OTO’S PLANET was being exhibited on the Quest at SXSW, but I had a chance to check out the Apple Pro Version ahead of the SXSW festival and I felt like I much preferred it. OTO’S PLANET picked up the second place prize at Venice Immersive, but I missed being able to interview the director Gwenael Francois there.
I did manage to catch up with Francois at SXSW to talk more about the development of this beautiful interactive narrative that uses table top-scale animation, and requires the user to rotate a tiny planet around in order to follow the story of Oto, his pet, and the story of a colonizing intruder who arrives.
I found that the interactions were much smoother and immersive on the Apple Vision Pro than the Quest, and the higher resolution also popped a lot more. The Apple Vision Pro version defaults to mixed reality while there is an opportunity to see it in fully immersive VR on the Quest. I normally would prefer the Quest version, but having the better quality mixed reality cameras and overall much higher resolution in the Apple Vision Pro.
Apple also featured Oto’s Planet, and DPT CEO Nicholas Roy shares in this interview that they’ve actually received more purchases on Apple devices than Meta’s ecosystem. Meta’s storefront has been flooded by Meta’s own first-party Horizon world as well as App Lab apps, and so it’s very telling and reflective of the current state of distribution to have more sales for the Apple Vision Pro than Meta Quest.
It is promising to see Apple get more serious at immersive storytelling as there was a session titled “Create Interactive Stories for Apple Vision Pro” on Tuesday morning featuring three representatives from Apple.
This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon.
Music: Fatality
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Rough Transcript
[00:00:05.458] Kent Bye: The Voices of VR Podcast. Hello, my name is Kent Bye, and welcome to the Voices of VR Podcast. It's a podcast that looks at the structures and forms of immersive storytelling and the future of spatial computing. You can support the podcast at patreon.com slash voicesofvr. So continuing my series of looking at different immersive stories from South by Southwest 2025, There's a number of different experiences that were either being exhibited on the Apple Vision Pro there at the exhibition, or they are generally available on the Apple Vision Pro. So this piece, Otto's Planet, it was actually premiered at Venice Immersive 2024. It actually picked up the special jury prize. It's kind of like the second place prize at Venice Immersive. And it's available on both the Quest platform and the Apple Vision Pro. If you happen to have an Apple Vision Pro, highly, highly recommend checking it out. On that platform, I think that the high resolution and the eye tracking, it's just a little bit more fluid interactions that you can have there on the Apple Vision Pro. But it's also available on the Quest platform, and that's where I first saw it, and it's just as strong as a piece there, but it's a little bit lower resolution. But I think the interaction design is a little bit more dialed in when it comes to the Apple Vision Pro. this is a really amazing like tabletop scale animation where you have this conceit of a planet that you can rotate all around and so you're seeing otto who is this laid-back character he's got a pet that is falling around and he's playing with it and then all of a sudden there's a visitor kind of like this colonizing force that is trying to take over and seize different parts of the land And so there's a number of different interactions that are happening, some miscommunications along the way. And the story kind of develops from there. It's conflict that is kind of resolved by the end. But they're traversing across this little globe-like sphere. And you are asked as a viewer to rotate that when there may be multiple points of focus on different points of the sphere. So you're kind of like this virtual cinematographer that is watching the story as it's unfolding, but also able to change the perspective. Sometimes it force changes the perspective if you might be missing something, but more or less you have a lot of control to change the way that you're actually viewing the story as it's unfolding. It's not changing the story much. There are some interactive parts, but it's mostly a way that you can change your perspective on how the story is unfolding. So really quite innovative and a really beautiful story simply told and highly recommend it if you have either their Quest or an Apple Vision Pro. And we talk a little bit about some of those differences and actually how they're having a lot more success on Apple Vision Pro than on the Quest, which I think kind of speaks to the larger ecosystem changes that have been happening on the Quest platform where they're really deprioritizing third-party apps, focusing on their own first-party apps with Horizon Worlds and kind of flooding the system with both promoting Horizon Worlds as well as with these App Lab applications. And they did actually get featured by Apple on their store. So anyway, lots to dig into with this really beautiful piece called Otto's Planet on today's episode of the Voices of VR podcast. So this interview with Gwinell happened on Sunday, March 9th, 2025 at South by Southwest in Austin, Texas. So with that, let's go ahead and dive in. Dive right in.
[00:03:23.075] Gwenael Francois: I'm Guylain Francois, and I'm the director of AutosPlanet. And I'm showing it here in South By, and it's in the spotlight experience section. And that's all.
[00:03:34.862] Kent Bye: Maybe you could give a bit more context as to your background and your journey into the space.
[00:03:41.286] Gwenael Francois: So my background is much more into live action since I have a company in Luxembourg that I own with Julian Baker since 15 years now and with this company we did both a lot of commercials, music videos and and short stories and stuff like that. And we kind of changed a bit the direction of the company a few years ago, focusing more on production of typical live action stuff like feature films and stuff like that, but also immersive experiences. And so that's kind of our new sector of exploration.
[00:04:22.409] Kent Bye: And so maybe you could just give a bit more context for how you came across virtual reality and immersive storytelling as a medium that you wanted to start to get into.
[00:04:31.724] Gwenael Francois: Yeah, so it was like, since I am kind of an interested geek into this kind of experiential stuff, I'm also a video gamer. But as I said, my partner and me were much more interested in film and good photography. But at a point we were like, oh, that's interesting. There's something, perhaps there's something to do in the immersive space, in the VR space. And the first things we saw were not really exciting, since it was shot with GoPros and stuff like that, and the visual quality was not for us, and it was like, OK, I'm not sure I want to do something like that, you know, 360 videos with bad quality, that was not something for us. But at a point, we saw really great experiences, like, for example, Arden's Wake, that was like, oh, my God, you can tell a story like that. But even if we are not from the animation world, that was obvious that it was what we wanted to do, because it was cute, really well done, storytelling was really good, and I was like, this is something that I want to do. So that was the starting point, and I was like, okay. I immediately thought about an idea with a tiny world, because I really like the idea of having small characters, like in The Line, those really good experiences, also Gloomy Eyes, you know? I was thinking about something small, and the idea of the small planet came up really early, you know? And that was the starting point of what is now Autospanit.
[00:05:59.516] Kent Bye: And then what were your steps for starting to collaborate with others that could help you close some of the technical gaps in terms of actually executing both in the art and implementation of some of the animation within virtual reality? So where did you begin to start to put together the team? Did you start with the story? And how did you start to find some of these other collaborators to help make it happen?
[00:06:22.009] Gwenael Francois: So at the beginning it was like okay I have this idea of a tiny world with a guy living on it so first I wrote the story and the first really first point was to find some fans to help me write this story. The very first help was given by the CNC in France because I am a French guy. even if my company is Luxembourg because I'm kind of between the two. And that was the very first step. And then we looked for partners to create a bigger experience. First, find funding, of course. And so we started to Not exactly, before that I was like I want to make something small and I want to do it in Luxembourg first you know because my company was there and the idea was really about making something easy and quick and that wasn't the case at the end but that was the very first idea and at this step it was like okay now that's interesting your story could be great you know but you need to find partners around the world you know to help you elaborate a story and of course have skills from all over the world so that's why a kind of a feedback we have from luxembourgish fund so that's why we opened it and tried to fight partners so at one point we were like okay we're gonna do that with a with a french company that was really involved in that Sadly we didn't have funds in France at this point so that kind of changed the idea and we've met Nicolas in the Atelier Grand Nord, XR, and he was really interested in the project and he said like, hey if you want we can work together. So that was the point and then we started to elaborate a plan and find funding in each of our countries and collaborate on the project.
[00:08:05.067] Kent Bye: Coming from the film world, usually there's a pretty linear process of pre-production, production, and then post-production where you're editing. Within animation and VR, there's a little bit more of an iterative process where you're making sure that the interactions are working, that you have different points where you have engagement. So the story is melding in between those interaction parts. But I'd love to hear you describe a little bit about your process of if you felt like you wrote the core arc of the story and that was pretty set, or if there were certain moments that the story changed based upon the different interactions that you wanted to have.
[00:08:43.532] Gwenael Francois: At the beginning, we had a storyline that was quite linear and all that. At the end, the story is still linear, but the very first important things we saw, it was like, how do you tell a story around the planet? So very early in the process, we were like, we need to have the opportunity to rotate the planet. So that was the point. telling the story about this planet and be able to rotate it was kind of an obvious way of doing it. And mainly regarding interaction, we only thought about doing small interactive elements just to trigger the next step of the story and to evolve the user. as you saw it, it's like at the moment you can help Otto having a fruit and this is not about changing the story or whatever but just evolving you a bit more inside it and to be kind of a partner of Otto or whatever or something like you are linked to the character a bit more, you know.
[00:09:51.937] Kent Bye: And I'd love maybe you could take a step back and how you start to describe the story. Who is Otto? What's he doing on this planet? And then something happens in terms of having a visitor. And so maybe you could just describe what the story is.
[00:10:04.801] Gwenael Francois: So the story is about Otto. He's living on this tiny planet. When you put the headset on, you have a planet in front of you, 1.5 meters wide. And Otto is chilling on this planet. He's living barefoot. And the only thing he does is eating the fruits from his own tree, sleeping in his hammock, and playing the ball with his tiny pet, Skippy. And at a point, a spaceship crashes on the planet. From the spaceship comes EXO, and EXO is the kind of annoying cosmonaut, a bit stressful. And the first thing he does is like he's taking a flag, plant it on the ground, and this is my home. And it's mainly about how they're gonna badly live together.
[00:10:49.049] Kent Bye: Yeah. And so the story is exploring all these themes that I think also mirror a lot of current geopolitical events in terms of immigration, refugees, people coming in, but also colonialism that is coming into lands and trying to claim it as their own. And so I'd love to hear any reflections on how this is a story that's also reflecting the stories of our time right now.
[00:11:10.785] Gwenael Francois: The thing is, when I was writing the very first story, it was at the point when the orange guy was like, I want to make a wall. So at a point in the story, you'll see that's going to be a wall. And it was directly inspired by this guy. So that totally resonates with what happened at the moment, but it's still totally actual.
[00:11:34.025] Kent Bye: Yeah, it's kind of a simple story, very well told in terms of the dynamics, but I think the way that the characters, they're in this tabletop scale, so they're like a little tiny. Like you said, you mentioned a number of the other experiences over the years, Gloomy Eyes and Arden's Wake and others that have had this tabletop scale. And so I'd love if you could go into a little bit of the character design of both Otto and this visitor and what you were going for for how you were designing each of these characters.
[00:12:01.832] Gwenael Francois: At the beginning it was also about thinking about we all know that we are kind of restricted with the technical capabilities of the headsets and the use of tiny characters is like you can use a small amount of polygons to show and it's still like really precise. So that was first I think also a kind of idea of showing something really visually attracting and so the smaller scale helps that very much. And regarding the character design itself, it was like kind of normal way of doing it in animation. You know, it's like you put some ideas on the tables and then you have concept artists that work on the look of the characters themselves. And it's a kind of evolving process. OK, we could go like that. It's looking much more OK. He have sandals. No, it's not. It's too biblical. I don't want that. So give the guy some. OK, let's try with barefoot. It's still too much of a, you know, it's an evolving process. You see something, you work with guys, and then, ah, okay, you go in that direction, and at the end you have the character. And all the design work for the characters was made in a studio in Luxembourg named Zalt, and they are very, very interesting, well-minded, and talented persons, you know. So that was a real pleasure to work with them, really, for that.
[00:13:28.223] Kent Bye: Yeah, I had some really amazing moments watching this piece in terms of, I felt in some ways like I was becoming the center photographer, editor all at the same time, all in a spatial context. I've seen a lot of augmented reality pieces over the years at festivals where you are essentially in charge of the perspective that you're able to see, and it's mostly through the phone where you're deciding what part of the augmented reality perspective that you want to see and it puts me into this like I'm the center photographer I want to create the best kind of framing but this piece was also tapping into that where it was not only like editing but also I mean I wasn't directing because I wasn't changing how things were happening but I was directing how I was going to experience this because I had the agency to twist this planet around. And there's ways that you can force the perspective to if people are missing something or to get their attention to say, OK, look over here. So there's this balance between giving the viewer agency, but sometimes not too much agency because you don't want them to completely miss a story. So I'd love to hear you explain a little bit about this process of giving that agency to the user decide what they're interested in, what to follow, because there's branching stories and you can mostly see both stories most of the time with the right perspective. But sometimes you can make a choice to go one or the other. And it felt like a lot of control to see what I was paying attention to as the story was unfolding. So I'd love to hear some of your process of developing this as an experience.
[00:14:58.272] Gwenael Francois: I think you already had a great description of it, it's like at some moments I didn't want the user to miss some pinpoint moment in the story you know it's like that's some clue moments and then we have to refocus the point of view and rotate the planet just at the right position to be sure that it's not missed. But at the end, you know, the way of using and turning the planet was really about giving more involvement into the story. It's a bit yours when you can rotate it. So as you said, it's like if you feel like a director, you can change your point of view. You want to be on the side of the world with one character or the other or both if you want to see both as they're doing at the same moment, you know. So it's like a kind of freedom for the user. It's also why I think it's an enjoyable piece for the people, you know?
[00:15:50.117] Kent Bye: Yeah, and this piece, Otto's Planet, had a chance to premiere at Venice Immersive 2024 and actually picked up the special jury prize. It's kind of like the second place prize there at Venice Immersive. So love to hear you explain a little bit about the process of being at Venice and receiving that accolade.
[00:16:09.287] Gwenael Francois: So first we had the chance to show the project in Annecy, the festival of animation. It was a perfect place to show it because since it's an animation film, in a way, that was the first evident step. And then we were like, I didn't wear to Venice at all. And I was like, I really want to go there because I know there's a lot of stuff to see, to experiment, to meet people and all that. And I was like, OK. so the thing we can do is like we can put it in a in a section uh since we already showed it and and we know that we need a kind of a premiere to be in the competition we were like okay we'll try a way to show it like out of competition whatever but the fact is we have a french coproducer on the project small and it was like oh no it's not a problem to have it in competition because it was a french premiere so it's you you still compete you can compete still an international premiere so yeah they can take either world premieres or international premieres and so i was like oh that's wonderful i was i wasn't expecting that that was already really cool you know to be in competition and to be there first you know so that was already really really really cool so we spent a week there meet a lot of people so that was a great experience and then we get back home and it was like okay that was an insane week a lot of meets and all that it was really cool and a moment i have a phone call like one day before the ceremony like you need to come back what you mean really i need to come back for something yeah you need to come back okay i'm coming back so with a big smile on my face i was like okay we're gonna go there And that was kind of insane to be there, really. It's like, OK, that's my first project. I'm here in Venice and there's Pedro Almodovar just right here. And, you know, kind of stars and stuff. What the fuck am I doing here? It's like crazy. And then going on stage, having this really beautiful prize was totally crazy, insane and unexpected at all.
[00:18:06.274] Kent Bye: Yeah, I think it was, you know, the way that this piece is tapping into this new mode of interacting with the story that's unfolding this way, and I think because it's set on this planet where the gravity is such that people could be twisting around, it's kind of a unique conceit that I can't imagine too many other contexts that would have that same type of mechanic. I'm sure there are other ways of doing something similar, but it was very unique in that way, and also... Yeah, I think, like I said, a simple story as it unfolds, but also really powerful. And then there's other twists and stuff that we won't get too much into in terms of where the overall story is going, which is also pretty fun. But yeah, I just think it speaks to the power of animation, particularly within the medium, where I see a lot of innovations that have happened with animation, also just generally in documentary. Documentary is a form that experiments a lot with storytelling. But animation also ends up being a big part. So because you weren't coming from this animation world, I'd love to hear any reflections of why you wanted to start with animation to explore something that you couldn't tell a similar story within 360 video that didn't have much interactivity to it.
[00:19:12.762] Gwenael Francois: like animation was obvious for us because we have a much more involvement with the characters since we have six DoF you know that's the first thing you have more stereoscopic view and then you can change you can rotate the planet but you can walk around if you want you know so it's like so much of a presence. So that was the idea. That's why we used animation. So mainly this is a way of telling a story. Since we would have loved to do that in film, it was just impossible for now. So perhaps at a point we're going to work with some cameras and stuff coming out where you can shoot volumetric videos with a very decent quality now. So perhaps we're going to do that in the future. But for Autosplanet it was kind of the only way of doing it, you know. But of course, we have also some great experiences in doing this in animation, because you can go crazy with the kind of characters you want to create, the kind of animation, the kind of look you can have. It's like the pure freedom of anything, you know? So that's mainly good for creativity and to express yourself easily. So it was a good way to do that.
[00:20:24.560] Kent Bye: And I noticed in this piece, what's interesting is that there's a lot of communication that's happening between the two characters. Some of it is through the embodied interactions, but there's also a lot of language. None of the language is translated. There's certain curse words here and there, maybe some other Italian words, but it didn't necessarily read it as this is actually words that they're saying, or maybe more intonations, or maybe it has got a whole script of meanings, but I think the meaning was clear without having... the ability to understand what they were saying. So I'd love to hear you maybe elaborate on this creative choice to have this gibberish or foreign language that's not translated.
[00:21:01.500] Gwenael Francois: And as you said, it's important that the two characters don't understand themselves. So it was the idea of creating a language, a kind of a language that's weird and At the beginning, I was writing some stuff that was not recognizable and using some words, a bit like they did in the Minions. The Minions speak also a kind of weird language, so you can have some points of what they're saying, but not everything. But at the moment when I wrote it, it was needed to be sure that I write something and I know what the character is saying. So the language was translated, into something. Some of the words are coming back many times. So, like, a can is a... I don't remember. I don't remember the name, in fact. But some of the words are coming back each time. It's a bit structured, you know? It has some kind of creation language. That was the idea. It was written and it was essential for me to have this language written so I can also give the translation of what they're saying to the actors. Because the actors have to play it, so they have to understand what are they saying, you know? What's the mood of that? What am I trying to express? So that was important to have something. If you heard like that, it's impossible to understand, but there's a meaning behind it.
[00:22:24.739] Kent Bye: So in the story, do the characters understand each other? It's clear that communication is happening and that they're understanding what they're saying, but are you saying that in the story they're also speaking different languages where they don't really understand each other?
[00:22:35.489] Gwenael Francois: Yeah, exactly. That was the first point. We don't know exactly if they don't understand themselves at all, or perhaps one of the two characters is faking it, like, I don't want to understand, perhaps, we don't know, but it's clearly about miscommunication.
[00:22:53.171] Kent Bye: Yeah, I thought that it was very clear in the story and how the story unfolds that even if the language parts weren't clear, I think the actions that they have towards each other, they're clearly fighting. But there's a certain way that Otto is just kind of chill and kind of accepting his fates of having this happen. And so, yeah, there's a way that he's not necessarily fighting against it too much, but he's resigned to accept it while having other ways of dealing with it, I guess.
[00:23:18.712] Gwenael Francois: Yeah, but if you dig into the story, you can also understand at the beginning that Otto tries to communicate with the other, you know? And he don't want this kind of fate always happen. So he tries to save the other guy, you know? But it's like, that's the way it's working. So that's how you understand at the end that it's not, it's always the same path. It's always the same story, you know? But at the beginning, you can understand that he's trying to saving, you know?
[00:23:48.678] Kent Bye: He's trying to communicate, but there's not a lot of listening that's happening, is what you're saying. Not at all. Yeah, yeah. So in preparation for coming to South by Southwest, I watched Otto's Planet again. I had seen it ahead of Venice Immersive, and we didn't get a chance to chat there. But I'm glad that you were coming here and that we could have a chance to sit down. And instead of watching it on the Oculus Quest again, I decided to watch it on the Apple Vision Pro. And I felt that... It was a completely different experience for me in a way. I don't remember when I did it at home if I used the controllers or used my hands. But when I did it on the Apple Vision Pro, it just felt much more responsive of being able to look at where I'm looking at. And I don't know if you had to also add additional asteroids around the planet to create additional gaze points to anchor on. I found that sometimes if I needed to reorient, I could look at one of those floating asteroids around the planet that were stationary. They're not moving, but you can just have another place to have some leverage to make it so that it was level. It was a little tricky to sometimes if I were just rotating it, it would get all twisted. And so it was nice to be able to correct it so that it was at the correct orientation that I wanted to watch it. But the overall experience of watching on the Apple Vision Pro, I felt like it was so much more immersive. Just being able to use the hands with the eye tracking, it just feels a little bit more magical in the way that the story's unfolding, that the technology's not getting in the way as much as it did, I think, when I saw it with the Quest, where wasn't as smooth or seamless. But with the Apple Vision Pro, it felt like it was on another level of being refined. But I'd love to hear some of your thoughts and reflections on developing it for the Quest and then porting it over to the Apple Vision Pro and what you've noticed in terms of some of the differences.
[00:25:29.485] Gwenael Francois: So it was a big challenge for our friends at DPT for programming it and to have a version for Apple Vision Pro because at that time it was like, it was very, very early in the stage of development of the headset itself and also in the, we used Unity. and Unity needs to communicate with the Vision Pro and all this part, we were writing functions and stuff to be implemented and to have it work on the Vision Pro. So that was not a really easy task for the programmers at DPT, you know. So that was a bit of a challenge and at the end, the experience is really, yeah, it's really, really smooth on the Vision Pro. So it's precise, you know, the headset is really incredible visually and all that. But there are some things that we're still missing. I don't know if you remember, but when you're using the Quest, this is something that you can do. You can use both hands and level the planet to have it at the right orientation you want. This is something that we didn't achieve in the Vision Pro. We have only one hand. That's a bit of a problem to have the exact angle that you want at the end. And this is something that is still evolving and perhaps now we can do it, but I'm not sure. But yeah, it was a lot of work that needs to be put in the working process to have it on the Vision Pro, but at the end it's like... really cool to see how precise it could be and how immersive it is. I heard some other guys experiencing the piece and they were like so immersed in the story even if they are in their own home, you know? That's strange because it's like it's your own environment and suddenly it's changing and it's like another approach on the quest you have the choice between the two the vr and the mr version but in the vr you in totally other worlds like you transport elsewhere but when you do it in a mixed reality it's much more closer to you because it's in your home you know
[00:27:31.840] Kent Bye: Yeah, and my recollection is that I did it in virtual reality the first time, but the background is all space, basically. There's not really that much that's happening. But the second time that I watched it, I watched it in mixed reality on the Apple Vision Pro. And yeah, it had a different feeling, both from the higher resolution of more pixels to work with on the Apple Vision Pro, but also there was something that was... really magical to have it floating in my office where I was watching it. I'm usually not like a big fan of mixed reality just because it's like I prefer not to see all the clutter and messiness of my office. My office is not really adding much to the experience most of the time. But with this, it felt like it actually, I don't know, I might actually prefer it because of the affordances of it. It just allowed me to really kind of sink into it more maybe like just kind of subconsciously believe that I'm in my office because I was but also this kind of magical world it had a different context because it just felt like this like little magical planet that was floating in my office that I didn't have that experience the first time so I think it was a combination of both the more streamlined user interfaces with the eye tracking was a lot more dialed in and able to control things more precisely but also this magic of seeing this little floating planet in mixed reality so yeah. I don't know if you've had any similar experiences of how any differences that you see through the different versions and what you prefer.
[00:28:55.385] Gwenael Francois: I really like both and I really like the way it can be experienced in virtual reality because I really like to be involved in the story, no, immersed in the story. And for me, I think, for my side, it's like I prefer to have it in the middle of space. It's like I'm in the story and this is the story I want to tell. But to have it also in mixed reality, it adds something else. much more involvement because it's your home and all that but I think the better way to experience it doesn't exist because I would love to try it like in VR in the Vision Pro but we don't have this version now.
[00:29:37.868] Kent Bye: So working with Astraea, you have this distribution of it being available now for folks to check out on both the Quest and Apple Vision Pro. Are there any other plans to show it in any other distribution context, or is it mostly just on the stores right now and then maybe some festivals here in the future?
[00:29:54.065] Gwenael Francois: For now, the idea is to have it, as you said, we have it on both the platforms. We are still going through a lot of festivals, so it will be visible in a lot of festivals. We also have a kind of showcase in Taiwan at two different places. In Taipei, there was like during one month in Taipei, one and a half months in Kaohsiung where we have LBE spots with a lot of headsets and people can come in, book a ticket and have it visible. We also have the chance to show it during two months now in Luxembourg. So we have a dedicated space for that and it's like The good thing is that it is free when you watch it in Luxembourg, so you have people walking around, it's in the center of the city, so it's also a way of sharing it with a lot of people that perhaps don't know VR and don't know immersive experiences, so that's really, really, really cool. And for the future, we are still open to a lot of different ways of showing it. But there's no plan right now. We would have loved to have it, for example, on an iPhone, you know, to have an augmented reality experience. But for now, it's not programmed, but we would love to have it in those different kind of ways of using it and eventually in other platforms. But we need money for that. And for now, we don't have money to do that.
[00:31:18.317] Kent Bye: And yeah, how's the launch been going? I know that there's Apple Vision Pro. There's not a ton of headsets that have been sold, maybe 100 or 200,000. We don't really know the number. And there's lots of Quest headsets that are out there. But Meta's also had shifting priorities with promoting Horizon Worlds and the App Lab. And it's just a little bit more of a cluttered space, I think, I'm hearing from a lot of creators. But just curious to hear some of your reactions of how the launch has been going so far.
[00:31:46.548] Gwenael Francois: It was much like a tiny thing because as you can imagine, Meta is not showing it in a way that you could expect to sell it. As you said, they are focusing more on the Metaverse world they want to create. We all know that some of the big game developers have some problem with that because they see that the sellings and all that are falling. But you can imagine that a piece like ours that is much more like storytelling, it's not exposed, you know. And they don't show it to the people, so you don't have a lot of sales at the end. So it's much more about, yeah, we do some kind of sales and stuff like that, but it's not totally crazy. And for Apple, we're still waiting for a much more affordable headset to have it to more people and eventually have it shown by them, you know.
[00:32:48.479] Nicolas Roy: We have more sales on the Vision Pro than on the Quest, so that's pretty surprising as well. Because Apple have put it forward, they have promoted it, whereas Meta hasn't done that. Awesome. And I'm going to have you just also introduce yourself. Yeah. Hi, my name is Nicholas Roy. I'm the CEO at DPT. We are the co-producers on the project, and we're the studio that built the experience.
[00:33:10.737] Kent Bye: Yeah, that's interesting, because I know that Serenity Caldwell and Apple, they're going to be listing a number of different best of immersive stories that are on the Apple Vision Pro, and Otto's Planet was one of them. That's how I heard that it had even an Apple Vision Pro version of it. I think with the Apple Vision Pro, Some of the best experiences on the Apple Vision Pro are watching 3D movies or stereoscopic movies. And with the Apple Immersive Video, I think it's cultivating an audience of people who appreciate storytelling, like more of the documentary and other ways that Apple Immersive Video is going. And also, I feel like that the light interactions that you have are much better suited than what people want to see on the Quest, which is much more of a game. So you have much more of a game console context. And I think the Apple Vision Pro is shaping up where it's really cultivating this. audience for immersive storytelling.
[00:33:58.246] Gwenael Francois: Yeah, you're right. I think the story itself fits really well in the Apple ecosystem. So we hope they're going to expose it a bit more because they already did that, you know, because we have the chance to be like the app of the week at the moment. So that's like a big chance for us to show it more for the people. But as you know, there's not a lot of people that had a vision pro. So some of them saw that. And yeah, we really hope that Happn is going to continue this kind of pushing the developers to experience and to propose this kind of storytelling. As you said, they are pushing a lot into 180 degrees videos. That's also interesting. As I said, we come from live action. This is something really interesting. We can here have a look at the very first a version of the Blackmagic camera that is shooting in this format so this is also something that is really interesting but we kind of also waiting to move from Apple to push content like ours you know and to help some kind of creators to do that.
[00:35:05.771] Kent Bye: Yeah, like Meta had the Oculus TV, which became the MetaQuest TV. So they were funding a lot of this immersive story content, but there was never any monetization around it. It wasn't set up to create a self-sustaining ecosystem. And in a way, it was producing a lot of great content that I saw in the festival circuit, but again, not really promoted internally. They were still always preferring games. And so I think there's this situation where now with Apple coming in hopefully that'll create new opportunities for Creators like yourself to distribute these different types of experiences because I think that you know at the end of the day if it doesn't have like a flywheel of Being able to raise funding and produce things and also get a return on that money then you know you're gonna be essentially beholden to whatever grant money you could get from European institutions to be able to fund and sustain this type of work, rather than have something that is more self-sustaining in terms of investing and creating something to be able to actually get a return and profit to continue for it to grow. So it feels like that's sort of like this situation where, as I talk to creators, they're in this chicken and egg situation of waiting for that flywheel to really get started but in that context I'm just curious to hear some of your own personal plans as you navigate this emerging realm.
[00:36:21.179] Gwenael Francois: Yeah for us it's a bit challenging also because you know it's like it's our very first experience that we are kind of developed and shown to the public so we are kind of new in this area so it's hard to have a step back on it and to know what to do next but We have the chance to create stuff with multiple farms in Luxembourg, in Canada, in France and all these lands. So we have the chance to create with a lot of freedom projects that make sense for us. So that's the very first point. At the end, we would love to have it more visible, used, sold and all that. But this is something that is not really in control. It's hard to have it since you don't own the platform. You cannot push the content. So it's really, really complicated. So I hope it's going to evolve into something where the people themselves would love to see that and push the platforms to do that. Yeah, we want this kind of stuff. But as you say, it's like, is there a project that is strong enough to drive the people to be visible and to force the platform in a way to do that? Not sure.
[00:37:43.511] Kent Bye: MARK MANDELMANN- Yeah. And also you have meta that's coming in and really promoting their own first party apps and kind of abandoning the third party app developers and experience creators that have been creating VR to be able to create their own first party thing and basically not really prioritize these third party developers. So that's a whole other dynamic that was certainly going on. But yeah, I guess as we start to wrap up, I'd love to hear what you think the ultimate potential of immersive storytelling might be and what it might be able to enable.
[00:38:12.165] Gwenael Francois: really hard to predict you know so I don't know exactly but we saw a lot also of LBE's projects coming out and it's like those kind of stuff are much more profitable and this is also a way that we would like to explore you know telling stories and having a lot of people seeing that at the same time without necessarily having a headset and all that so this is also another way of telling stories that's always interesting us and through the other way of distributing and seeing that I think that as we see that other big gamers are coming in the game like Google that could also change things you know perhaps I don't know what's their point how they're gonna push the content what are they gonna do but I think to have all these big companies involved in the immersive field means That could be interesting for creators like us because at the end, you need creators to attract the people and to use it. So that could be interesting. So the future will tell.
[00:39:18.862] Kent Bye: Awesome. Is there anything else that's left unsaid that you'd like to say to the broader immersive community? Any final thoughts?
[00:39:28.564] Gwenael Francois: The final thoughts is like, yeah, go watch Otto's Planet and other stuff like that. And so perhaps things are going to change for us and for creators like us.
[00:39:38.988] Kent Bye: Very cool. Awesome. Well, AutosPlanet, it's a really beautiful, short little animation piece. Well, I guess it's about a half hour. So it's a nice little story that is really quite innovative in the way that you're able to interact and engage with it. And in the different formats on the Quest and Apple Vision Pro, if you do have an AVP, I highly recommend checking it out in the mixed reality mode. And if you have a Quest that's also available there, I guess you have a choice to see it either in mixed reality or within virtual reality. Yeah, a beautiful story simply told, really powerful piece. And yeah, I'm glad we had a chance to be able to talk about it. So thanks again for joining me here on the podcast. Thanks a lot. Thanks for listening to this episode of the Voices of VR podcast. And there is a lot that's happening in the world today. And the one place that I find solace is in stories, whether that's a great movie, a documentary, or immersive storytelling. And I love going to these different conferences and festivals and seeing all the different work and talking to all the different artists and sharing that with the community. Because I think there's just so much to be learned from listening to someone's process to hear about what they want to tell a story about. And even if you don't have a chance to see it, just to have the opportunity to hear about a project that you might have missed or to learn about it. And so this is a part of my own creative process of capturing these stories and sharing it with a larger community. And if you find that valuable and want to sustain this oral history project that I've been doing for the last decade, then please do consider supporting me on Patreon at patreon.com slash voicesofvr. Every amount does indeed help sustain the work that I'm doing here, even if it's just $5 a month. That goes a long way for allowing me to continue to make these trips and to to ensure that I can see as much of the work as I can and to talk to as many of the artists as I can and to share that with the larger community. So you can support the podcast at patreon.com slash voices of VR. Thanks for listening.
