Walk with your feet in the water, on a dream beach, with the weather always perfect… Arizona State University now allows you to do this, only everything is fake, or rather virtual.
The videos of this virtual beach with the astonished reactions of its visitors have caused a stir on social networks in recent days. Arizona State University (ASU) acquired a state-of-the-art immersive video complex last October: the MIX Center in Mesa, in the middle of the desert, which will house the world’s best studios for virtual reality and video creating games.
The fake dream beach (originally filmed in California in Los Angeles) occupies a space of about 100 m2: it is an experimental studio of total immersion used by both students and television and cinema professionals public who already visit it can.
An increasingly narrow border between the real and the virtual
The use of virtual productions for films and series has increased significantly during the Covid 19 pandemic. It combines real elements with virtual 3D elements, which are then broadcast on giant LED screens. For the needs of movies and TV series (like 1899 Fiction on Netflix), the movements of the cameras are synchronized with those of the images, adding depth to the virtual environment and therefore even more realism. The special effects are done in pre-production, not post-production. As a result, even the actors or visitors in the case of the university studio find it difficult to distinguish between fiction and reality!
The California beach “converted” into a university building in the middle of the Arizona desert. ©Chiemela Peter