SirDavidAttenborough
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Sky VR's interactive museum visit deserves a bigger audience
Sir David Attenborough first lent his silky narrator's voice to the medium of VR when he teamed up with London's Natural History Museum for a special exhibit on the earth's prehistoric oceans. And now, several years later, the institution and Sir Dave have collaborated once again on a VR experience commissioned by European media-and-telecommunications company Sky. Hold the World offers an interactive look at a few of the museum's more interesting specimens, from the huge blue whale skeleton that hangs in the building's main entrance hall down to a tiny rat flea. Naturally, there's an educational aspect, with a lifelike hologram of Attenborough telling you all about the artifact as if he were sitting right there. But there's a catch: You'll have to be a Sky customer to try it out when it launches this spring.
David Attenborough's hologram will help you study fossils in VR
Sir David Attenborough is no stranger to VR. The beloved naturalist and TV presenter has worked on immersive, look-where-you-like films for the Natural History Museum (NHM) in London, the American Museum of Natural History and Google. Now, the documentarian is teaming up with Sky and the NHM for a new experience called Hold the World, which allows you to pick up fossils and other rare objects. As you turn them over, a "hologram" of Attenborough will pop up and explain their importance.
New BBC app highlights the best of David Attenborough
On Sir David Attenborough's 90th birthday earlier this year, the BBC announced it was developing a mobile app to showcase the veteran presenter's huge body of work. "Attenborough's Story of Life" is finally available to download for iOS and Android today, and features more than 1,000 curated clips from the 40-plus BBC shows Attenborough has been involved in over the past 60 years. Best of all, it's available worldwide for free, so while Brits are enjoying fresh weekly installments of 4K nature porn courtesy of Planet Earth II, the new app means everyone else can get their Attenborough fix too.
Nature documentary 'Planet Earth II' looks absolutely stunning
For people who love showing off their high-end A/V gear, documentaries from BBC Earth are about as good as it gets for infinitely rewatchable reference material. But the clock ticks ever forward and some of those older releases don't look quite as good anymore thanks to screen sizes getting dramatically bigger and pixel counts higher. But now we have our first glimpse at the shot-in-4K Planet Earth II by way of a trailer from BBC One.
David Attenborough's next 3D nature doc and new VR experiences are coming soon
The 3D hype may have died down from its peak a few years ago, but Sir David Attenborough is continuing to make use of the technology (check after the break for a video explaining some of the infatuation with it) for his critically acclaimed nature documentaries. The latest one is Conquest of the Skies 3D, and Sky has announced that the three 60-minute episodes will air around Christmas in the UK. In order to "tell the evolutionary story of flight" Attenborough and crew are using new 3D macroscopic and high-speed filming techniques, as well as 3D octocopters. What it won't have is the Oculus Rift or Project Morpheus-compatible virtual reality version that was bandied about earlier this year, but that doesn't mean the tech is on the shelf. Newly-expanding Sky has teamed up with Atlantic Productions, and Atlantic's new division Alchemy is planning to have VR experiences (that combine live action 3D footage, 360 degree video and CGI) available this fall.
Sir David Attenborough's latest wildlife show is coming to VR headsets (updated)
Ever want to get immersed in a wildlife documentary? Like, really immersed? You're going to get your chance soon. Atlantic Productions has revealed to Realscreen that its upcoming Sir David Attenborough project, Conquest of the Skies, is destined for Oculus Rift virtual reality headsets. The studio is shooting all of its footage using an eight-camera rig that will give VR viewers a chance to catch the action from every possible angle.
