At the G-Star gaming convention in Busan in 2015, visitors waited anxiously in front of Oculus VR’s exhibition booth to get a taste of new media content.

In the virtual world of a shooting game, gamers can see bullets passing right by them, run down the street with shotguns or automatic weapons alongside other police SWAT members while fighting bad guys and feeling like heroes on a mission.

Content such as games and videos using the emerging technology of virtual reality provide a unique and interactive experience beyond what traditional 3-D content has offered.

“It is a different world where participants can interact with others, and most importantly make us not only immersed in the content but feel as if we are really there doing it -- not just playing it,” said an industry source.

Oculus Story Studio, part of Facebook’s Oculus VR that made “Henry,” its first short animation for VR last year, said enabling viewers to feel the present was what set VR content apart from other content.

“VR creates an entirely new set of opportunities and creative constraints,” it said.

“We believe our environments, characters and situations should be better suited for virtual reality than they would be anywhere else. This is easier said than done, as you might imagine.”

“Henry” is an interactive VR short featuring a balloon-loving hedgehog that received rave reviews for its content and technological breakthrough, ushering in a new era of filmmaking. 

In Korea, however, there has not been any real activity in the VR field, with only a few game companies investing in the development of VR content, industry sources said.

Big names such as NCsoft and Nexon Korea said they were in “the research stage, and had not really started developing VR games,” while HanbitSoft, a listed game publisher, said it invested in Skonec Entertainment to produce VR content.

“The U.S. obviously has been in the forefront in developing VR content, while China has been keen on fostering the technology with content on a par with its drone industry, which is the world’s biggest thanks to DJI,” said a source in the entertainment industry.

“In Korea, not much has happened in the content space other than Samsung Electronics and LG Electronics increasing their VR interest in the manufacturing sector.”

Besides Oculus’s “Henry,” Disney’s Lucasfilm has been experimenting with VR on content such as “Star Wars,” while game-makers such as Sony PlayStation and Electronic Arts have been increasing their VR game lineups to excite audiences in the new media age.

“Foreign players have an upper hand because they have a huge library of characters and stories with which they can experiment and introduce a new world using new technology. Marvel, for instance, can recreate their characters like Iron Man using this technology,” said an industry source.

“The technology itself cannot appeal to the masses. Content -- whether games, videos, movies or characters -- can offer a new immersive experience.”

At the current stage, VR technology, however, does pose a challenge in storytelling. The headsets are bulky and uncomfortable to wear for a long period of time, thus making it hard to create longer videos or games for people to stay immersed.

But it offers a lot of opportunities when converged with other technologies such as drones, wearables and sensors.

For instance, when converged with wearable sensors, people will be able to feel like Neo in “The Matrix,” and with drones, VR content can make people feel like they are flying in the air like Superman. VR can be used in a variety of fields beyond games and movies such as health care, the military and tourism.

By Park Hyong-ki (hkp@heraldcorp.com)