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Alex Honnold: The Soloist VR
- jjeaff 5y agoI get dizzy watching him climb on my big tv. I can't imagine what a VR version would be like.
- qbasic_forever 5y agoTighten your belt and tie a rope between it and a solid anchor in your room so you can have the reassuring feeling of safety while you watch.
- andrethegiant 5y agomore like VRtigo
- carabiner 5y ago
- mod 5y agoCare to explain? Your comment lacks any real meat, but hints at an interesting thread, and your username suggest you have some domain expertise.
- acslater00 5y agomight buy an Oculus just for this
- sytelus 5y agoI am holding off for Occulus Quest Pro, hopefully due to release in Fall 2022 according to rumors.
- skilled 5y agoThe people who made the film did an exceptional job. My palms were producing buckets of sweat just from watching.
- daenz 5y agoHow they filmed "Free Solo"[0] was also pretty incredible. They had to assemble world class videographers who were also world class climbers. As you can imagine, it's a very small group of people! 0. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dtnjRoDa71Y https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dtnjRoDa71Y
- hit8run 5y agoToday a bunch of drones would be sufficient I guess?
- 10729287 5y agoWay more disturbing for the climber. Also, it's not always just about the end result.
- artonge 5y agoThe movie is only a few years old, so drones were already a solution back then. They did not use them because of the noise. Being filmed while climbing was already disturbing for Alex, so drones making a lot of noise was a no go.
- carabiner 5y agoProhibited in Yosemite, maybe all National Parks. This doesn't stop everyone though.
- snowwrestler 5y agoIt’s possible to get a filming permit for one. There is a drone shot near the end of Free Solo.
- 5y ago
- lordnacho 5y agoMakes me feel weird just watching him. One wrong move and you die. So you need to have extremely high confidence in each move. But how do you build that without falling off something? Practice in a safe environment? Ok so when is it safe to try for real?
- aeonik 5y agoHe climbs all these routes with a rope dozens to hundreds of times before free soloing them. The routes that he free soloes are also considered relatively easy to intermediate in skill level, well within his skill level. The really incredible part of his free soloes is just how long his body can last. It's Olympic levels of endurance.
- salty_biscuits 5y ago5.12d is pretty hard. Seems beyond intermediate to me (but maybe I'm just soft).
- pcthrowaway 5y agoAbsolutely, it's not just pretty hard, it's pretty damn hard. Most climbers will never climb this hard (maybe ~1-5% of climbers reach this grade with lots of practice and training). Even fewer will get to a point where they might conceivably flash or onsight 5.12d (<0.5% of climbers if I had to guess) I doubt there are more than 10,000 people alive who would consider free soloing 5.12d at all, and I don't think anyone else has free soloed a 5.12d big wall route.
- takk309 5y agoI agree with you for sure. I don't think 12d is unattainable to a typical fit person, it just takes a lot of training and focused desire to get to that point. It isn't a grade you can reach in a year or even five (except maybe children with their crazy power to weight ratios) but normal 2-3 days a week climbing over time will get you the strength and technique to climb a 5.12d. Style matters too. Are you good at steep overhung routes, slabby vertical routes that require lots of balance, crack climbing, or even off widths. It is all kinda relative. I am a tall guy so powerful long moves are my preferred style. I have friends a foot shorter than me that can crack climb way better than I can. It is a great sport and there are accomplishments to be made at every grade and every step of your climbing journey. Try hard and people with respect you regardless of the grade.
- schaefer 5y agoBummer it’s locked in to Facebook land.
- baby 5y agoYou mean meta
- hwers 5y agoWe still call it Google instead of Alphabet, brands are sticky (by design).
- verytrivial 5y agoThey got one free change with the dropped "The". Facebook is final.
- OneLeggedCat 5y agoIt honestly would not matter how much I loved this. Facebook is not getting my money. Most harmful institution in America. I'm sad to see Alex attach his name to this.
- eternityforest 5y agoI would never in a million years want to do this, but it must be pretty amazing to be able to do something with that degree of reliability. There's only one thing that I can start doing and be reasonably sure I'll succeed, and that's coding, and only because there is a defined process to follow that is resistant to basic errors, because it's so highly mutable and mistakes can be fixed individually without starting over. To be able to do anything to that degree of reliability must be pretty amazing.
- robotresearcher 5y agoDo you drive a car? Ride a bike in traffic? One false move and you are dead. You, like most people, are probably competent at these things that would be very risky but for your skill.
- misotakacs 5y agoAs a climber, I don't think it's comparable. The death rate among notorious soloists (as compared to rate among people who bike in traffic every day) agrees here. Each bad move on a solo is death. For driving, biking in traffic, it has to be a series of bad circumstances to mean death.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- codecurve 5y agoAlso a climber, and occasional soloist. You can absolutely make a bad move on a solo and not die. The soloists who achieve notoriety are either pushing the limits, or seeking adrenaline, which skews the stats, especially when you check the number of them that passed doing non-climbing activities. It's not particularly fair to compare that demographic to the average folks who bike in traffic every day. Soloing well within your limits is like riding a bike on a quiet road, there are things that can go wrong, but something extraordinary has to happen for it to be serious. Soloing close to (or outside of) your limits is like riding a bike on a busy motorway. The margins for error disappear and mistakes are far more likely to be fatal.
- domatic1 5y agoPete Whitaker was the first who did this with a 360 camera https://gearjunkie.com/climbing/pete-whittaker-solo-climb-on-film https://gearjunkie.com/climbing/pete-whittaker-solo-climb-on...
- rurban 5y agoI refused to watch this, after having watched Honnold's Free Solo. Suicidal
- Vinnl 5y ago> available exclusively on Meta Quest VR headsets I'm afraid this is going to be our future. There's web standards and VR browsers that allows us to enter any VR experience using your preferred device, but like Podcasts, there's a lot of effort to create silos that companies can act as a monopolist in.
- rjh29 5y ago'Future' is an odd term, console game exclusivity has been a fact of life for 40+ years.
- Vinnl 5y agoThe future of VR if it takes off, I guess.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- desmond373 5y agoThis is why I'm not too worried. I believe general purpose has an innate advantage due to versitility. PC is still around and still great for high performance gaming. Sure there are exclusives but that doesn't mean I can't play them on PC. Just means that some large company doesn't want me to and I'll happily ignore them like so many others. They may Sue me but it's not going to have a real effect unless they start catching way more people or making the fines unbearably huge. I won't give up the fight against exclusivity because my side isn't the uphill fight.
- rplnt 5y agoThat at least made some technical sense up until recently.
- ______-_-______ 5y agoDedicated fans can get around console exclusivity, as long as you're willing to wait a couple years. I wonder when we'll see the first VR headset emulator?
- pdevr 5y agoA colleague recommended "Free Solo" to me a few years back. There was this part where the doctors claim (paraphrasing) his brain is unique in that he is much less afraid of danger than us. The part towards the end, where he does the actual climb of El Capitan in Yosemite National Park, is also worth watching.
- thinkharderdev 5y agoI've never had such sweaty palms in my life as when watching that part.
- marttt 5y agoThere is a 4+ minute Youtube clip that includes the central climbing scenes from "Free Solo" [0]. Amazing guy. The National Geographic documentary had Hollywood-esque layers that slightly annoyed me (ominous music etc), though. A documentary by Werner Herzog about Alex Honnold would be fascinating; something in the vein of his 1974 "The Great Ecstasy of Woodcarver Steiner" [1,2]. I would have loved to see more of the philosophical, introspective side of Alex Honnold in the NG movie. In case of Herzog's ski jumper Walter Steiner, it was very much there. 0: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tnRoda7Ke2w https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tnRoda7Ke2w 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Ecstasy_of_Woodcarver_Steiner https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Ecstasy_of_Woodcarve... 2: Full movie here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oTdQ2fGlrq8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oTdQ2fGlrq8
- gmadsen 5y agoMeru is a lot better and interesting documentary in my opinion. Not Hannold, but same circle of people and ice climbing
- palindrome818 5y agoHerzog doc about honnold would be dope. Honnold actually reminds me of Grizzly Man in alot of ways- in that you root for him but don't totally understand him. Interesting to think about whether Grizzly Man was more or less naive than Honnold- I think that's what makes them different. Honnold knows the risk he's taking, Grizzly Man didn't.
- jimmySixDOF 5y agoDocumentary filmmaking and VR are such a good fit especially with video game engine 3D de novo animation and mechanics used to tell a better more compelling story beyond what is possible with normal filming and VFX. 360 video is a natural transition medium but there is so much more that's possible inside the experience. For what it's worth Meta should get credit for pushing the envelope with content efforts like a recent David Attenborough walk through of early life on earth [1] among quite a few others. [1] https://alchemyimmersive.com/productions/david-attenboroughs-first-life-2/ https://alchemyimmersive.com/productions/david-attenboroughs...
- mark_l_watson 5y agoI agree, there is so much interesting “You are there” type Oculus content. I decided to love the Oculus ecosystem, while maintaining my dislike for Facebook social media, etc.
- rdxm 5y ago
- dividuum 5y agoStupid question, but is that really full VR in the sense that you can move your head around in a limited volume and see everything with real depth perception? Or is it a 360 degree video projected to a sphere and you virtually sit in the center? Is the former even possible to produce somehow?
- tehidiot 5y ago> Is the former even possible to produce somehow? Google has done some research into it though it's not very practical https://augmentedperception.github.io/deepviewvideo/ https://augmentedperception.github.io/deepviewvideo/
- ChicagoBoy11 5y agoTheir lightfield demo app has been one of the most mind blowing VR things I have ever seen. Truly excited for the world where streaming video content in that way will be possible (and I'm truly hopeful it isn't too far away!)
- ahelwer 5y agoThere is only 3 degrees of freedom, not 6. So yes it's a sphere and you sit in the center. You only get depth perception from your eye parallax, but it's enough to see the rock geometry.
- Traster 5y agoI get extremely strong 3D movies vibe from this. I honestly think this is probably a worse way of watching this content than just viewing it as a movie. You might watch this as a gimmick but I don't think it really presents any value above real movies. Having said that, I wonder if Facebook will start to engage in the content war, trying to ramp up their spending on original video content for their VR. It's an extremely expensive route to go, but it's certainly a possible strategy.
- seemaze 5y agoI think that's an issues with this medium in general. The utility decreases as the barrier to entry increases. With this title in particular, I'd just as soon spend my resources (time, energy, money) to GTFO the couch and climb something in Reality™. As a side thought, can you imagine how boring skydiving in VR would be?
- aronowb14 5y agoI agree, I climb a lot IRL and yep, VR can't come close to touching that experience :). But yeah as far as what VR is good for, there are definitely places where it sings: and where people tend to make a mistake is thinking that it can be a 1-1 with reality and is supposed to replace existing experiences, like climbing or skydiving. I think it's more of a creative medium that will need a really long time to develop (think film, which has had over a century to get its feet under it). Anyway as an example: this video is kind of the inverse of skydiving, (360 camera on a balloon floating into space), but definitely an interesting experience that can't really be replicated on traditional media. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pCve1w1GFOs&ab_channel=SeekerVR https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pCve1w1GFOs&ab_channel=Seeke... Another really interesting one: https://tenderclaws.com/theunderpresents https://tenderclaws.com/theunderpresents
- ahelwer 5y agoI watched the first half. Having watched many (too many?) climbing vids it was actually incredible by comparison. The scenes are a series of statically-positioned full-sphere 3D shots where you can watch him climb through a sequence or turn and look out at the mountains. Scale is conveyed in a sense not possible with your standard 2D video, especially of both height and the actual geometry of the rock he has to move through. Very similar experience to watching someone climb as a belayer or when hanging next to them on a rope. Greatly enjoyed. Anyone who has tried to take a photo of a climb they've just completed will know how difficult it is to really capture the climb and what was interesting or difficult about it. So much so that people will often resort to visual tricks to make the photo of the route look steeper, to match their non-photographic perception (you can pick this out by looking at the angle of trees in the background). It's also notoriously difficult to match a real-life climbing route to a photo, as anyone who has stumbled around a crag squinting at a guidebook will attest. I think this form really does capture what it's like to be looking at the route in real life.
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- SergeAx 5y agoWhat part of this is virtual? Isn't this just a 360 video?
- ahelwer 5y ago360 (along both axes) and 3D.
- elcapitan 5y agoAs if the 2D version of watching him climbing wouldn't trigger enough anxiety attacks in me already. xD
- mark_l_watson 5y agoI have two Oculus Quest headsets, so I might try this. I bought a rock climbing Oculus app that is well done, it really feels like you are climbing (having to stretch to grab a rock outcropping, etc.) but that app triggers fear of heights feelings.
- cjauvin 5y agoWhich game is it, Climb 2? If so I'm really interested in it, would you care to say more about it?
- mark_l_watson 5y agoYes, Climb 2. It is fun and realistic, but it does trigger fear of heights feelings in me. If you don’t have that problem, then go for it and enjoy! Off topic, but when I am writing code, getting up for a 5 minute game of Oculus ping pong is a great refresh.
- wlesieutre 5y agoNot who you asked, but also see To The Top on app lab if you're looking at climbing games. It's more of an arcadey take on it versus The Climb's more realistic levels. https://www.oculus.com/experiences/quest/5930576503634498/ https://www.oculus.com/experiences/quest/5930576503634498/
- rfreytag 5y agoBecause they create an incentive to practice BASE jumping or free solo climbing I do not watch or support this kind of movie. Watching a tightrope act without a net is similar. They are amazing people. They are free to do what they want. I am not going to contribute to their possible sad end.
- RobKohr 5y agoAnyone know what the 360 cameras were that they used on it? The video is amazing. I watched him for a good half hour climbing and it was great.
- weystrom 5y agoAs much as I'm a fan of Alex after watching his previous docs, I'm not buying into Facebook world, just to watch this. Hoping someone would dump this on trackers somehow.
- mattsnuts 5y agoI watched the first part last night... it was pretty cool, but I felt a bit guilty watching it. Dude leaves his (hot) pregnant wife at home to fly to Europe to risk his life up a mountain for Zuckerberg $$