‘Independence Day’ maker’s next bet? A social-VR mashup – CNET

Roland Emmerich doesn’t want to direct a virtual-reality experience for you. He wants you to direct VR for everybody.

“I’m too much of a dictator” to shoot in the immersive format, the “Independence Day” director said during an interview and demo last week. VR lets viewers decide where their attention should be. “I want to decide where the camera is,” he said.

So unlike most of his Hollywood brethren, who are venturing into virtual reality by shooting narrative VR experiences, Emmerich is going the route of a startup co-founder, with a mashup of live-streaming, VR and a social network. And as the explosions in his films might suggest, he doesn’t go small: The endgame of his VR company, Vrenetic, is to bring VR to the masses.

Good luck. Virtual reality, which uses headsets to make viewers feel transported into a different world, has been one of technology’s hot trends in the last three years, attracting huge investments by the likes of Facebook, Google, Sony and Samsung. But even those giants have run up against skimpy consumer traction compared with the hype.