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47 years, Australia
Daily Mountain
This article first appeared on http://metro.co.uk. The original can be read here.
by Jeff Parsons
Climbing the tallest mountain in the world is not something any of us are likely to accomplish in our lifetime.
Despite this, summiting Mount Everest isn’t the exclusive experience it used to be. Over 4,000 people have made it to the top since Tenzing Norgay and Edmund Hillary first accomplished the feat in 1953.
Not all expeditions end in success and, in April 2017, climber Ueli Steck attempted to reach the summit without the help of bottled oxygen. He died on the West Ridge of the mountain at the ripe old age of 40.
Steck’s friend, a mountain guide called Sherpa Tenji, decided to finish the journey as a way to honour him. Renowned cameraman Jonathan Griffith joined the party and used the expedition to create Everest VR: Journey to the Top of the World, a docuseries shot specifically for virtual reality headsets.
‘Ueli mentored Sherpa Tenji from a very young age,’ Griffith explained. ‘He really took him under his wing. They were on this project to do it together, so it felt fitting to get Tenji to try and finish up his mentor’s climb in his stead.’
The series consists of three episodes and was made with the assistance of Oculus, the Facebook-owned virtual reality (VR) company that’s been working to make VR mainstream for the last several years.
‘My ethos has always been to keep it real. So we’re bringing these cameras up really big mountain routes—things people consider to be a lifetime climb. It’s something they’ll remember the rest of their lives, and we’re carrying this whole rigging and shooting everything in a day,’ Griffith said.
‘We need to move fast and efficiently because you just don’t have time to hang about with a big crew at all.’
Metro.co.uk was lent an Oculus headset to experience the series for ourselves and the result is undoubtedly impressive.
For starters, virtual reality viewing lets you look in any direction you choose. The action documents Tenji, Griffith and the rest of the team explaining their love of climbing before trekking from a Himalayan village up to base camp and, finally, the assent. But because you’ve got full 360-degree vision, you can let your eyes wander around as much as you choose – either gawping up at high craggy bluffs or gazing down at the view beneath you.
Virtual reality headsets aren’t the clunky things they were four or five years ago. The Oculus Quest we used to watch the series is an all-in-one headset that doesn’t need a PC to run and is gloriously free of wires. There’s a 1,600 x 1,440 resolution OLED panel for each eye with a 72Hz refresh rate meaning there’s no discernible latency.
True, the headset will set you back £400 if you want to buy it. But that’s why productions like EverestVR are going ahead – to give people a reason to splash that kind of cash on the gadgetry.
Back to the action and although there’s no movement on your part required for the episodes, it’s still jarring when you look down and see team members crossing dangerous crevasses or scaling sheer walls of ice on the way up to the top.
The series also captures a Himalayan avalanche, a rock climbing fall, and the general beauty of the mountain ranges the climbers call home.
‘Obviously the view is everything,’ Griffith notes.
‘I love VR because you can’t make a sunrise or sunset look more saturated than it is because then it doesn’t look real to the viewer. I can’t tilt the camera to make a climb steeper than it is because the horizon will be off. You can’t cheat in VR. It keeps me really honest as a content creator.’
Ultimately, this three-episode series will reach a very small audience, which is a shame because it’s jammed with stunning photography blended with a cutting-edge technological perspective.
But virtual reality headsets don’t look like they’re going away any time soon. Oculus’ main rival, Vive, has just announced a brand new headset that it hopes will get even more users on board with the technology.
‘VR won’t seem novel to my kids when they grow up — it will just be how they consume media,’ Griffith explained in an interview with Facebook’s tech team.
‘But the VR that they’re going to be consuming is going to be completely different to the VR we are creating today, both in terms of narrative and interactivity. The only way to get there is just to get there.’
If you’ve got an Oculus headset you can find the series available to view here.
Classic mountaineering ice axe
Location: Italy, Milan, Lombardy, Metropolitan City of Milan, Milan
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