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Samsung Bringing VR to Bedtime Stories

Virtual reality is an incredibly powerful tool for connecting people miles and miles apart. We saw our first glimpse of social interactivity in VR a few weeks ago at Facebook’s F8.

Now Samsung wants to demonstrate how parents who work away from home can connect to their children during bedtime through their concept project called “Bedtime VR Stories”. The app is still a prototype being tested in the UK, but what we have seen so far, can be a powerful tool for parents around the world.

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When it’s time for bedtime, both parent and child wear a VR headset. In the video example from Samsung, the parent is using  a Gear VR and the child is wearing a decorated Google Cardboard headset. The parent narrates a 6-7 min story called ‘The most wonderful place to be,” both are connected through VOIP technology and see each others movements in avatar form.  There are three main characters; a penguin who takes you to see her home in the arctic, a dinosaur who takes you to visit his friends in the past and a Robot who takes you to space. It’s all tied together in a beautiful poem.

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The whole story is available to watch on Youtube as a 360 video here.

The experience was built by Samsung’s creative agency BBH and VR studio UNIT9 VR in London. It hasn’t been announced if Samsung plans on releasing the experience publicly yet, but I am sure there are many parents and children that would love this for bedtime tonight.

About the Scout

Alaster Armitage-Brain

Alaster is the UK Editor-at-Large for VRScout. Outside of VRScout he is producing VR content for leading brands around the world.

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