Signal Space Lab and Actrio Studio are excited to unveil VREX, the innovative proprietary software tool that powers their breakthrough interactive VR experience, Human Within, now available on Meta Quest 2, 3 and Pro.
Directed by Avi Winkler and Anne Weigel, Human Within seamlessly blends a captivating storyline with interactive gameplay, utilizing VREX to create a thrilling branching narrative, immersing players in a world that explores the profound influence of AI and advanced technology on society while shedding light on the potential threats of misuse.
VREX’s aim is to democratize content creation for both VR and non-VR platforms, making it accessible to all creatives by using easy drag & drop functionality and deep technical menu-based inputs. Resembling most timeline bound editors like video editors (Premiere, FinalCut) and digital audio workstations (Protools, Reaper), VREX offers interactivity features and authoring solutions that were integral to the development of award-winning projects such as Afterlife and Human Within.
Designed with both creative and technical teams in mind, VREX enhances immersion while optimizing media management and rendering for various devices. Its complex interactive workflows effortlessly combine branching narratives with attention-based choices that respond immediately to users’ stimuli, including eye movement and sound.
Key Features of VREX
- Media Ingest: Supports a wide array of monoscopic and stereoscopic video formats, including popular options for Windows and MacOS (H.265 compatible).
- Timeline Manipulation: Familiar video editing functionalities, such as zooming, scrolling, and track rearrangement for effective editing.
- Choice Tracks and Logic: Enables selection of tracks based on user-defined criteria, with conditions to enhance branching narratives.
- Attention-Based Choices: Interactive decision-making where video segments play based on user gaze, allowing users to confirm choices by maintaining focus on the desired content. This gaze based interactivity is in addition to other standard choice selection features (ie; point and click)
- File Size Reduction: Innovative composite rendering reduces file sizes while preserving quality, ensuring seamless visuals with consistent color balance.
- High Resolution: Maximizes visual quality by utilizing a proprietary decoding engine that achieves resolutions beyond usual device constraints. Human Within for example uses and decodes 8192 x 8192 video on Quest headsets which are normally limited to 5760 x 5760 pixels.
These features collectively enhance the immersive storytelling experience, making VREX an innovative tool for interactive narrative creation.
Signal Space is currently working alongside video content creators interested in pushing the boundaries of storytelling and giving them free access to the VREX tool. If you would like to be part of our early tester group or want to leverage its features in your next project, please contact us at: vrex@signalspace.ca
About Human Within
Signal Space Lab began pre-production of Human Within, in 2019, including script writing and prototyping the experience under the creative direction of Avi Winkler. Director Anne Weigel and award-winning German producer Actrio Studio joined the project and wrapped principal photography in December 2023. Human Within then began its festival tour in October premiering at FIVARS in Toronto on October 3rd and Beyond The Frame Festival in Tokyo on October 25th-27th, 2024. Supported by Meta, Canada Media Fund, Medienboard Berlin-Brandenburg, and Filmstiftung NRW Germany, Human Within aims to raise the bar for interactive narrative VR experiences.
“Human Within is an experimental multimedia mix of film and interactivity that offers a one-of-a-kind look at what drives us to create new tech, and how technology shapes us in return,” said Avi Winkler, Creative Director at Signal Space Lab. “We didn’t just want to tell a story in a passive way, but let the audience play a role in how it plays out. With technology rapidly advancing every day, we wanted to change the way we tell stories in turn.”
