The Power of Story

Stories are fundamental to the human experience.

They connect us, teach us, entertain us, and ignite our imagination. Transcending time, space, and culture, they encompass every subject, character, and genre, expressed through countless mediums—spoken, written, visual, and auditory. Storytelling is the universal language that binds us all.

When we tell stories, we invite others into the lives of our characters and the worlds they inhabit. We aim to immerse our audience and make them feel present, sharing glimpses of humanity in the hope these resonate on a deeply personal level. A great story tends to linger— bridging the gap between individuality and shared understanding to offer meaning and connection. It illuminates the journey we take together in life.

Stories are more than an indulgence—they are a necessity. In a world often divided, storytelling thus serves as an unifying force, fostering empathy and understanding.

Immersive Storytelling
 

Sight, sound, taste, touch, and smell—the five senses. The more of these we can engage, the deeper our immersion in a story becomes.
 

For decades, stories have captivated us through flat screens: feature films, series, documentaries, shorts, and bites. Whether experienced on cinema screens, televisions, tablets, or phones, these formats have advanced the art of engaging sight and sound to deliver unforgettable experiences.
 

Now, with the rise of VR (Virtual Reality) and rapid technological leaps, storytelling has entered a transformative new era. VR surrounds us with visuals that fill our entire field of view and audio that envelops us completely, dissolving the boundary between audience and story world.
 

This revolutionary medium, known as Immersive Entertainment, engages not just the mind but the body, creating an unparalleled sense of presence. It’s an exhilarating frontier—and it drives everything we’re building at Merse Labs.

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Our Vision: 6DoF Volumetric VR

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When you put on a VR headset to watch an immersive film, the visuals and sound surround you, responding to where you look. Turn your head sideways or upward, and you see more of the scene around you.

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However, there’s something missing: a slight perspective shift that happens naturally in real life. To demonstrate, if you look at an object in front of you and move your head slightly, your view changes—you see more of what’s behind the object. This effect, called dynamic parallax, is a key element of a VR approach called 6DoF (Six Degrees of Freedom), allowing us to move naturally in all directions while perceiving depth accurately. Without 6DoF, VR can feel static or even uncomfortable during extended viewing.

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Animated VR films can create a 6DoF experience relatively easily because the scenes are built in three-dimensional space. However, live-action VR films face a unique challenge. Traditional VR cameras capture flat images—like photographs—that our brain combines into 3D. But these images lack dynamic parallax, so the perspective doesn’t change when you move your head.

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At Merse Labs, we’re solving this challenge with a groundbreaking approach to allow the capture of live-action immersive scenes with full dynamic parallax within a defined ZOV (Zone of View).

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We call this workflow MerseCap.​​