Folks over at IGN have discovered a patent recently filed by Sony Interactive Entertainment that allows audience members to participate in virtual reality content.
The technology is explained in the illustration above, which shows a VR user receiving messages informing him that spectators are “now voting” and “have given you a soup ladle.” The audience will be able to join players with “spectator devices,” which are presumably mobile phones, tablets, etc. According to Sony, this will “augment the VR scene based on the spectator inputs in response to the interactive content of the audience participation content.”
An abstract reads:
A computer-implemented method for processing operations for integrating audience participation content into virtual reality content presented by a head mounted display of an HMD user is provided. The method includes providing a VR scene to the HMD of the HMD user and receiving indications from one or more spectators. The indications corresponding to requests for audience participation content for participating in the VR scene. The method includes sending audience participation content to the one or more spectator devices. The audience participation content configured to be displayed on respective displays associated with the one or more spectator devices. The audience participation content further includes interactive content for obtaining spectator input from one or more spectators via the one or more spectator devices, respectively. The method includes augmenting the VR scene based on the spectator inputs in response to the interactive content of the audience participation content.
Not all patents come to fruition, but this one would make things pretty interesting!