What is Volumetric Storytelling?

“Volumetric Storytelling is adding that “dimension of you” into the story. It’s very personal because now you are an actor in the story. So, you can be told a story that is presented to you, but a Volumetric Storytelling lets you navigate through the world and use your physical presence as part of the story or part of the discovery.”

-Elizabeth Baron
Enterprise Solutions Executive
Unity Technologies

First, let’s zoom out

When you think about the evolution of immersive storytelling or Extended Reality (the umbrella term for AR, VR, and MR) – it could be a bit confusing to figure out the differences among the various types.

In a nutshell

360 video allows you to look around physical-world footage in a 360 degrees bubble.

Virtual Reality (VR) lets you move around and interact in virtual worlds.

Augmented Reality (AR) lets you view virtual objects overlaid on the physical world. Think Pokémon GO game.

When you mix together the physical and virtual, you get Mixed Reality (MR), which lets you interact with virtual and physical objects and see changes in the physical environment.

Volumetric Video is a powerful technique used for immersive MR experiences, that allows you to capture 3D real-world locations with all the people and objects in them. You can move around and interact with realistic characters, with virtual backdrops – as if you’ve just been actually teleported there!

See the recent ABBA’s volumetric concert in London.

This opens up richer worlds of immersive storytelling for various applications from employee training, education, customer service, corporate communications, medical applications, product development, marketing, advertising – to performance arts and more.

No wonder, the global volumetric video market is expected to grow from US$ 1,898.7 million in 2021 to US$ 9,685.7 million by 2028 (ReportLinker).

To help me unpack this exciting topic – and a whole new set of considerations to tell immersive stories – I had the great pleasure to speak with Elizabeth Baron.

She is an Enterprise Solutions Executive at Unity Technologies – the world’s leading real-time 3D development platform.

It’s all in the latest episode of the Visual Storytelling Today podcast.

Watch the full video recording of this interview:

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How would you apply Volumetric Storytelling to your brand and marketing strategy? Feel free to drop your comments below.