Hardie Tankersley (Silverdraft / Fox) on Why VR Is Not Good for Games, and Where VR Does Shine (Part 2)
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The Guest
Hardie is the VP of VR and Solutions Consulting at Silverdraft, a company that uses a unique supercomputer architecture to address the significant computational and processing needs of high-end rendering, VR, visual effects, and visualization. Honda, Audi, Tesla, GE, and Autodesk all rely on Silverdraft for product visualization in VR.
Previously, Hardie spent more than 8 years at Fox Television, where he was Senior Vice President of Innovation. There he created the very first mobile apps for Fox TV as well as interactive experiences for American Idol, 24, Glee, and others.
He also developed the first-ever, Emmy-winning virtual reality experience for Sleepy Hollow and a virtual reality behind-the-scenes series for Scream Queens.
Early in his career, Hardie spent nearly 8 years at Apple.
The Conversation
This is the second of two parts of our conversation. Here Hardie continues his exploration of the challenges of crafting compelling entertainment content in VR. While acknowledging the success of Beat Saber, Hardie doesn’t believe VR is well suited for games.
We go on to chat about where he thinks VR does have a lot of utility today, and some of the lessons he’s learned in driving engagement within VR experiences.
We also talk about AR and how it fits with VR. Hardie believes that AR and VR are not two ends of a continuous spectrum. While they share some underlying technologies, they are fundamentally different mediums.
Links From The Episode
- Video: Sleepy Hollow VR experience at San Diego Comic-Con 2014
- Article: Review of Michael Abrash’s Predictions at Oculus Connect 1-5 by VentureBeat
- Book: Thinking in Bets: Making Smarter Decisions When You Don't Have All the Facts by Annie Duke
- Book: Blockbusters: Hit-making, Risk-taking, and the Big Business of Entertainment by Anita Elberse
- Episode Transcript