You’ll probably want to experience this twice.
I’m not sure what’s more disturbing. Hearing the sound of a beating heart while being trapped inside a claustrophobic host body. Bursting through the back of an infected crew member and realizing you’ve taken the body of an alien at birth. Or the blood curdling screams coming from your first victim as you move in for the kill.
They’re all equally disturbing and just down right disgusting — and that’s probably the point.
This is the latest VR experience for Alien: Covenant that’s just what fans of the Ridley Scott sci-fi thriller franchise may be looking for.
Dubbed Alien: Covenant in Utero, the two-minute VR video experience is now available on Oculus Rift for “Alien Day,” a nod to planet LV-426 from the Alien films.
Produced by Ridley Scott and directed by David Karlak, Alien: Covenant In Utero is a 360-degree VR journey that gives you a terrifyingly close and personal encounter as an alien Neomorph at the time of its birth. And just to be clear, it’s easy to miss things the first time around in this nightmare. I ended up watching two times during a press event in advance of the launch today. Reliving the experience a second time allowed me to look in directions I skipped prior. Helping unearth new details that made it even more unsettling, but at the same time adding a new appreciation to the detailed work created.
Even though this a short VR promotional piece for Fox’s upcoming Alien: Covenant movie, the VR experience wasn’t just a marketing afterthought. Inspired by a scene in the film, Fox teamed up with FoxNext VR Studio, RSA VR, MPC VR, Mach1 and technology partners AMD RADEON and DELL to bring the piece to life. VFX studio partner MPC, who created the special effects for the Alien: Covenant movie, worked directly with MPC VR teams on set to simultaneously develop the experience. Assets for the film were immediately applied to the production of the Alien: Covenant In Utero project. Additionally, the motion capture work for the piece was done at the Technicolor Experience Center (TEC) right here in Los Angeles.
You can check out the 360 video on the Oculus platform starting today. It should be available in the Oculus Video app on the Oculus Rift or the Samsung Gear VR. There will also be a 360° trailer of the experience available on Facebook.
On May 10th, when Alien: Covenant releases in theaters, the free VR experience is also expected to be distributed to Google Daydream View, HTC Vive and PlayStation VR.
In an effort to bring these types of VR experiences to the masses, AMD has teamed with Alienware and Oculus Rift to bring this disturbing VR Alien experience on tour to unsuspecting moviegoers at 15 Regal Cinemas.
