Jerry’s Place VR Let’s You Stumble Around Seinfeld’s Apartment With The Oculus Rift
Although it’s as gimmicky as they come, the Jerry’s Place VR project is simply terrific: Seinfeld superfan Greg Miller, who also happens to be learning to develop for the Oculus Rift, decided to virtually recreate Jerry’s iconic apartment from the popular 90s show.
“Television is virtual reality in some ways. We make believe that Jerry's place is actually a Manhattan studio and Monks Cafe is just down the street. We suspend the reality that his apartment is just a set in Hollywood, with tons of cameras and lighting dangling overhead,” he wrote. “I thought it would be a novel virtual reality experience to take a place that only exists in Hollywood magic, and make it for the Oculus Rift as if it were real. Virtual Reality Virtual Reality.”
Miller used Blender to make the 3D models and relied on the Unity game engine to develop the software. He professed to doing quite a bit of work to capture all the items in Jerry’s apartment, including using screen grabs of streaming episodes, Googling around to find the actual items in the dwelling to more accurately depict the props.
He’s managed to recreate all the rooms, although he noted that the bedroom depicted in the series is actually too large to fit in the apartment--a bit of Hollywood trickery, that.
The YouTube walkthrough posted by Pancho Joshi is most enjoyable (some NSFW language), especially when he finds some of the 11 Easter eggs from various episodes that Miller put in. For more of Miller’s incredibly creative techie endeavors, check out his homepage.
“Television is virtual reality in some ways. We make believe that Jerry's place is actually a Manhattan studio and Monks Cafe is just down the street. We suspend the reality that his apartment is just a set in Hollywood, with tons of cameras and lighting dangling overhead,” he wrote. “I thought it would be a novel virtual reality experience to take a place that only exists in Hollywood magic, and make it for the Oculus Rift as if it were real. Virtual Reality Virtual Reality.”
Miller used Blender to make the 3D models and relied on the Unity game engine to develop the software. He professed to doing quite a bit of work to capture all the items in Jerry’s apartment, including using screen grabs of streaming episodes, Googling around to find the actual items in the dwelling to more accurately depict the props.
He’s managed to recreate all the rooms, although he noted that the bedroom depicted in the series is actually too large to fit in the apartment--a bit of Hollywood trickery, that.
The YouTube walkthrough posted by Pancho Joshi is most enjoyable (some NSFW language), especially when he finds some of the 11 Easter eggs from various episodes that Miller put in. For more of Miller’s incredibly creative techie endeavors, check out his homepage.
