Mainebiz

V O L . X X V N O. I V F E B R UA R Y 1 8 , 2 0 1 9 14 Y ou slip on the virtual reality goggles and find yourself on a boat with a lobsterman, then below the surface inside a lobster trap with crustaceans snapping and claw- ing at you. After finding your way out of the trap, you click yourself onto safer ground. Welcome to "Island Land," a virtual reality storytelling experiment created by Portland's Big Room Studios for the Island Institute, a Rockland nonprofit working to sustain Maine's island and remote coastal communities. e story starts with an imaginary rendered island that serves as a gate- way to a collection of videos, filmed with 360-degree cameras and other emerging spatial capture devices. Each puts the viewer in a three-dimensional environment that feels disconcertingly real, from the back of the trap with ferocious-looking lobsters and looking up out of the water to see the lobster- man reaching in. "Your empathetic position switches and you're suddenly not against the lobsters, you're with them and are like hey, 'Don't mess with my buddies," says Sam Mateosian, co- founder of Big Room Studios with his older brother Tim. "at's the power of this particular medium, to give experiences like that." Big Room Studios, based in a 3,000-square-foot office at ompson's Point, started out in web design in 2002. e firm added cus- tom software development in 2008 and that remains its bread and butter. More recently, it has branched out into virtual and augmented reality projects of varying scope. "Island Land" has been a huge success, a portable story that can be viewed anywhere in the world, including U.S. Sen. Angus King's Washington office, where he has an Oculus Go headset. Island Institute president Rob Snyder calls "Island Land" a powerful tool that gives viewers "an unprec- edented experience of the places we work, and the VR tool eliminates the narrator. It puts Mainers in charge of their own story." Future tech Big Room's other virtual reality proj- ects include a visit with immigrants in Lewiston at home and in the mosque, and a project for the global exhibit and event marketing firm Czarnowski that features a fun play on its logo. Both brothers are bullish on virtual reality's business prospects, both through Big Room Studios and their second, newer startup called Yarn. It's creat- ing a platform called Driftspace that would allow anyone to create and share high-quality virtual reality expe- riences without having to code. "e reason I got into web stuff in the first place is because it was cutting- edge 20 years ago," says Tim, 48, whose first computer was a $99 Timex Sinclair he got for Christmas in 1982 and today serves as CEO of Big Room Studios. "Virtual reality is future tech." Sam, 39, who runs Yarn from San Francisco, adds: "We are premised on P H O T O / T I M G R E E N WAY Reality bytes Virtual reality gains traction in sectors from architecture to hospice care B y R e n e e C o R d e s F O C U S Tim Mateosian, left, founded Big Room Studios with his brother Sam, right. The firm, which specializes in virtual reality projects, is based in 3,000 square feet at Thompson's Point in Portland.

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