Virtual reality may have launched with gamers in mind, but so far the most interesting applications for the technology have come from outside the games industry. Case in point: Marshmallow Laser Feast's In the Eyes of the Animal, a VR experience showcased at this year's Sundance film festival, which showed what it would be like to see and hear a forest through the eyes of its fluffy (and not so fluffy) inhabitants.

The experience is, as you might imagine, a strange one. When it launched, In the Eyes of the Animal was set in the dream-like Grizedale Forest in the Lake District. Amongst the ferns and ancient oaks, viewers strapped on an Oculus Rift headset (weirdly encased in a grass-covered pod), and were transported through a pink and purple landscape, transforming from a midge into a dragonfly, and then from a frog into an owl.

In the Eyes of the Animal was made using a combination of 360-degree cameras, drones, and laser and CT scans. London's Natural History Museum pitched in too, offering up animal footage captured with photogrammetry, while surround sound and audio vibrations were added to help complete the experience.

For the current tour—which starts at the Bluedot Festival later this month before moving to South Korea, Belgium, and Japan throughout the year—Marshmallow Laser Feast has added bats, which navigate via echolocation—the process of using sound waves and echoes to determine where objects are in space. In order to replicate this ability, the company has built a shoebox-sized listening device attached to pole, and dressed it up with a 3D-printed bat ear that replicates the parabolic curve of the real thing, helping to amplify sounds.





















Trusting viewers wear headphones and a blindfold while walking along a path, with the device picking up sounds in the environment along with a clicking noise that changes depending on how close or far away they are from objects in the environment. This is combined with bat recordings and sounds created by Marshmallow Laser Feast to create a single audio experience. While one or two mishaps are likely (read: inevitable) when asking blindfolded people to navigate a room, Eyes of the Animal is a unique and educational experience, one that's only really made possible with VR.

Those that don't fancy a trip down to Cheshire or abroad can check out the freshly launched Eyes of the Animal 360-degree video on YouTube and Facebook, or (ideally) via a Google Cardboard headset. It's largely the same experience, but don't expect quite the same quality as you'd get from an Oculus Rift.

Eyes of the Animal is free to view or download from iteota.com.