If you read the previous post you would have guessed that the team I joined at Disney was Disney VR Studio. VR is a hot buzz word these days but it wasn't that popular when I was joining the team in 2007. But originally this team was...
img src: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Towards-Virtual-Reality-for-the-Masses%3A-10-Years-o-Mine/5c9ac413bbc64679ca3b085c2ecc8388e3f715d9
It was formed in 1992. Above picture is the head mount display used for the VR attraction, Aladdin's Magic Carpet Ride developed by the VR Studio. Do you see how bulky it is with all the cables? :)
Disneyland would be what people think of Disney and it was opened in 1955. Walt Disney created Disney Imagineernig in 1952 to prepare Disneyland. As the name combining Imagine and Engineering shows, this is the team who imagined all the attraction at the Disneyland and engineered them. If you want to know more about Disney Imagineering, you can read "The Imagineering Way".
Disney VR Studio started as the R&D department of Disney Imagineering. And it was in 1992, 15 years ago from 2007 when I joined the team. So their original tasks were developing VR attractions for Disney Theme Parks. Aladdin's Magic Carpet Ride shown below is one of them.
img src: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Towards-Virtual-Reality-for-the-Masses%3A-10-Years-o-Mine/5c9ac413bbc64679ca3b085c2ecc8388e3f715d9
Later Disney VR Studio developed more VR attractions like Hercules in the Underworld and Pirates of the Caribbean: Battle for Buccaneer Gold. Then on September 11th, 2001...
9/11 happened as you all remember. Because of this terrible incident, the number of Disney Them Park visitors decreased and it affected Disney VR Studio, too. (This is my personal view and doesn't reflect the official position of the company.)
Disney VR Studio employees re-used the computer graphics technology they developed for the theme park attractions to make an online game for kids. And the game was...
Disney's Toontown Online which opened in 2003. Thanks to the success of this game, Disney VR Studio left Disney Imagineering and joined Disney Internet Group which was responsible for Disney's online business. Then they kept developing online games for kids after Toontown Online. And I joined them there.
I'll talk about what happened next and the game I joined for in the next posting. Thank you for reading :)
- Previously:
9 years at Disney #0
9 years at Disney #1
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