Several Connected Tech Predictors said that immersive entertainment is coming, but what does it look like and what can integrators do? Stuart Corner writes.

Driving these predictions was industry interest in the Immersive Audio Design Recommended Practice (CEDIA/CTA-RP22), which he said had been an absolute hit with integrators and has packed conference rooms at CEDIA Tech Summits, even crashing CEDIA’s website when it first debuted.

But why stop at audio? What else can the integration industry streamline and deliver to customers?

The answers to those questions are: the integration industry is not stopping at audio, and the industry plans to deliver a great deal to customers in the way of immersive entertainment by integrating multiple technologies. However, these answers come with a caveat: it’s important to be clear about exactly what is meant by ‘immersive entertainment’ because it can mean many different things.

Two Bain & Company partners were getting very excited about the prospects for immersive entertainment in an August 2023 brief, claiming: “The media industry is entering a new era of more immersive content… revenue streams from immersive platforms could grow US media revenues by as much as 20% by 2030.”

They described the shift to immersive entertainment, rather vaguely, as the difference between traditional ‘lean back’ entertainment (everything from books to streaming media) and ‘lean in’, which is more interactive and engaging.

Despite all the interest it generated, CEDIA/CTA-RP22 pertains to only a small subset of immersive entertainment technologies. The document states: “[This recommended practice] provides guidance for the design and specification of audio reproduction within private entertainment spaces.”

Additionally, it defines immersive audio as: “Content and systems that together envelop an audience with sound to enhance the feeling of being physically present in [a private entertainment space].”

CEDIA/CTA-RP22 is a “recommended practice” so it is not some forward-looking document setting out what might be coming: it describes what could be created today. It provides extremely detailed guidance on the creation of immersive audio entertainment spaces. It seems likely audio that is truly immersive in “private entertainment spaces” will be only ever for those with big houses and deep pockets: some of the configurations detailed require more than 50 speakers!

The US Professional Audio Manufacturers Alliance (PAMA) has a wider view of immersive audio entertainment. In December 2023, the alliance put out a press release that reported on the results of a survey in which members were asked to assess the impact of the burgeoning immersive audio movement on their product development and business.

What PAMA considered immersive audio in the consumer market was a far cry from the complex multi-speaker systems described in CEDIA/CTA-RP22.

“Consumer immersive audio experiences are dominated by headphones for portable listening, internal television speakers or soundbar-based home systems for gaming and streaming/broadcast playback,” PAMA wrote.

“Two-thirds of participating companies reported significant current overall demand for products with immersive audio capabilities. 80% of the respondents expect products with immersive audio features to be a growth area in their company’s portfolio of products over the next five years, with a third of all respondents seeing great potential for growth.”

Broaden the term from ‘immersive audio’ to ‘immersive entertainment’ and the scope for different interpretations increases enormously. This is a problem which has already been recognised. If you ask Google for a definition the first one that comes up is “the extent to which an audience is engaged with a story and its fabricated reality or fictional world.” It comes from a research proposal, Immersive Entertainment and its Problem with Terminology submitted by Asa Allegra-Berger, a student at the Loyola Marymount University in the US.

He argued the term was overused and vague when immersive entertainment was rising in popularity. He proposed combining scholarly research with real-world experience “to try and understand the nature of immersion and provide information that will hopefully help redefine the term.”

We were unable to find any report on the conclusions of his research, but he was spot on; the term means many different things depending on who is using it.

The most immersive entertainment system widely available at home to the consumer today is probably Apple’s Vision Pro, a system combining a virtual reality headset, lots of software and content. It went on sale in the US in February 2024 at US$3,499. Australian pricing and availability are yet to be announced, but it represents only one aspect of immersive entertainment. There are many more, especially when the scope embraces entertainment in public spaces.

The domain name immersive-home.org has already been taken for an open-source project that promises to combine mixed reality and smart home technologies to “unite your physical and virtual home into a coherent and immersive experience”. Immersive entertainment it is not! Rather, as the promotional video shows, the aim is to combine control of all smart home technology into a single virtual reality interface.

Whatever technologies emerge, the cost is likely to limit the experience of immersive entertainment and immersive experiences in the home to audio headsets and virtual reality (VR) glasses for all but the very wealthy. Immersive entertainment in public venues shows much more promise in the short to medium-term and much is happening.

REMIX Summits are global conferences that, as it states; “Bring together leaders from different industries to explore the future of culture, creative cities and the creative economy.” REMIX Perth in September 2023 was reported as having explored the themes of culture, technology and entrepreneurship with a focus on the booming immersive entertainment market.

The cofounder of REMIX Summits, Peter Tullin, has authored a book The Immersive Revolution: How Immersive Entertainment is Driving the New Experience Economy. He envisages a broad scope for immersive entertainment.

“A new wave of creative entrepreneurs, technology innovation and changes in consumer behaviours are combining to supercharge the growth of immersive entertainment, spawning a whole new industry,” he writes.

“Immersive experiences are built upon or span multiple other industry sectors such as games, theme parks, immersive theatre and experiential art. They are intimately connected to the rise of immersive and metaverse technologies such as haptics, VR, augmented reality (AR), mixed reality (MR), holograms, motion capture and even AI.”

Tullin portrays a bright future for immersive entertainment and immersive experience in which immersive becomes almost pervasive. Peter points to the future in the Mukaab, a massive cube with each side reaching 400m², being built in New Murabba, Saudi Arabia.

New Murabba is billed as a visionary project to build a new modern downtown in Riyadh, where technology and sustainability are fused into one.

“The world’s first immersive experiential destination… where you and those around you enter a new reality transporting you to Mars one day and magical worlds the next. Were your retail experience is completely reimagined and hospitality, leisure and entertainment reach new levels, all in breathtaking, ever-changing environments.”

The promotional video is certainly impressive. The Mukaab is supposed to be complete by 2030 and, as promoted, expands the scope of ‘immersive entertainment’ to referencing an artificial ‘immersive environment’ that surrounds, engages and entertains people while they pursue in other activities.

If the vision is realised it will certainly represent one answer to the opening question: What can the integration industry streamline and deliver to customers beyond immersive audio?

Those inside the Mukaab will be in a completely closed environment big enough to hold 20 Empire State Buildings which will contain all the normal features of an urban environment: shops, restaurants, residential and hotel accommodation.

Within the Mukaab cube will be a massive dome encompassing most of these facilities and creating an environment for VR experiences on a truly massive scale. But it raises more questions: Can it be realised? Will it represent the future of immersive entertainment and immersive experiences or become a giant white elephant?

Perhaps the intriguing questions are: does it portend the creation of scaled down versions in which artificial immersive environments can be created in the home, where the experience of using Apple’s Vision Pro can be replicated without the need of unencumbered by a massive piece of headgear?