A glimpse into the future of Home through the LOOT Space Apartment

Back in September you may recall reading an article I wrote regarding a visit to Sony studios in Culver City. A few select websites that cover games and specifically the goings on within Playstation Home were invited to tour the backlot. More importantly we were given the opportunity to meet and get to know the development team LOOT. If you are not familiar with LOOT (at this point who isn’t), they are the group behind the “Hollywood Hills” and “Sunset Yacht” personal spaces which each contain the EOD screen. They also seem to encourage users inside of Home to flex their creative muscles and shoot short films and “Machinima”, by providing interactive stage sets equipped with ambient lighting, and green/blue screens for visual efx. Along with active lighting and an active camera that allows people to shoot footage of their personal spaces in Home and export it out to video editing software, LOOT has created a ton of interesting bundles which provide new settings and themes.

I didn’t know what to expect when I arrived, but was completely blown away by the content that we were privy to get a preview of. At that point a feature that people had been clamoring for was the ability to watch movies with our friends inside of our personal spaces. Most likely due to licensing we aren’t able to stream movies from our HDD into Home. Through a deal with the website Crackle though, LOOT has been able to provide uncut feature length movies and television shows we can watch and enjoy with others. We also found out that the movies could be accessed in the public theater space that they had developed. On top of that we were shown the Active Camera which I described earlier. There are a couple of other exciting items which are coming down the pipeline that will only add to the social experience in Home. To me what they are doing makes Home more than just a game or an MMO. Being able to watch full length movies is incredible, but the last thing they showed us was the icing on the cake.

It’s been difficult holding back what I saw, only because I knew how excited people would be over the features and level of interaction of the personal space we were shown. This past weekend LOOT finally let the cat out of the bag and decided to allow certain sites early access to the new Space Apartment. It was like a weight had been lifted off of my shoulders, because I felt if I could get that excited over what they are bringing into Home, then others would be as hype also. The public theater has a space station motif, which carries on into the personal space. When I first stepped into the Space Apartment I was overwhelmed by how stunning the art style is, specifically being able to see the Earth in all of its glory. Aside from the great look, there is an amount of customization that only this personal space contains. There are 4 levels in which people can add furniture and active items into. When you enter into the space, you will be in the main level. Here is where you will find the most room to roam around in. Along the walls, on this and the floor directly below, are 15 photo screens which users can lower and raise at will. Those with a Flickr account will be able to access and place their pictures in these screens. Not only are you able to put pictures from your account, you can also add friends pictures into those screens if you know their username. Or if you wanted to have random pictures you can access the keyword option and add photos that are not from your account. You can place one static photo that will remain in the frame, or there is an option to place many pictures in one frame and view them as a slideshow. When viewing the pictures as a slide show there are different speed options from 5 seconds to 4 minutes. One thing to note though, is that “This product uses the Flickr API but is not endorsed or certified by Flickr. Flickr does not own rights to the images on Flickr, the individual members do (the photographers). Use this application to access your own images only or those which you have permission to use”.

Also on each of the levels are several (8 in total) EOD screen icons on the floor which can be used to watch movies courtesy of Crackle, video podcasts from “Revision 3″, trailers for upcoming films, live streaming Nasa events, videos and content provided by LOOT, and 2 new features that could potentially change the landscape of how content is provided and consumed in Home. The 2 new features coming to the EOD (these options will be in the public theater along with the EOD screens in the other personal spaces) are RadioIO and Ustream. With RadioIO users could find any genre of music they are interested in, stream uncut songs through the screen allowing for a party type of atmosphere or a relaxing and romantic time depending on what you are listening to. With the inclusion of Ustream this opens up endless possibilities to what users can create and share within Home. If LOOT allows us to search for various streams like they are doing with the implementation of Flickr there’s no telling what people will come up with or be able to watch.

In terms of customization users will be able to add up to 5 twitter feeds into their space, open and close the roof and windows, and change the lighting to whatever their favorite color is. Or if you want you can turn the twitter feed and the lighting off. This is all done through the S.A.R.A. (Space Apartment’s Remote Access) system. In the middle of the space is a giant tank that contains jellyfish. The stairway to be able to access the various levels, wraps around the fish tank leading to the bottom floor where there is a pool, lights that turn on and off, and EOD screens. If you don’t want to use the stairs there is a teleport system that is put in place that allows you to not only teleport through the different levels in the Space Apartment, but also teleport to the public theater space. On a side note, when entering into the Space Apartment you will see text on the screen saying that it is connecting to the main frame. I contacted Sara Stephens, the Production Coordinator at LOOT, regarding what that meant and was told “That’s us saving your changes to our servers. The photos you’ve chosen, color settings, etc. We need to save that info so when you leave and come back we can call it all again, so your apartment appears the way you left it”.

The Space Apartment and the upcoming additions to the EOD will be coming soon. It is well worth your money, and I’m excited to see what else this great group of developers will be coming up with next.

A glimpse into the future of Home through the LOOT Space Apartment, 10.0 out of 10 based on 5 ratings