![]() Sequences like this also make the documentary’s strengths and flaws equally clear. The car the beta group test-drives is impressively detailed and realistic, but the sim’s physics are dubious: Characters protrude through the car in all directions, and the avatars’ breasts flap wildly in the wind, as if the platform interprets body parts as trailing hair or clothing. An early foray into one of those worlds-in-progress - a driving sim where users get to traverse a scenic route along winding roads and tall cliffs - is an entertaining window into VRChat’s strengths and flaws. The doc just jumps straight into observing events, like the showcase where people introduce new VRChat spaces they’re developing for users to navigate. Part of Hunting’s commitment to shooting entirely within VRChat is that he doesn’t take time away from the platform to explain his goals or the setting. But for most viewers, it’s more likely to simply be a confusing, exhilarating, context-free introduction to the fantasy world itself. This is a movie meant to introduce viewers to the real emotions people bring to their escapist fantasy worlds. The contrast is dizzying, and it’s hard to keep the chaotic surroundings from trivializing what’s going on beneath the surface. It’s heavy stuff - but these conversations take place in a noisy cartoon carnival full of mix-and-match animal-robot-monster hybrids, and near-naked anime characters with outlandish anatomy falling out of skimpy fetish gear. Many of his subjects tell hair-raising stories about their pasts, featuring alcoholism and addiction, family tragedies, abuse, mental illness, even a suicide attempt. Director Joe Hunting used a virtual camera tool to shoot the entire movie inside VRChat, where users talk to him about how they’ve used the platform to get close to other people, forming relationships that sometimes cross over into real life. Viewers not intimately familiar with the virtual-reality hangout platform VRChat might find it difficult to take in the importance of what its users are saying in the documentary We Met In Virtual Reality, because there are so many startling distractions. It has been updated for the film’s exclusive release on HBO Max. This review of We Met In Virtual Reality was originally published after the film’s premiere at the 2022 Sundance International Film Festival.
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