Breaking the Forth Wall through Extended Reality

Abstract

Filmmakers pursue a goal of a more absorbing and powerful sensory viewing experience through implementing advanced technologies. With the thriving of extended reality (XR), an XR revolution in the entertainment industry has been initiated by practitioners. This article reviews cinematic realism from aspects of photorealism, the phenomenal S3D cinema, and its unfulfillments for the immersive experience, and elaborates the XR trend by specifying the potential of implementing augmented reality (AR) as a medium for a new level of cinematic realism. AR's feature of presenting virtual imaging in the physical world provides a solid foundation for an extended dimension over the viewing screen. This article introduces the concept of augmented dimension (AD) that implements augmented reality as the out-of-screen visual effects to explore the perceptual realism in cinematic experiences. Compared with stereoscopic 3D films, the three-dimensional perception in AD can be considered as perceptual realism rather than photorealism. This article also illustrates the proposed pipeline to produce AD films and concludes the potential of AD for the future immersive cinema.