Nickelodeon’s Revolutionary VR Experience Turtle-Powered by NDI®
By Jim Bask
From NewTek
Your eyes drift off toward the horizon. In the distance, two figures stand atop a concrete block wall, ramrod straight, watching you carefully. Both of them are green. It’s obvious who they are. You’ve seen them a thousand times before, but never in person. It’s the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, or at least two of them. You take a few steps forward and wave. Donatello waves back. Michelangelo smiles and turns to show off that stunning Turtle profile of his. They speak to you.
“Hey,” Donnie says. “How are you doing? I hear you’ve got some questions to ask us.” You take another step forward and glance down at your feet. A wide puddle of water spreads across the cracked concrete floor and you catch a glimpse of your reflection. It looks like you, but somehow, your head has morphed into… Hey Arnold. Awesome. You love Hey Arnold.
This is the experience journalists and a few choice super fans were treated to at this year’s Comic-Con Convention in San Diego, thanks to an incredible virtual reality environment cooked up by the talented staff of Nickelodeon Entertainment Lab. And at the heart of the experience, working tirelessly behind-the-scenes to allow layers of disparate technology to interact seamlessly with one another, NewTek’s NDI® was doing the heavy lifting, bringing the new world of Rise of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles to life in a way that’s never been possible before.
Chris Young, Senior Vice President of the Nickelodeon Entertainment Lab, headed up this virtual reality project, designed to create the ultimate PR splash to publicize the reboot of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles franchise. Nickelodeon’s new turtle series Rise of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles is a prequel to the original show, and features the TMNT crew before they became crime fighters. The new show is set in a dense, urban background reminiscent of New York City, along with NYC’s mythical, hidden underground worlds. By creating a virtual press junket, Young was hoping to be able to immerse journalists into the Turtles’ new world. “At the Nickelodeon Entertainment Lab, we believe the future is rendered in real-time,” Young says, and at 2018’s Comic-Con, he and his crew of engineers and dreamers set out to prove it…read more