Jeffrey Travis has a background in engineering, but his career focuses on entertainment. As co-founder of Positron Inc., a Glendale virtual reality and experiential technology studio, Travis invented Voyager, a motion-controlled chair platform that gives a viewer a more immersive experience when watching a VR film. Voyager debuted two years ago at the Sundance Film Festival and the chairs are available for lease into select theaters, hotels, concerts and events to provide a premium VR experience. “There is a keen interest on my part to find a way to use technology to tell better stories,” Travis said. A graduate of the University of Texas in electrical and computer engineering, Travis went on to start Burning Myth Productions that produced the animated feature “Flatland” in 2007 and the thriller “Dragon Day” in 2013. The following year he started Positron. Travis spoke with the Business Journal about the market potential for virtual reality, what people like and don’t like about the technology and the most fun aspect of his job. Question: How is virtual reality used by Positron? Answer: I look at it as an entirely new medium that draws from filmmaking, gaming, theater. Our interest in VR is on cinematic storytelling. We created a hardware and software platform that is intended to bring the best cinematic experience to audiences. It is for out-of-home locations, such as a cinema that is repurposing a screen to put in these kinds of chairs to show VR. Museums are starting to install some of these as well. We have had several of these installations at film festivals. At South by Southwest, we will partner there with several companies, including Universal, Accenture and Technicolor, to bring three different VR experience to audiences there. How do you see the VR market developing? It’s primarily going to be about initially having to access experiences without people having to buy a high-end computer and headset in their home. That is happening – the rate of adoption of people getting VR headsets continues to increase. PlayStation VR combined with some of the other VR headsets shipped 4 million units last year. I see it mainly starting with LBE, or location-based entertainment. It is happening in places even here in L.A. that are now catering to folks that want to go pay $20, $30 and have an experience at a place like The Void or Dreamscape. Two Bit Circus is another one. At Positron, we are looking to have our own Positron VR Cinema with the first one in L.A. sometime in the near future. People can come and experience cinematic VR in one of our motion chairs. Where else has Positron put Voyager chairs? We did a pop-up at the Ace Hotel. It was a VR cinema for a week. We essentially did one Facebook ad and a little bit of word-of-mouth and sold out 100 percent of the shows, Monday through Sunday. What was interesting was that we would always ask people had they done VR before. And 70 percent of the people had not. Or they had only tried Google Cardboard. It is interesting to see people coming to a place, buying a ticket and none of them had seen the content. We showed three sci-fi VR films that were festival films from Sundance, Toronto and Tribeca. To see people’s reactions to it was fascinating. Were these films made especially for the Voyager chairs? None were made for the chair. We enhanced them by adding some motion. In two cases, the directors decided to make some editing changes to optimize it for the chair. It is a little bit like an IMAX where there might be some optimization for the framing. What is the market potential? Enormous. One of the analysts that we follow says the VR/AR combined will be a $50 billion market by 2023. According to our projections we think cinematic VR is going to a $3 billion market. It is based on if you had 100,000 chairs running in how many locations that was and you only sold 30 percent of all available slots it would be a $3 billion market. For comparison, there are about 24 million seats in movie theaters worldwide. So, 100,000 chairs is not a crazy number. What will take to reach that potential? I think a lot of it is about access and great content. Content is getting better. So much of the VR content that was made in the last couple of years has tended to be a demo, something really short. If it’s not a game, there has been a lack of full narrative content. I see that starting to change. Disney just released their very first VR film called “Cycles.” It is super moving, very classic Disney in terms of it being animated but fully taking advantage of the VR medium. The story they told would not have worked on a traditional screen. How are the studios using VR? Some of the other studios were originally making VR content just as marketing pieces, to promote a bigger film. We’ve showcased on our platform: “The Mummy VR Experience” a couple of years ago; “Jurassic World” and “First Man.” Each of these pieces was successful. What do people like about VR technology? It’s a deeper level of immersion in a story. Again, when compared to great filmmaking or a great piece of theater you are mesmerized, your transfixed by the story. You have that sense of being lost in the story. In VR, there is an opportunity to feel like you are inside the story in a different way. VR brings you a lot closer to what is happening in the story with the characters because now you feel like you are inside of it. There is no more frame to look around. There is an escapist element to it. VR has the potential of taking you places you might not otherwise go. What don’t people like about it? Some VR is causing motion sickness. The last study we read is about 20 percent of people will experience nausea on average. One of the things about our chair is we eliminate that. We have less than 0.2 percent people report nausea. It still an issue until certain things are resolved on how the graphics work and how your inner ear gets triggered. I think another thing about VR is it can get a little bit intimidating because of all the wires and you’re putting this thing on your face. You can feel awkward if you are doing it in a public space with other people watching you. Is cost an issue when it comes to the headsets? It depends. I think that for an average consumer the high-end headsets are a little pricey. We use the Samsung Gear that retails for $399 right now. It requires a high-end computer. I think the cost of headsets is high for home adoption but the cost for a ticket to a location-based place is not. We found that people are happy to pay $20 if they get a real rich experience. What is the most fun part of your job? Watching people who have never done VR see something amazing for the first time – that look of joy and wonder on their face and seeing their emotional reactions.