Soon you may truly be at the center of the Netflix experience.
As part of Netflix's Hack Day, where the company allows employees to work on whatever they want for 24 hours, a group of developers put together some software called Oculix. The program allowed you to browse through Netflix streaming menus in a virtual reality headset, like the Oculus Rift.
Besides Oculix displaying what you can watch in a spherical view that wraps around you, the program utilized a Leap Motion to use gestures to navigate. Once something is selected, you can watch a streaming film in a three-dimensional room. You can see it in operation in a YouTube video posted by Netflix.
Though the interface and viewing room were simple, it provides a good proof of concept for what could come in the future. Perhaps Netflix will refine the UI and actually build up the viewing room to look like a theater. There will be a demand for a VR version of computer programs once the consumer version of Oculus Rift launches in 2015.
Of course, Oculix may never actually see the light of day outside of Netflix offices. As it states in the blog post about Netflix Hack Day, "While we think these hacks are very cool and fun, they may never become part of the Netflix product, internal infrastructure, or otherwise be used beyond Hack Day. We are surfacing them here publicly to share the spirit of the Netflix Hack Day."
Other projects that came out of the Netflix Hack Day include: Netflix Hue, which uses lights to tint your room to match the picture you are watching; Nerdflix, a text-based interface that resembles an old text adventure; Netflix Mini, a shrunken window to watch streaming videos while working in another window; and Circle of Life, a different UI that focus the menus into circular icons at the center of the page.
