**USA Today's Digital Trends: An Exclusive Interview**

In a recent conversation with USA Today's digital trends team, we had the opportunity to sit down with a representative from the company and discuss their latest projects and initiatives. The conversation covered various topics, including their approach to storytelling, new technologies, and future plans.

One of the first topics discussed was the company's experience with interactive storytelling. Over the past two years, they have been working on improving their techniques and experimenting with different formats. They emphasized that while they didn't have everything figured out, they had a solid understanding of what worked for them. This expertise was evident in their latest project, which utilized spatial audio and four cameras to create an immersive experience.

The company's second interactive project, known as the Eisenhower project, served as a significant milestone in their development. They learned valuable lessons from this project that they applied to their next endeavor, which resulted in a more complex and engaging story. The team noted that each new project presented its own set of challenges, but they were excited about the opportunities for growth and innovation.

The conversation then turned to the company's latest app, Three 2 One Launch. This augmented reality (AR) app was developed in collaboration with Florida Today, a space expert organization based out of Kennedy Space Center. The team shared their vision for this app, which aims to provide users with an immersive experience that simulates live rocket launches. By utilizing AR technology, users can feel as though they are actually at the launch site, witnessing the Falcon 9 rocket take off in real-time.

The company's plans for Three 2 One Launch include expanding its capabilities to accommodate different rocket launches and locations. They are also excited about the potential for user engagement, citing features like pre-launch experiences and post-flight analysis. The app was recently featured by Apple, highlighting its innovative use of AR technology for storytelling.

Looking ahead, the company is focused on leveraging emerging technologies to enhance their storytelling capabilities. They believe that future platforms will need to integrate multiple technologies seamlessly, allowing users to access data and information in a more intuitive way. While they don't anticipate reaching the level of "Ready Player One" in the near future, they are optimistic about the growth and momentum of AR technology.

The conversation concluded with a discussion of USA Today's plans for the Three 2 One Launch app. The company hopes to expand its reach and become an integral part of the ecosystem surrounding this technology. They expressed excitement about their potential partnership with other brands and organizations, envisioning a future where users can access information and data in a more immersive and engaging way.

The team's enthusiasm and dedication to innovation are evident throughout our conversation. With their continued focus on storytelling and emerging technologies, it will be exciting to see how USA Today's digital trends evolve in the coming years.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enwelcome back to Digital Trends live thank you for tuning in broadcasting live on Facebook periscope twitch and YouTube meaning we can take your comments in your questions every day live at 9:00 a.m. Pacific noon Eastern our next guest is Ray so toe the director of emerging technology for the USA Today Network we are so excited to have him on to talk about this whole world of virtual reality AR M are how how that's being utilized in how we're crossing the bridge into creative storytelling and journalism how it's accident in it I have so many questions I should probably just bring you on the show hello ray going doing great thank you so much for it for joining us um before we get into to my questions and talking about everything you're doing why don't we just if you don't mind if we could walk people through kind of your background and how you came to this possession this position here at USA Today yeah you know first and foremost you know I really appreciate the opportunity to kind of share our story but to answer your question it's definitely been an interesting journey you know I am a former video game developer I worked for you know EA and C soft on different IPS mostly on PC online gaming and I did not expect to get into you know creative storytelling within USA Today and news but when I think about it you know kind of looking back it's a really perfect fit when you consider where virtual reality and augmented reality the tools are used to create these experiences is that they're very much similar to what you find in the video game industry and it kind of when you consider my background and game developers were passionate about interactive stories so it was definitely an interesting transition it was definitely a challenge because when you consider video games highly creative in the new space you can't make stuff up so there there was quite a bit of a learning curve but something that I very much appreciate to have had the opportunity make that transition from video games into a creative storytelling your USA Today I think it really is kind of a unique situation of you have you know video games oh it's at the forefront or generally speaking the forefront of Technology and USA Today which is you know I in the past at least considered to be a more traditional journalistic news source and you know marrying these two and just having that crossing that bridge like what were one of the first steps that you did when you hopped on board and how do you see this this this crossover happening yes so the whole conversation started around you know there were there was someone on the Digital side who had reached out to me and they had gotten my phone number from from a colleague asking if I was interested in exploring virtual reality opportunities you know as applied to storytelling and you know my interest was very much peaked you know at the time this is almost five years ago the ikx DK one was out so you know that everyone was really interested in virtual reality but no one at the time really was speaking to much how to apply interactive storytelling within that platform so you know the the conversations really started off with what can we do with this platform that provides a unique perspective for an audience someone to feel as if they're actually there to feel as if they're engaging you have full control of the story the way that they want to actually consume the story essentially play up to virtual reality strengths and the the conversation that we initially had to support a project that would ultimately we ended up releasing called harvest of change was truly inspiring I I feel as if the USA Today Network truly understood that there's an opportunity here to do something different to explore and it's what we've been doing for the past five years and you know you had mentioned before you know for virtual reality augmented reality and where things might go from here and you know USA Today is very much you know there's a rich history of innovation and this is just one small aspect of one of our kind of commitments of exploring storytelling through emerging tech just have a multi-tiered approach to bringing people you know different viewpoints and different ways to look at the at the news or the articles or the you know investigations that you have going on absolutely yeah it's one of those things where we're developing these interactive stories because we feel as if there's an impact there when you consider some of the work that we've done more recently our Pulitzer Prize winning you know the wall project in which VR was just one small component of this very very large feature story that we want users to engage we want them to feel as if they can walk away from something with a little bit more information feel as if there's they've been moved in in some way so each project that we look at and possibly to determine whether or not we're going to work with VR or er as a component of a story it's what can we do that place of the strengths of the story and how can we apply the technology to it so it's not necessarily just bringing the news it's more of just telling a story that can really leave an impact let's let's talk about a couple of the projects cuz I mean you run up the wall which congratulations you don't Pulitzer Prize winning and and what did you do with that because we've got some video I wanted to show just kind of how you took that story and how did you apply VR to that to give that other perspective yeah that was you know that was one of the most rewarding projects and those are the most challenging projects I've ever worked on it was a very very ambitious you know we started the conversation months early before we even started capturing some photographs kind of build the environments that you see here and ultimately what we wanted to do was provide a you know a perspective in which these different environments across the board are very different from one another that building a border wall at the border is actually a much more complex issue that most folks might not realize and we thought that VR would provide that perspective you know that you can't necessarily build a wall down this massive cliff at Big Bend which is one of the experiences we have within this project so you know the entire process was was very interesting it was also very much of a creative and a development challenge when we started off we were hoping to leverage lidar to build out our environments you know we had hired a helicopter crew to go out and capture points of data and we were hoping to build some environments from there and it just didn't work for us fortunately we ended up leveraging photogrammetry they were you know capturing high-resolution images for us and that got us a nice foundation to build upon and from there we started just working very very closely with the editorial teams that were you know at these different locations to tell these stories to make sure that we're providing a perspective that that the user feels as if okay I'm actually there but at the same time learning what makes that location unique as applied to this story so things such as you know drug trafficking you know in weaker migrant crossing eminent domain a very very complex lots and lots of different types of topics within it so it was complex but it was so it was a lot of fun to work on for sure I mean I think it's it's really incredible you know and obviously Pulitzer Prize winning on top of that I mean I think this idea of making something more real especially when it comes to a story like that with the wall or just making it more interactive for people it makes it more you know this isn't just something I'm reading about okay that's you know that's not whatever it's a story that's fine I can go off and forget about it you do this you know you're actually in there and you're feeling what's going on you're getting to see it from those perspectives and something that you wouldn't normally get I think it's really incredible let's let's talk about one of your other ones this is the USS Eisenhower I was just watching some of that online let's talk about the the creation of that and what that is yeah so I like to call this one the Eisenhower project our kitchen sink project you know I'd mentioned it early on that our very first interactive yard project was harvest have changed and we learned quite a bit developing with that experience and at the time we really had no reference materials to work from and that included you know 360 you know what works what doesn't work for the video side of things what works for on a UX perspective and interaction schemes so what ends up happening is we the US Navy reached out to us and provided us an opportunity to actually get onto the Eisenhower for three days of a lot of combat training exercises so when we had that opportunity we wanted to return back to interactive storytelling and provide an experience that users feel as if they can actually explore and discover the many many stories on this floating city and we incorporated stereoscopic video working with the Nokia ozo we had you know two camera four cameras six camera arrays we had spatial audio we essentially took everything that we had done over two years between harvests of change in this project to apply everything that we had learned and I wouldn't say that we had everything figured out but we we had a hunch as far as storytelling and that we could return back to it it was just the right time and it did very well for us and it was it was a fun project to kind of kick start where we would be going after the I summer project because when you consider the Eisenhower project was our second interactive and what we learned from from the Eisenhower we applied to the wall so it made it bit more of an easy transition for us when it comes to complex storytelling of various topics complex storytelling and figuring out which technology works best for which story you know in this new format as its developing constantly - it's not like this is a platform that's been around for a long time you know it's always changing and so I imagine that's a big challenge when it comes down to it let's let's talk about your the three to one app the three two one launch app what are your plans with that and where where do you where you want to take people with this app you know the one thing I'm going to preface that with three two one launch it was our first augmented reality app and it was due to a strong collaboration with our Florida today who are our space experts based out of Florida and you know we were very very fortunate to have the access that we did you know down at Kennedy Space Center trying to learn what you know which stories we can tell but ultimately we wanted to provide an experience that users who who can feel as if they're they're a part of these live launches you know so through augmented reality you'll see an example here the Falcon 9 rocket you know sitting on the actual launch pad you would see it animate in real time in sequence with the actual launch that's happening from Kennedy Space Center and you know our plans for it you know we're very much looking forward to expanding it you know right now it's limited to just one interactive non-live experience but users can still watch all of the upcoming launches to include you know the Falcon ions and you LA's launches as well but we're looking to expand it because we recognize that there are different you know let's say the Falcon Heavy there are different locations that that some of these rockets can launch from so we're looking to expand it we're very fortunate that Apple featured the app and we see that there folks are engaging with AR content storytelling and we're looking to expand it and we have some big plans coming up for the app very cool as somebody who really loves anything I'm a space nerd so I love the idea of this app like this that's so much fun to me final thing I wanted to ask here - just where we're going forward just kind of maybe may thinking forward several years how do you see this evolving I mean we have you know people are working on haptic suits and different things like that I mean are we about ready to be in ready player one essentially in a couple of years or where you see this going in the next few years I'm really really excited about where VRA are just emerging technologies are are taken I said what I see is a future in which convergence of different technology types coming into you know singular platforms persistent platforms what I'm really excited about is augmented reality future with where we're at right now I think it's a little bit more playful folks trying to kind of figure out what works what doesn't work you know for our specific purposes we're focusing on a storytelling side of things but for the future of AR I could see an opportunity in which you know I where you walking down the street you know to kind of pull from what Charlie Fink had said at South by you know the data is everywhere and we want to leverage that data in a much more intuitive and seamless way and I feel as if we're maybe just a couple years out from that and our hope is to have USA Today to be you know a part of that that ecosystem a part of that you know the brand for you to be there when you need it and well I don't think we're necessarily too close to two ready player one I'm very much looking forward to something like that don't get me wrong but I do see all these technologies continue to grow I think the momentum is going to just continue in to gain traction and audiences are gonna be looking forward to it right thank you so much for joining us and talking about this really exciting stuff and excited to see where it goes and where you go with the USA Today Network and all the all the different things that you guys are coming out with right thanks so much for robbing our digital trends live hey thanks much I appreciate itwelcome back to Digital Trends live thank you for tuning in broadcasting live on Facebook periscope twitch and YouTube meaning we can take your comments in your questions every day live at 9:00 a.m. Pacific noon Eastern our next guest is Ray so toe the director of emerging technology for the USA Today Network we are so excited to have him on to talk about this whole world of virtual reality AR M are how how that's being utilized in how we're crossing the bridge into creative storytelling and journalism how it's accident in it I have so many questions I should probably just bring you on the show hello ray going doing great thank you so much for it for joining us um before we get into to my questions and talking about everything you're doing why don't we just if you don't mind if we could walk people through kind of your background and how you came to this possession this position here at USA Today yeah you know first and foremost you know I really appreciate the opportunity to kind of share our story but to answer your question it's definitely been an interesting journey you know I am a former video game developer I worked for you know EA and C soft on different IPS mostly on PC online gaming and I did not expect to get into you know creative storytelling within USA Today and news but when I think about it you know kind of looking back it's a really perfect fit when you consider where virtual reality and augmented reality the tools are used to create these experiences is that they're very much similar to what you find in the video game industry and it kind of when you consider my background and game developers were passionate about interactive stories so it was definitely an interesting transition it was definitely a challenge because when you consider video games highly creative in the new space you can't make stuff up so there there was quite a bit of a learning curve but something that I very much appreciate to have had the opportunity make that transition from video games into a creative storytelling your USA Today I think it really is kind of a unique situation of you have you know video games oh it's at the forefront or generally speaking the forefront of Technology and USA Today which is you know I in the past at least considered to be a more traditional journalistic news source and you know marrying these two and just having that crossing that bridge like what were one of the first steps that you did when you hopped on board and how do you see this this this crossover happening yes so the whole conversation started around you know there were there was someone on the Digital side who had reached out to me and they had gotten my phone number from from a colleague asking if I was interested in exploring virtual reality opportunities you know as applied to storytelling and you know my interest was very much peaked you know at the time this is almost five years ago the ikx DK one was out so you know that everyone was really interested in virtual reality but no one at the time really was speaking to much how to apply interactive storytelling within that platform so you know the the conversations really started off with what can we do with this platform that provides a unique perspective for an audience someone to feel as if they're actually there to feel as if they're engaging you have full control of the story the way that they want to actually consume the story essentially play up to virtual reality strengths and the the conversation that we initially had to support a project that would ultimately we ended up releasing called harvest of change was truly inspiring I I feel as if the USA Today Network truly understood that there's an opportunity here to do something different to explore and it's what we've been doing for the past five years and you know you had mentioned before you know for virtual reality augmented reality and where things might go from here and you know USA Today is very much you know there's a rich history of innovation and this is just one small aspect of one of our kind of commitments of exploring storytelling through emerging tech just have a multi-tiered approach to bringing people you know different viewpoints and different ways to look at the at the news or the articles or the you know investigations that you have going on absolutely yeah it's one of those things where we're developing these interactive stories because we feel as if there's an impact there when you consider some of the work that we've done more recently our Pulitzer Prize winning you know the wall project in which VR was just one small component of this very very large feature story that we want users to engage we want them to feel as if they can walk away from something with a little bit more information feel as if there's they've been moved in in some way so each project that we look at and possibly to determine whether or not we're going to work with VR or er as a component of a story it's what can we do that place of the strengths of the story and how can we apply the technology to it so it's not necessarily just bringing the news it's more of just telling a story that can really leave an impact let's let's talk about a couple of the projects cuz I mean you run up the wall which congratulations you don't Pulitzer Prize winning and and what did you do with that because we've got some video I wanted to show just kind of how you took that story and how did you apply VR to that to give that other perspective yeah that was you know that was one of the most rewarding projects and those are the most challenging projects I've ever worked on it was a very very ambitious you know we started the conversation months early before we even started capturing some photographs kind of build the environments that you see here and ultimately what we wanted to do was provide a you know a perspective in which these different environments across the board are very different from one another that building a border wall at the border is actually a much more complex issue that most folks might not realize and we thought that VR would provide that perspective you know that you can't necessarily build a wall down this massive cliff at Big Bend which is one of the experiences we have within this project so you know the entire process was was very interesting it was also very much of a creative and a development challenge when we started off we were hoping to leverage lidar to build out our environments you know we had hired a helicopter crew to go out and capture points of data and we were hoping to build some environments from there and it just didn't work for us fortunately we ended up leveraging photogrammetry they were you know capturing high-resolution images for us and that got us a nice foundation to build upon and from there we started just working very very closely with the editorial teams that were you know at these different locations to tell these stories to make sure that we're providing a perspective that that the user feels as if okay I'm actually there but at the same time learning what makes that location unique as applied to this story so things such as you know drug trafficking you know in weaker migrant crossing eminent domain a very very complex lots and lots of different types of topics within it so it was complex but it was so it was a lot of fun to work on for sure I mean I think it's it's really incredible you know and obviously Pulitzer Prize winning on top of that I mean I think this idea of making something more real especially when it comes to a story like that with the wall or just making it more interactive for people it makes it more you know this isn't just something I'm reading about okay that's you know that's not whatever it's a story that's fine I can go off and forget about it you do this you know you're actually in there and you're feeling what's going on you're getting to see it from those perspectives and something that you wouldn't normally get I think it's really incredible let's let's talk about one of your other ones this is the USS Eisenhower I was just watching some of that online let's talk about the the creation of that and what that is yeah so I like to call this one the Eisenhower project our kitchen sink project you know I'd mentioned it early on that our very first interactive yard project was harvest have changed and we learned quite a bit developing with that experience and at the time we really had no reference materials to work from and that included you know 360 you know what works what doesn't work for the video side of things what works for on a UX perspective and interaction schemes so what ends up happening is we the US Navy reached out to us and provided us an opportunity to actually get onto the Eisenhower for three days of a lot of combat training exercises so when we had that opportunity we wanted to return back to interactive storytelling and provide an experience that users feel as if they can actually explore and discover the many many stories on this floating city and we incorporated stereoscopic video working with the Nokia ozo we had you know two camera four cameras six camera arrays we had spatial audio we essentially took everything that we had done over two years between harvests of change in this project to apply everything that we had learned and I wouldn't say that we had everything figured out but we we had a hunch as far as storytelling and that we could return back to it it was just the right time and it did very well for us and it was it was a fun project to kind of kick start where we would be going after the I summer project because when you consider the Eisenhower project was our second interactive and what we learned from from the Eisenhower we applied to the wall so it made it bit more of an easy transition for us when it comes to complex storytelling of various topics complex storytelling and figuring out which technology works best for which story you know in this new format as its developing constantly - it's not like this is a platform that's been around for a long time you know it's always changing and so I imagine that's a big challenge when it comes down to it let's let's talk about your the three to one app the three two one launch app what are your plans with that and where where do you where you want to take people with this app you know the one thing I'm going to preface that with three two one launch it was our first augmented reality app and it was due to a strong collaboration with our Florida today who are our space experts based out of Florida and you know we were very very fortunate to have the access that we did you know down at Kennedy Space Center trying to learn what you know which stories we can tell but ultimately we wanted to provide an experience that users who who can feel as if they're they're a part of these live launches you know so through augmented reality you'll see an example here the Falcon 9 rocket you know sitting on the actual launch pad you would see it animate in real time in sequence with the actual launch that's happening from Kennedy Space Center and you know our plans for it you know we're very much looking forward to expanding it you know right now it's limited to just one interactive non-live experience but users can still watch all of the upcoming launches to include you know the Falcon ions and you LA's launches as well but we're looking to expand it because we recognize that there are different you know let's say the Falcon Heavy there are different locations that that some of these rockets can launch from so we're looking to expand it we're very fortunate that Apple featured the app and we see that there folks are engaging with AR content storytelling and we're looking to expand it and we have some big plans coming up for the app very cool as somebody who really loves anything I'm a space nerd so I love the idea of this app like this that's so much fun to me final thing I wanted to ask here - just where we're going forward just kind of maybe may thinking forward several years how do you see this evolving I mean we have you know people are working on haptic suits and different things like that I mean are we about ready to be in ready player one essentially in a couple of years or where you see this going in the next few years I'm really really excited about where VRA are just emerging technologies are are taken I said what I see is a future in which convergence of different technology types coming into you know singular platforms persistent platforms what I'm really excited about is augmented reality future with where we're at right now I think it's a little bit more playful folks trying to kind of figure out what works what doesn't work you know for our specific purposes we're focusing on a storytelling side of things but for the future of AR I could see an opportunity in which you know I where you walking down the street you know to kind of pull from what Charlie Fink had said at South by you know the data is everywhere and we want to leverage that data in a much more intuitive and seamless way and I feel as if we're maybe just a couple years out from that and our hope is to have USA Today to be you know a part of that that ecosystem a part of that you know the brand for you to be there when you need it and well I don't think we're necessarily too close to two ready player one I'm very much looking forward to something like that don't get me wrong but I do see all these technologies continue to grow I think the momentum is going to just continue in to gain traction and audiences are gonna be looking forward to it right thank you so much for joining us and talking about this really exciting stuff and excited to see where it goes and where you go with the USA Today Network and all the all the different things that you guys are coming out with right thanks so much for robbing our digital trends live hey thanks much I appreciate it\n"