Coco VR was envisaged as a way to allow fans inside the stunning world of Coco- into the sets of the movie and to meet the characters themselves, face to face. The goal was for guests to be able to feel the world of Coco, to imagine what it must be like to be a character in that universe.

The creation of CocoVR was a true collaboration between Pixar and immersive experience company Magnopus. A lot of time and effort at the beginning of the process was dedicated to determining the best methods for translating Pixar’s gorgeous, highly-detailed characters and environments into a real-time, game engine-powered experience. A great deal of care went into ensuring that the filmmakers and other stakeholders at Pixar would feel comfortable that a level of quality could be achieved consistent with the studio’s reputation. Pixar and Magnopus worked together to create new tools and pipelines to handle everything from sets to crowds to the complex facial animations of the main characters.

While much of the team was busy polishing pixels and maximizing GPU cycles, others were focused entirely on making sure CocoVR would be fun. A lot of the multi-user support and social mechanics were implemented in the earliest phase of rapid prototyping, which allowed the creative team to concentrate on designing activities that would appeal to pairs and groups. It also became clear that making the visitor avatars expressive and relatable would be very important. Custom systems were created for handling everything from eye tracking and blinks to physical interactions between visitors, and refined repeatedly all the way up to the official release.

The end result of all this emphasis on leveraging the social opportunities offered by virtual reality is an experience with a lot of Disney’s theme park DNA. There are costumes to try on, a variety of small and large immersive environments, a gondola to ride and several performances to enjoy; and like a theme park, it’s all best explored with family and friends. CocoVR is less a narrow, linear narrative and more an opportunity to create your own unique narrative in the universe of the film.