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Robert Stromberg

Co-Founder & Chief Creative Officer, The Virtual Reality Company · 1 appearance on the record.

computed by AI from the episodes · how this works → · full disclaimer →

entertainerfounderexecutiverobertstromberg.com ↗Wikipedia ↗

Robert Stromberg is an Academy Award-winning production designer and filmmaker who directed Maleficent. He co-founded The Virtual Reality Company to produce immersive narrative content.

16statements → 10claims → 8claims resolved → 88%fully supported → 4.06/5average certainty → 1.62/5average debate potential →

7 supported 0 partly supported 1 contradicted 1 not yet assessed 1 not checkable as stated how the 10 claims stand · each chip opens the sources

5 predictions · 5 assertions · 1 opinion · 3 insights · 2 disclosures · every statement was checked. The predictions and assertions are the 10 claims: statements the public record can support or contradict. 8 are resolved, 1 is not yet assessed, and 1 names no date, number or outcome precise enough to check. Everything else (opinions, insights, what ifs, disclosures) can never be settled by the record, so it carries no assessment.

The record, in short

What the tape says about how Robert argues and how the claims held up. Everything they said, and everything said about them, is in the tabs below.

Their most notable supported claim

Prediction Held up
Stromberg: VR distribution will shift from download stores to subscription models
“Initially where you know when you have sites like Steam and you know, Oculus site and all these will be the first places that you're able to sort of download, but I can see very clearly a time when you will have this sort of Netflix like library to choose from…”
Robert Stromberg Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 31:02 a16z Podcast | Building Worlds with VR, Art, and Narrative

Their most notable contradicted claim

Assertion Contradicted
Stromberg: VRC completed an 18-minute VR project with Steven Spielberg
“We just completed an 18 minute piece with Steven Spielberg who, you know.”
Robert Stromberg Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 32:57 a16z Podcast | Building Worlds with VR, Art, and Narrative

Expressed certainty vs assessment result

none yet certainty 1
none yet certainty 2
100% certainty 3
100% certainty 4
75% certainty 5

weighted support: a fully supported claim counts one, a partly supported claim counts half. Each filled bar is clickable and opens exactly those claims; "none yet" means nothing said at that certainty level has resolved yet

How they sound: speaking style how? →

249 words/min while actually speaking · 33.9 um and uh per 1k words · 30.4 false starts per 1k · 39.4% of pauses land inside a clause

No argument clarity score for Robert Stromberg: no usable question→answer exchanges on raw tape (a fair score needs 8+). We do not score a sample that small. Roundtable and news formats yield far fewer direct exchanges than interviews.

Measured by listening to the audio itself: 4,283 words across 1 episode of raw-level tape, transcribed verbatim with every um and uh kept, each one attributed only where the alignment onto our timed stream is unambiguous. These are measurements of speaking style. We do not rank them: across this corpus, fluency and argument quality are nearly uncorrelated (ρ≈0.2), and smooth talking does not signal clear thinking. How it's measured →

Everything Robert Stromberg said on the a16z Podcast that made the record, most notable first. Filter by type, assessment or year in the ledger →

Opinion
Stromberg: Virtual reality remains in a 'parlor trick' stage
“And in VR, you know, I hate to say this, but I feel like we're at this sort of parlor trick stage of things right now.”
Robert Stromberg Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 26:25 a16z Podcast | Building Worlds with VR, Art, and Narrative
Prediction Held up
Stromberg: VR distribution will shift from download stores to subscription models
“Initially where you know when you have sites like Steam and you know, Oculus site and all these will be the first places that you're able to sort of download, but I can see very clearly a time when you will have this sort of Netflix like library to choose from…”
Robert Stromberg Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 31:02 a16z Podcast | Building Worlds with VR, Art, and Narrative
Prediction Held up
Stromberg: VRC is developing gaze-driven branching VR narratives
“Where we're going now is we are doing branching narratives, so, which is really cool. So you can be going through a story being told to you, and depending on where you look, take different paths and different stories.”
Robert Stromberg Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 33:53 a16z Podcast | Building Worlds with VR, Art, and Narrative
Disclosure
Stromberg: VRC has started production on a feature-length VR film
“We've already started what I will call a feature-length VR film.”
Robert Stromberg Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 36:34 a16z Podcast | Building Worlds with VR, Art, and Narrative
Insight
Stromberg: Artists solve problems by observing details others ignore
“What I came to was that I believe that creative types or artist types are better observers of the world or more curious somehow about creativity. The world itself. And what happens is by paying attention to all those small little details that nobody else cares…”
Robert Stromberg Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 7:06 a16z Podcast | Building Worlds with VR, Art, and Narrative
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Stromberg: VR visual fidelity will reach photorealistic levels of immersion
“So I think that you know, the fidelity will get better. The viewing systems will get better. And one day you'll be able to go into the worlds of Pandora, wherever you want to go, but in a very, very real way.”
Robert Stromberg Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 14:21 a16z Podcast | Building Worlds with VR, Art, and Narrative
Insight
Stromberg: VR immersion requires realistic arm and body tracking, not floating hands
“One of the biggest hurdles of even that, that the Martian was developing the arms, you know, which are completely textured. So you could Put your arm right up to your, close to your face and see the same controls that Matt Damon had in the movie. And you're in…”
Robert Stromberg Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 18:20 a16z Podcast | Building Worlds with VR, Art, and Narrative
Prediction Held up
Stromberg: Virtual reality content will eventually adopt motion rating systems
“You know, I think that, that eventually we'll probably see some sort of motion rating system.”
Robert Stromberg Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 21:57 a16z Podcast | Building Worlds with VR, Art, and Narrative
Prediction Open · timeframe Jan 2022
Stromberg: Dedicated 30-to-40 seat VR motion-seat theaters will emerge
“There's lots of talk of that, and we're talking to people about that, and I think you can very realistically see you know, 30, 40 seat theaters pop up with seats that, motion-based seats that are synchronized to the experience itself.”
Robert Stromberg Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 31:47 a16z Podcast | Building Worlds with VR, Art, and Narrative
Assertion Contradicted
Stromberg: VRC completed an 18-minute VR project with Steven Spielberg
“We just completed an 18 minute piece with Steven Spielberg who, you know.”
Robert Stromberg Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 32:57 a16z Podcast | Building Worlds with VR, Art, and Narrative
Assertion Supported
Stromberg: Avatar was mostly filmed via motion capture in Playa del Rey
“So actually, the entire movie, there was a section of the movie that was shot in New Zealand, which were actual sets and actual actors, but the majority of the film was actually all motion capture, which means that all the actors had a motion capture suit on, …”
Robert Stromberg Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 9:01 a16z Podcast | Building Worlds with VR, Art, and Narrative
Assertion Supported
Stromberg: Avatar production allowed real-time visualization of digital characters
“And we were seeing back real time the actors as their avatar character.”
Robert Stromberg Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 10:14 a16z Podcast | Building Worlds with VR, Art, and Narrative
Disclosure
Ridley Scott gave VRC unreleased footage to build The Martian VR
“I was talking to Ridley. Along the way. And he was kind enough to let us work while he was in editorial still on making the actual film, but he allowed us to take their footage and experiment with it.”
Robert Stromberg Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 18:59 a16z Podcast | Building Worlds with VR, Art, and Narrative
Insight
Stromberg: Keeping the horizon level is key to preventing VR motion sickness
“One of the things I figured out is, you know, keeping the horizon correct at all times. Because our equilibrium is so delicate. That that if you're off a little bit, you feel it, you know.”
Robert Stromberg Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 21:24 a16z Podcast | Building Worlds with VR, Art, and Narrative
Assertion Supported
Stromberg: 85% of the movie Gravity was CG
“85% of that movie was CG anyways.”
Robert Stromberg Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 25:23 a16z Podcast | Building Worlds with VR, Art, and Narrative
Assertion Supported
Stromberg designed Avatar's organic world while Rick Carter designed military elements
“Later on a guy by the name of Rick Carter came on who was, we co-production design. He did the human elements, the military base, and I did the organic world.”
Robert Stromberg Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 5:50 a16z Podcast | Building Worlds with VR, Art, and Narrative

Appearances (1)

EpisodeDateSpeaking time
a16z Podcast | Building Worlds with VR, Art, and Narrative Jan 2, 2019 21m
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