Existing VR capabilities are far more limited than what is portrayed in the film. For entertainment, VR’s most prevalent use is in gaming, where players can battle in 360-degree settings seen through headsets from Facebook’s Oculus unit, HTC Corp and others.

Spielberg was among VR’s early adopters. He had been toying with a headset at home before he made Ready Player One, and he incorporated the technology behind the scenes. To appear in the Oasis, the actors had to perform in a nearly empty white room wearing motion-capture outfits so their movements could be transferred to digitally created sets. Spielberg had the Oasis sets re-built in VR.

“Everybody had a chance to put on the headsets, and suddenly, wow, there you are in the set itself,” he said. “It gave a kind of orientation so they weren’t just acting in the abstract.”