Stand in front of a surface coated in Vantablack and it feels like you might fall in. The nanotech material isn鈥檛 just the blackest black you鈥檝e ever seen, it looks like there鈥檚 nothing there. A hole in space.
Step into a room painted floor to ceiling with the stuff and the world disappears. It鈥檚 a little like being in a sensory deprivation tank. Your eyes and ears strain to get a grip on something, anything.
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When the giant screen explodes with colour and the roar of Activision鈥檚 latest Call of Duty game shatters the void, the effect is certainly dramatic. 鈥淭his is VR 2.0,鈥� says Ben Jensen, chief technology officer at UK-based Surrey NanoSystems, the company behind Vantablack.
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Vantablack is the blackest material ever created. Its main industrial use is in precision cameras, such as those used in autonomous vehicles or satellites, where it prevents interference from stray light. But it鈥檚 no surprise that artists such as Anish Kapoor 鈥� who used the material in a paint-off against Stuart Semple and his pinkest pink 鈥� and marketing agencies are busy dreaming up other things to do with it.
Earlier this year a pavilion at the Winter Olympics in South Korea was coated in a version of Vantablack called VBx2, developed for covering large surfaces like the outsides of buildings.
But this is the first time that VBx2 has been used to paint the inside of a structure. 鈥淥ne of the questions we get asked most is what would it be like inside a room coated with this material,鈥� says Jensen.聽When game publisher Activision came calling, they got their chance. To promote the 12 October launch of the new title in its blockbuster Call of Duty series, Activision has set up an ultrablack room in a warehouse in London. This week the company invited people to come and try it out.
Call of Duty is a juggernaut 鈥� the biggest entertainment franchise ever, as Activision loves to tell people. And the latest iteration of the first-person shooter, Call of Duty Black Ops 4, is the biggest and most bombastic yet. It even promises a personalised zombie experience.
Most players like to compete against each other in matches that pit two teams together. To play well demands a lot of skill and lightning reflexes. By shutting out everything but the game, the black room helps. Could Vantablack offer a new kind of immersion for virtual worlds?
鈥淚鈥檝e played Call of Duty for years,鈥澛燡ensen says. 鈥淚t鈥檚 a great way to blow off steam after a bad day in the lab.鈥� But he has struggled with virtual reality. 鈥淎fter a short period of time I鈥檝e got to get the headset off, it鈥檚 too much,鈥� he says. 鈥淏ut in the Vantablack room I feel like I could play all day without a problem.鈥�
Don鈥檛 plan on redecorating your living room just yet, however. 鈥淚t will never be the case that you can buy a can of paint and do it yourself,鈥� says Jensen. That鈥檚 because applying the material is not easy.
The blackest version of Vantablack reflects just 0.0365 per cent of light. Photons hitting the material get trapped inside a carbon nanotube structure, bouncing back and forth until they are absorbed. 鈥淓ssentially you grow nanoscale grass with very perfect alignment and spacing.鈥�
Jensen鈥檚 team has developed sprayable versions of Vantablack that are easier to use but they still need to be applied in a way that lets the nanostructure build up. 鈥淚t takes significant training鈥�, he says. 鈥淲e actually use robots in our facility.鈥�
Still, everyone leaving that blacker-than-black room this week had a big grin on their face. Whether painted by robots or not, Vantablack gaming arcades could be the next big thing.
The team at Surrey NanoSystems were certainly excited about creating this one. 鈥淭he guys and girls in the science team said we鈥檝e got to do this,鈥� says Jensen. 鈥淚t鈥檚 just so cool.鈥�
