http://www.telegraph.co.uk/film/sky-cap ... -happened/

Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow is one of those films that I can watch and marvel at the imagery of it. It’s deemed a failure, despite pioneering techniques that are used by pretty much every modern blockbuster.

Yup, I enjoy it immensely too. One of a handful of films that really has a distinct look to it.

The acting isn't great, but fits the 1930s/1940s serial style, but given that they didn't have any sets and pretty much everything around them is CGI from a Mac (or originally on a Mac, I can't remember of the top of my head if they did in fact get access to a render farm, but the original pilot/trailer footage was 100% Mac).

It is a great demonstration of what is possible, even if the film itself isn't brilliant, and as you say, very watchable.

I saw apiece about VR cinematography - i.e. making a feature length piece to be viewed using a VR system like say oculus rift - and there were two main problems to be overcome

1) What do you do about the crew & cameras - it very difficult not have the 'in shot' when you've got 360 degree vision
2) The fact that these days there is a very great use of virtual sets - even films where you'd assume they'd just use someone's house or whatever, it's done with a CGI set. Doing that with VR Massively increases costs as you have to render twice as much each frame.

Sky Captain was the film that pioneered this stuff and now it's apparently completely common place.

1. If I were to set out to make an immersive film, I'd block it so that at any time you needn't be aware of the full 360° area you're in. This gives you room to cheat a camera, focus puller etc.
2. Render time gets cheaper all the time, and it depends what you're doing of course. Rendering the rear wall of a room (to hide a camera crew etc.) would be child's play compared to creating the floating islands on Pandora with a vast array of flying beasties.

All about how you choose to apply the technology.