Adobe’s pdf reader is generally a no-frills experience. There’s text you need to read, and it shows it to you. But, there is a movement in the Adobe Research labs to put a more immersive feel to documents using virtual reality.
The idea is that reading a PDF is a very passive experience, one that is completely unsuited for VR. Because of this, an experimental interface is being developed to allow the viewer to enter pictures embedded within the document. Essentially turning the image into an interactive environment from which the text can be experienced.
Each image is also provided with a door that acts as a link to the next image in the document. Creating a document that’s more of a journey than a boring wall of text.
This interactive environment is the work of Laurel Warrell, a former Adobe Research intern. She worked with Adobe Research Principal Scientist Walter Chang to change the way people read text. Ideally, this technology will make it easier to annotate images and allow people to discover information as they explore the image.
Sure, it won’t work with every single pdf. But the PDF-to-VR is more of a proof-of-concept at this stage than anything else. In fact, there is no indication that this is being pushed out as a feature in the near future.
