Cinematic virtual reality has evolved from a novelty centered on spherical spectacle into a complex field of immersive linear storytelling that draws on cinematic form while reorganizing it around embodiment, spatial orientation, and computational image making. This article argues that the medium’s recent development is best understood through three interconnected shifts: the relocation of cinematic control from the frame to the environment, the transformation of screenwriting into a spatial design practice, and the rise of hybrid production pipelines that combine live action, avatars, volumetric capture, and generative workflows. Real examples support each stage of this argument. Early works such as Access Mars, VR Dinos, and Shark Dive VR exemplify the attraction based phase of the medium, while The Protectors, Invisible, Carne y Arena, VR Noir, Collisions, and The Next Striker show a stronger investment in directed narrative form. Practice based examples such as Until Jesse 360 and Embodied demonstrate how screenplay form itself changes when scenes must be written for a surrounding field rather than a bounded image. More recent examples including Neural Volumes, HumanNeRF, BNeRF, Urban Radiance Fields, SynSin, and 3D Gaussian Splatting indicate that the ontology of the immersive image is shifting from panoramic recording to reconstructed space. At the same time, 2025 and 2026 discourse around AI assisted video production, avatar interoperability, WebAR accessibility, and real time XR engines suggests that cinematic virtual reality is increasingly shaped by adjacent industrial logics as well as by film practice. The result is a medium defined not by immersion alone, but by the ongoing construction of an authored language of presence.

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Vincenzo De Masi is an Associate Professor at Guangdong University of Foreign Studies (School of Journalism and Communication), China. He holds a PhD jointly awarded by the University of Zurich (ProDoc) and the Università della Svizzera italiana (Lugano), and received his Master’s degree (laurea magistrale) in Cinema and New Media from DAMS at the University of Bologna. His research examines creative industries in Asia, platform-mediated communication, and AI-enabled audiovisual production, with a particular focus on AI video generators and their implications for verification, provenance, and public trust. He has previously taught at the New York Institute of Technology (NYIT), Beijing Normal University, Hong Kong Baptist University, and the Communication University of China. He is the founding director of the Italian Film Summer School Veneto and Creative Director of FakeART, a company specialising in AI, VR, AR, and ER content production for immersive media and metaverse-related applications.