One of the infinitely sad and melancholy things in my life is that I just don’t get to read as much fiction as I used to. It isn’t that I don’t want to, but life just seems to get in the way sometimes. When I fondly think of retirement, I see myself wearing a smoking jacket and ascot in the library next to a warm fire with my dog at my feet while reading from my vast collection of books that I have held off while Gorgoroth plays on my Windows Hologram.

Enter The Hunger Games. I wasn’t aware, but this series of books apparently are a huge deal with it being on The New York Times bestseller list for over 180 weeks! The movie adaptation is coming out March 23rd as well.

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Yesterday, Microsoft announced that fans could go check out The Hunger Games in an immersive HTML5 experience. It allows you to explore the capitol in a unique way. It is plug-in free using only standards-based markup and taking advantage of particle effects, cinemagraphs and skewed video.

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Even more brutally fabulous is that the site has a developer teardown which lets you see the work behind the scenes to build it!

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What is interesting is that typically movie sites are written with plug-ins. With the greatness of HTML5, we are finding that folks are relying less and less on browser plug-ins, which is a Good Thing.™

Are you thinking about using HTML5 for your next immersive experience? Want to learn more? Check out the Behind the Scenes and then head over to the IE Developer Center for all the latest on HTML5.