The World VR Forum – Year 2 – The Conferences

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I was a volunteer at the World VR Forum again this year. I was in the conference room providing speakers with microphones before they went up on stage. As a result of this I was able to listen to many interesting speakers. They spoke about a diversity of topics of interest to various groups.

Google Earth and the HTC Vive

Dominik Käser presented Google Earth VR. He spoke about how Google had spent time thinking about how the earth sounds in different locations, from different altitudes and more. He spoke about how they thought about the sound of a dragging rock when the globe is spun slowly and a jet when it is spun faster. He also spoke about the considerations for how to move within this environment. An excellent demonstration of Google earth in VR is included with the video above. It would be a fantastic tool for journey planning.

Club Med and VR

Julien Lebreton spoke about how Club Med was thinking about and implementing Virtual reality and 360 videos in to advertising for events. 360 videos are a great way of getting people to experience what travelling to certain locations are. I am interested in how VR can be used for tourism.

Other discussions included the Neuroscience of VR and how the mind perceives the world in VR as well as consciousness and VR. These are interesting talks because the better people understand how the Human mind reacts to virtual reality environments the better experiences can be. To go along with this there was a speech about the Limbic chair and how it provided people with the opportunity to “walk” around in VR more naturally. The full program is at the following link.

2017 World VR Forum Program

Due to the volume of speeches of I heard and because I was busy I was unable to devote my full concentration to every speech. What I did come away with is that people are looking to fund VR content and they do want to be seen as first movers. They want to see up to a 30 fold return on investment multiple funding rounds down the line. Content creators are looking to create a large back catalogue of content so that in future when VR goes mainstream they will have something to distribute on multiple panels. China was given a strong position within this year’s world VR forum and their point of view was expressed by a diversity of speeches.

Conclusion:

During last year’s World VR Forum I tried and enjoyed almost all of the VR experiences, some of them multiple times. As a result of this I really got to grips with the breadth and diversity of opportunities that VR experiences could offer to the user. I met with most of the speakers this year and listened to their speeches. As a result of this my understanding of many topics has increased. I will look at some of these topics in more depth.

My favourite side event was the midnight swim. It’s the first time that I’ve been for a midnight swim in a heated indoor pool in Switzerland. Another moment I really enjoyed as a volunteer was the fondue dinner on the last night. The fondue and the ambiance were really good.

I’ll be back again next year. I enjoy the World VR Forum. It would be fun to go as a content creator next time.