The BBC is experimenting with immersive virtual reality, according to today’s blog post by Cyrus Saihan, head of business development for BBC Future Media. “When the BBC started making the world’s first regular public television broadcasts in 1936, there were only about 20,000 TV sets capable of receiving the programming,”Read More →

I love watching YouTube demos of new Oculus Rift titles, and am a fan of PewDiePie and folks like him. Last night, however, I watched an Oculus Rift review video that wasn’t the typical player-scared-by-creepy-shadow or man-scared-by-rollercoaster or grandmother-astounded-by-Tuscan-villa. It was an opera, Senza Peso, reviewed by emart. I’ve been trying toRead More →

The arcade industry was decimated back in the mid-90’s by the advancements in consumer console games as well as a failure to adapt to changing player demographics. Virtual reality could bring it back. As a side benefit, virtual reality arcades could help drive the development of the technology, whet public appetite forRead More →

Press release: EON Reality Launches the World’s Largest Virtual Reality Library, EON Experience The EON Experience Portal enables global EON developers to bring their innovative applications to market. IRVINE, Calif. - EON Reality Inc., the world’s leading provider of Virtual Reality software, systems, and applications, launches the new EON Experience Portal, the world’sRead More →

Press release: Full-service creative design agency, Cubicle Ninjas, launches VR services for business. Their mission is provide businesses with a fresh opportunity to tell stronger stories through the new technology. Glen Ellyn, IL — Cubicle Ninjas announces a suite of services for businesses looking to explore new opportunities in virtual reality.Read More →

Survios is a virtual reality startup that combines an Oculus Rift headset, Sixense controllers, a Sony Move motion detector and a battery pack plus its own game software for a self-contained virtual reality system. It has raised $4 million in venture capital funding, led by Shasta Ventures, VentureBeat reported today.Read More →

Silicon Valley Virtual Reality Conference & Expo 2014 — billed as the world’s first professional conference for consumer virtual reality — kicked off today with Oculus Rift inventor Palmer Luckey and other hardware innovators and a keynote by Second Life founder Philip Rosedale. Some of the videos of the firstRead More →

Press release: CyberLightning brings 3D visualization to industrial internet of things CyberVille Combines Big Data Processing and 3D Internet Technology in Powerful Platform for Monitoring and Control of Energy Networks and Smart City Infrastructure Oulu, Finland – CyberLightning Ltd., today introduced CyberVille, a software platform for visual monitoring and controlRead More →

Vrban, a tool that allows users to see how proposed buildings will look like from different points of view or time of day, won the $5,000 grand prize at the Techcrunch Disrupt NY Hackathon this past weekend. Backstage interview with the developer: Read the full story here.Read More →

UK-based Reign Development and students from Southampton Solent University have produced a ten-minute preview of their documentary, “Dawn of Virtual reality.” The documentary features the Oculus Rift, as well as Digital Out-of-Home Entertainment specialist Kevin Williams.  Watch the full video here:Read More →

I gave a talk about virtual reality yesterday in Boston at a conference of the Society of Professional Journalists. The main goal of the presentation was to explain what virtual reality was, give a few examples of virtual reality currently being used for business, and discuss some ways in whichRead More →

A new report by UK research firm KZero highlights a number of brand-related projects in virtual reality. These include a recreation of the Wall from the Game of Thrones television series. You can read more about the Game of Thrones simulation here, or watch the video below. Then there’s theRead More →

Press release: Conquer Mobile and VRcade Partner to Provide Fully Immersive Virtual Reality Medical Simulation Solutions Conquer Mobile will Use the VRcade Virtual Reality (VR) Out-of-Home Platform to Create State of the Art Medical Simulation Solutions for Medical Education. Vancouver, BC  – Conquer Mobile, a mobile solutions specialist, and VRcadeRead More →

Virtual reality is finally starting to hit the prime time, with the Oculus Rift taking Best of Show at the Consumer Electronics Show and Sony unveiling its own headset, Project Morpheus, at the Game Developers Conference this week. This isn’t the same virtual reality that flopped big in the 90s.Read More →

The value of virtual reality in architecture, real estate and construction industries is becoming increasingly well known, and what everyone wants to know is, “how much does it cost?” To help simplify the estimation process, we developed the Cost Estimation Tool, found at the bottom of our Architectural Visualization page,Read More →

Press release: Multi-User Virtual Reality System for Sale from ICAP Patent Brokerage New York – ICAP Patent Brokerage announces for sale a patent portfolio disclosing an improved, interactive multi-user virtual reality system from Louis de Groot, as trustee of The Louis and Barbara de Groot Trust. This IP package is available viaRead More →

We’re back from Autodesk University in Vegas, where we had the opportunity to show some of our latest Oculus Rift projects to the architecture, engineering and construction crowd there. Wow, was that ever fun! Exhibiting can be a boring, exhausting experience, but not with the Rift! From beginning to end,Read More →

At some distant point in the future, virtual reality will be good enough and immersive enough that we can telecommute to our jobs by simply stepping into some version of a Holodeck or plugging into some version of the Matrix. Today’s virtual reality has only very limited use for theRead More →

Revit and Oculus Rift via Unity3D: Experiencing BIM in Virtual Reality While the vast majority of my work is designing virtual world environments, our studio Crescendo Design, still takes on a new architectural project from time to time. The best part is, our clients get to become test subjects forRead More →

Last month I attended one of the most engaging meetings I’ve ever experienced and I was not even there.  The event was EventCamp Twin Cities.  This was a one-day conference for event professionals.  It was a hybrid event, meaning they had a live conference with a virtual component. I hadRead More →

Press Release: Quantum3D ExpeditionDI Ushers in New Era of Virtual Immersive Combat Training With Successful Completion of U.S. Joint Forces Command FITE Program Industry’s First Wearable Infantry Training Platform Simulates Squad-Based Close Combat to Improve War Fighter Readiness, Team Communication and Decision-Making Skills SAN JOSE, Calif., Oct. 6 /PRNewswire/ —Read More →

Professors at Purdue University, Indiana, say their year-long presence in Second Life has made their teaching more engaging by giving students face-to-face interaction, preparing them to use virtual reality as a professional tool, and allowing business classes to simulate concepts. The program was originally for distance learning students, but laterRead More →

Virtual reality will be more successful in China than in the West because of cultural differences in the way Chinese people use the Internet and emotionally connect with it, said Tom Doctoroff, the CEO of JWT, a marketing and communications company that specializes in brand identity. Doctoroff spoke today atRead More →

Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak told me he was excited about the potential of virtual reality. “I’m bullish and predict a huge future for it,” he said. “Not only that, but it’s a great opportunity for entrepreneurs.” He said he can see a lot of uses for it. “Especially for games, butRead More →

There are a variety of businesses that exist only — or at least mainly — inside OpenSim worlds. Those businesses are often run by creative artists who use their talents to make digital art which they market as products to customers in OpenSim.Read More →

Story telling is increasingly blurring the line between the physical and virtual worlds, according to presenters at the just-concluded this year’s  Technology + Storytelling: Engaging The Immersive Future event organized by NYC Media Lab. We’re already seeing this happen on the production sites in series like Disney’s The Mandalorian, as youRead More →

The Sundance Film Festival starts tomorrow, and this year, for the first time, it’s all virtual. Now, Sundance has been featuring cutting-edge content at its New Frontier category for more than 15 years now, and virtual reality has been playing a bigger and bigger part for the past few years.Read More →

Social gatherings in a virtual world? Some of you might ask what this means. I have been in virtual worlds since 2004. During that time, my friends have fallen into two broad categories. People I know in the physical world and those I know through virtual worlds. The COVID-19 outbreak andRead More →

If you haven’t done enough this week to honor our planet you can get some belated Earth Day action this weekend at the annual EarthX conference in Dallas, Texas — and, if you can’t get there in person, streaming online and on its YouTube channel. The event, which is taking place onRead More →

Augmented reality endorsement picks up pace, according to a recent market forecast. The AR market volume is expected to hit $30 billion by 2023, growing at 39 percent CAGR. This growth is rooted in AR’s utility. Augmented reality proves itself a multi-purpose technology, being eagerly adopted across different domains, such asRead More →

This year’s Virtual World Best Practices in Education 2018 conference, which ended last week in Second Life, was shorter than last year — three days, instead of four — and attracted about 1,100 attendees, down from a high of around 4,500 in previous years. Attendance was up slightly over lastRead More →

Educators are using virtual worlds, but not in the way they had used them in the past, and not in the same numbers. What you see now is a more selective and targeted use by a smaller subset of the educational community, primarily higher education. Those groups that still useRead More →

Educators are souring on virtual worlds, as evidenced by declining participation in online forums, in virtual conference attendances and education-related destinations on the Second Life grid. For example, Second Life Educators, the forum for educational organizations and educational use of Second Life, shows a dramatic decline in the number ofRead More →

Eight year ago, when I first launched Hypergrid Business, virtual worlds offered a unique set of compelling features. There was presence, and immersion, and the ability to create your own virtual environments. Plus, they also had other benefits that, combined with the unique features, created a potentially world-changing technology platform.Read More →

Viar.Live allows users to upload and share 360 degree photos, create virtual reality tours from the uploaded 360 degree photos, embed virtual reality content on websites, and distribute the content across desktops, iOS and Android mobile platforms. It supports Google Cardboard Camera and iPhone Pano so anyone whose phone supportsRead More →