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This Week In XR: VR Tested As Rift Sells Out

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It’s the end of the world as we know it. For starters, say goodbye to the handshake, non-essential business travel, casual vacations, cheap hotels and restaurants, and the old way of doing business. Say hello to remote work and virtual conferences, but not in VR. Not yet. For starters, there aren’t enough 6DOF headsets. Even the Rift is sold out, but if it weren’t there’d be a shortage of $1,500 gaming PCs. Nonetheless, we believe the coronacrisis will give VR needed momentum as we await more availability of the Oculus Quest and, indeed, the next generation of devices. We know we need them now, even if the platforms are in beta, and the headsets on backorder. For more on this, check out our story on Virtual Conferences. And keep an eye out for the next book, Remote Collaboration & Virtual Conferences, The End of Distance, and the Future of Work coming June 1st. Not soon enough.

Will some good come of this crisis? Maybe this will save the environment. Today in LA there is no traffic, and the air is crisp and clean. Medical inequality may be addressed. Homelessness may be addressed as millions will lose their source of income as entire industries go under. That’s the happy ending. As Prime Minister Winston Churchill said during the battle of Britain in World War Two, “Of course I’m an optimist. What’s the point of being anything else?”

HTC conducts v2EC conference on Engage VR. The fourth annual conference, moved online because of Covid-19, featured keynotes from Sher Wang, HTC Chairman, Yves Maire, CEO, Alvin Graylin, President, HTC China, Tom Furness, Peter Diamandis, and Qualcomm’s Hugo Swart. The company announced it had made a deal with Immersive VR Education to resell the ENGAGE platform they used for their own show. For a deeper look inside the HTC conference and how they pulled it off on ENGAGE, check out this story from UploadVR.

AWE 2020 will have both online and in person conferences. AWE is scheduled for the last week of May and the organizers are prepared to run the conference entirely online if and when the live conference and exhibition is shut down by authorities. No one is thinking that far ahead right now. There is hope that the current travel and crowd gathering restrictions will be lifted by the last week of May, but the organizers are prepared to host the entire event virtually. This will open us AWE to tens of thousands who were unable to afford tickets and travel before. Co-founder and executive Producer of the conference, venture capitalist Ori Inbar, told Forbes there will be more details next week on the platform(s) the online conference will use. There’s $99 special on the AWE site right now.

This year’s VR Awards are going virtual and will be held entirely in virtual reality. The 4th International VR Awards will be held on October 27th, 2020 with nominations opening next week on March 26th. 

Doghead Simulations offers VR education platform Rumii for free during Covid19 crisis. Rumii is a VR education, training, and collaboration platform that works on all current VR headsets as well as PC, Mac, iOS, and Android. Read more from the founders on their recent Linkedin post announcing the free software.

Librestream, announced it, too, would offer its service at no charge to companies who need to serve the needs of a remote workforce. 

Rokoko releases mocap library for free via Rokoko Studio and natively in Maya 2020.1. From animators to game developers, creators everywhere can access thousands of high quality motion captures for use in their own projects, for free. 

Mike Booth of Left4Dead fame joins Resolution Games to work on VR titles. Booth founded Turtle Rock Studios and created games like Left4Dead before selling the company to Valve in 2007. His most recent position was as creative director at Facebook working on VR experiences. 

What we’re reading:

A list of virtual conferences from Tony Vitullo.

ICYMI, Tom Emrich’s top XR stories for February.

34 VR Apps for Remote Work, Education, Training, Design Review, and More (Road t0 VR)

This Week in XR is written and edited with Michael Eichenseer.

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