This Month in Virtual Reality — December, 2016
Hi there! 👋
Welcome to the first Virtual Reality Pop newsletter ever. I have never created something like this before and I am so excited to hear your feedback.
I have filled this newsletter with December’s top virtual reality announcements, new funding for companies in the space, and the part I’m most excited about, exclusive Virtual Reality Pop Q&A with some of my favorite virtual reality thinkers and influencers (including Robert Scoble, Chris Milk, Maureen Fan, and more!).
💌 I’m still deciding whether or not I should send a newsletter out like this every month. If you think I should, please please click here to let me know.
— Helen Situ, Editor of Virtual Reality Pop
p.s. Interested in publishing your thoughts and ideas on Virtual Reality Pop? Apply here.
🔖 Stuff to Read at VirtualRealityPop.com:
- The Costs of Making a VR Game by Joe Radak
- UX in The Age of Augmented Reality by Alex Gurgulescu
- Prototyping in VR for VR by vrhuman
- Virtual Concerts — a New Way to Experience Music by Amy LaMeyer
- How to Get a Job in VR by Adrienne Hunter
💥 The Big News:
- Oculus Touch controllers officially launched on December 6th at $199. At launch, 54 titles became available on the Oculus Store. Read more: Oculus blog
💸 Funding News:
- Survios raised $50 million Series C, led by MGM and Lux Capital. Other investors include Danhua Capital, Dentsu Ventures, Felicis Ventures, Shanda Holdings, Shasta Ventures, and WiL. Read more: Survios
- Lumus raised $30 million Series C, from investors including HTC and Quanta Computer. Read more: Lumus
- High Fidelity raised $22 million, led by IDG Capital and Breyer Capital. Read more: High Fidelity
- AxonVR raised $5.8 million in seed investment, led by NetEase.com and Dawn Patrol Ventures. Other investors include Dick Costolo, Jon Snoddy, Keeler Investment Group, and Paul Matthaeus. Read more: AxonVR
- STRIVR Labs raised $5 million Series A, led by Signia Venture Partners. Other investors include Advancit Capital, BMW i Ventures, Presence Capital. Read more: STRIVR
⚙ Platform News:
- Oculus CEO Brendan Iribe steps into a new role to lead the PC-based virtual reality division within company. Read more: Oculus blog
- HTC announced its newest subsidiary: Vive Studios. The company has appointed Joel Breton, VP of Content, as head of operations for the new content publisher. Read more: HTC press release
💎 Content News:
- Oculus launched Quill, a creative tool for “illustrative storytelling” at Touch launch. Read more: Oculus blog
- NextVR launched its app on Google’s Daydream platform with weekly live NBA games. Read more: NextVR
- Jaunt launched its app on PlayStation VR with 150+ experiences. Read more: Jaunt
📃 Other News:
- Virtual reality hardware manufacturers Acer Starbreeze, Google, HTC VIVE, Facebook’s Oculus, Samsung, and Sony Interactive Entertainment announced the creation of a non-profit organization, Global Virtual Reality Association (GVRA). Apple and Microsoft are notably missing. Read more: GVRA press release
🔑 Virtual Reality Pop Q&A:
We took some time to talk with a few key players in the virtual reality space. Here are the questions we asked them:
- In one sentence, what is your biggest prediction for virtual reality in 2017?
- What is the biggest misconception people have about virtual reality right now?
Robert Scoble
Author of Age of Context
Q: In one sentence, what is your biggest prediction for virtual reality in 2017?
Answer: My biggest prediction for 2017 is that Apple will release a mixed reality iPhone, one that does both VR and AR, and will sell WAY more than anyone else has in VR space yet.
Q: What is the biggest misconception people have about virtual reality right now?
Answer: The biggest misconception is that there’s only games in VR. Partly that’s because if you have an HTC Vive or an Oculus Rift the coolest things are games. I’ve watched many things from music, to journalism, to narrative experiences (we used to call them movies), to sports, to education. VR isn’t just for games, and if you are at Disney you know that, its new Disneyland in China was designed in VR, for instance, and Ford has a special VR room at its R&D lab in Silicon Valley to design cars for the future
Shuhei Yoshida
President of Worldwide Studios, Sony Interactive Entertainment
Q: In one sentence, what is your biggest prediction for virtual reality in 2017?
Answer: Apple will announce a VR/AR product.
Q: What is the biggest misconception people have about virtual reality right now?
Answer: 2016 “The Year of VR” did not deliver.
Chris Milk
CEO and Founder, Within
Q: In one sentence, what is your biggest prediction for virtual reality in 2017?
Answer: Certainly more headsets, but personally most excited about more profound VR experiences as creators figure out the medium, and the technology advances to allow them to create what’s currently impossible.
Q: What is the biggest misconception people have about virtual reality right now?
Answer: That it’s worth debating what is “real VR”. You can be sitting, standing, or laying on the ground… if you feel presence in someplace you’re not, it qualifies as VR. What really matters as John Carmack talked about at OC3, is does the content actually deliver value to the audience.
Maureen Fan
CEO and Co-founder, Baobab Studios
Q: In one sentence, what is your biggest prediction for virtual reality in 2017?
Answer: As we enter a natural downturn in the tech lifecycle, those of us who believe in VR — Baobab, distributors and creators — will steadily do the heavy lifting to create the content and ecosystem needed to turn VR into reality.
Q: What is the biggest misconception people have about virtual reality right now?
Answer: VR is just for gamers. VR is for everyone to enjoy, whether games, films, interactive storytelling, exploration, sports, travel, science, education, medicine, and much more!
Darshan Shankar
CEO and Founder, Bigscreen
Q: In one sentence, what is your biggest prediction for virtual reality in 2017?
Answer: Positional tracking for mobile VR headsets.
Q: What is the biggest misconception people have about virtual reality right now?
Answer: Biggest misconceptions are “VR is just for gamers” and “VR makes people sick”.
Kent Bye
Host of Voices of VR Podcast
Q: In one sentence, what is your biggest prediction for virtual reality in 2017?
Answer: In 2017, we’ll see tons of new Lighthouse input devices announced at CES, more AI & VR crossover with rudimentary interactive narratives & procedurally-generated content, an explosion of VR art from artists, WebVR-enabled browsers will be released and catalyze data visualization innovation from web developers, more world-building tools for walled garden and open metaverse worlds will be launched, more gameplay innovations from small indie game devs, wider awareness of specific medical applications of VR, some of the first made-for-VR narrative content, lots of progress on VR open standards, significant advances on 3D audio hardware & software, AR will still be in the DK1 era, and I will have launched “The Ultimate Potential of VR” book and Voices of AI podcast.
Q: What is the biggest misconception people have about virtual reality right now?
Answer: The biggest misconception that I see about VR is that higher graphical fidelity will yield a deeper sense of presence, but this can actually break presence. Photorealism raises your expectations for realistic audio and haptics, but the current VR tech is no where close enough to match the level of graphic fidelity and falls into the uncanny valley. It’s counter-intuitive, but multi-modal coherence at a lower fidelity can actually yield a deeper sense of presence than striving for photorealistic graphics while ignoring spatialized audio & haptic feedback. It’s a pretty universal misconception, and so I’d encourage you to learn more from Voices of VR podcast episodes #130 & #478.
Justin Hendrix
Executive Director, NYC Media Lab
Q: In one sentence, what is your biggest prediction for virtual reality in 2017?
Answer: Sometime before the end of the year, a break-out multi-user VR experience will emerge and drive major consumer demand.
Q: What is the biggest misconception people have about virtual reality right now?
Answer: People don’t realize that the device form factor and the content of virtual reality experiences are still in relatively early days- soon mobile phones will deliver experiences competitive with today’s high-end headsets and 5G networks will allow VR to go truly mobile.
I hope you enjoyed this newsletter! If you would like to see a new one next month, click here to let me know.
❤ Thank you to Robert Scoble, Shuhei Yoshida, Chris Milk, Maureen Fan, Darshan Shankar, KentBye, and Justin Hendrix.
