Live from the 2018 VRLA Expo, the latest trends in virtual and augmented reality, by our correspondent Jean Yves Chainon, CEO of JYC, a start-up partnering with L’Echangeur.
Industry leaders sponsoring this year’s event included Intel, Dell, Qualcomm, NVIDIA, Viveport and Microsoft, which also gave support to dozens of freelance developers, empowering them to feature at VRLA.
The show-stoppers
This year’s show featured the next generation of immersive technologies like motion simulators, arcade VR, haptic jackets, 360 cameras and the most popular VR/AR/XR product roll-outs.
These innovations include the VR mobile Pico, which provides real 6DOF motion (6 degrees of freedom: i.e. enhanced motion capabilities (left-right, forward-backward, up-down) for users, thanks to its inside-out tracking that senses users’ position in their environment (not just a head rotation, or 3DOF (3 degrees of freedom), which the Samsung Gear VR headset or the more recent Oculus Go can already do).
This year’s show also featured quite a few VR applications focussing on multi-player gaming, generally involving a maximum of 4-6 players and a clear trend towards FPS (First Person Shooters), as well as a virtual reality poker saloon.
AntVR’s augmented reality headgear scored a hit with a 96 degree field of view, and, although still wired and at the prototype stage, this spells promise for the entire industry.
Highlights
Every edition of VRLA showcases hundreds of new demos and, this year, in partnership with LACMA, a major Los Angeles art museum, the expo’s centrepiece was Mezo, a 20 foot high futuristic temple featuring synchronised LED panels, lasers and spatialised music, not to mention the Hololens demos.
This interactive artistic piece prefigures an alternative future in which ancient meso-American societies became technologically advanced, taking participants on this journey of creative rebirth.
Other noteworthy exhibits included the Scan Truck, a mobile avatar photogrammetry studio that can travel from Hollywood studio to Hollywood studio, although more advanced mobile solutions are under development.
Disappointments
The number of participants seemed to be on a slight downtrend, and industry experts agree that the show featured few major technical innovations. Doubtlessly, this heralds the end of the first generation VR consumer headgear cycle, with the public showing only moderate enthusiasm, especially in Los Angeles, where lots of users have already tried out VR. People wait patiently as the market prepares the next generation of mobile VR headsets, like the recently announced Oculus Go.
Article published on may 16th 2018 by
Jean Yves CHAINON
CEO of JYC, a start-up partnering with L’Echangeur
JYC is based in Los Angeles with teams in Paris and london. In 2017, JYC was one of few accepted into the incubation program at TF1, the largest private media broadcaster in Europe.
