Nick Ochoa curated some of the top artists producing work entirely in VR for the Magik Gallery show that happened in San Francisco, CA on May 20th. It was an ambitious effort to introduce VR creation tools for artists within a fine arts context in the Terra Gallery space. There were physical posters of scenes showed around 15-20 VR stations featuring an individual piece of art, as well as opportunities to try some of the VR art tools like TiltBrush. Most of the VR art pieces featured some dimension of scale or vastness that showcased some of the unique affordances of art within VR, and the intention was to inspire the art scene within San Francisco for how VR could be used as a medium for expression and storytelling. I had a chance to catch up with Magik Gallery founder Ochoa the day before the showing to talk about his efforts to get art within VR to be taken more seriously within the larger art world.

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The VR artists featured in the show were Steve Teeps, Vladimir Ilic, Liz Edwards, Sougwen Chung, Issac “Cabbibo” Cohen, Danny Bittman, Sutu, Wesley Allsbrook, Mike Jelinek, Abraham Aguero, and Edward Eyth. The write-up by VRScout’s Jesse Damiani features more information on some of the individual art pieces that were being shown, as well as in this twitter thread:

(THREAD) Already way too hyped for the @MagikGallery exhibition on 5/20 in SF. Here are 12 reasons you should be too https://t.co/XZnzibYgpH pic.twitter.com/1sKpynGdLT

— Jesse Damiani (@JesseDamiani) May 15, 2017

Magik Gallery is going to be focusing on holding VR art shows in physical spaces as there are a number of other virtual art gallery initiatives and efforts for virtual spaces.

Other VR Art Initiatives

I’ve seen a number of recent gallery efforts including VR Chat’s Infinity: VR Art Gallery. No Proscenium has a great write-up about the Alejandro González Iñárritu piece Carne Y Arena that is showing at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (and it is sold out until September).

Acute Art VR aims to be Contemporary Art’s Virtual Reality Home & features work by Marina Abramović, Jeff Koons, and Olafur Eliasson

The FLOAT Museum pilot @ SFMOMA featured some VR art during GDC

The VR Society’s The Art of VR Show at Sotherby’s just happened a few weeks ago.

Zach Krausnick’s VR Galactic Gallery showed at VRLA and should be releasing on Steam soon

You can find out more information on the artists and Ochoa’s future plans on the Magik Gallery website and @MagikGallery on Twitter.

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Virtual Reality Headsets have not sold as many units as some of the more optimistic analysts have predicted, and VR Fund’s Tipatat Chennavasin says that the relatively quick adoption of smart phone technologies have spoiled a lot of people within the investment community. But despite the adoption being slower than some had hoped, Chennavasin still sees a lot of optimistic indicators for the long-term investment of companies that are driving the evolution of the medium in different industry verticals. Some of those indicators are a Magid Insights survey that found that a majority of VR consumers “very satisfied” and say product performance exceeds expectations, that there are at least 30 VR games on Steam that have grossed more than $250,000, and that there are a number of enterprise VR companies with revenues between half a million to a million dollars.

I caught up with Chennavasin at the Silicon Virtual Reality Conference on March 31st to talk about the state of the VR ecosystem. We talked about how he sees Chinese investors could be shifting focus to AI and local Chinese companies, the market challenges for educational VR companies, and why he thinks that the lack of revenue in the 360 video could bring a reckoning moment for 360 video technology and content companies. After traveling to 36 VR conferences over the past year and seeing over 2000 VR demos, Chennavasin sees some of the most promising VR industry verticals as being healthcare, advertising technology, collaborative meeting and product design apps, enterprise applications, as well as architecture, engineering, and construction. He’s been advising companies try to create applications that could only be done in VR, and that if you build something of value then you can find a way to pay you for it.

He provides some updates on some of VR Fund’s investments including Owlchemy Labs (which was acquired by Google in May), Against Gravity’s Rec Room, Vivid Vision, and InstaVR. He’s seeing enough positive indicators form his portfolio companies to continue making strategic investments in the VR ecosystem for the long-term path towards more ubiquitous adoption.

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Here's the latest #VR landscape hot off the press: The number of VR companies grew 40% in 2016 https://t.co/RwzYWC5Jd0 via @VentureBeat

— tipatat (@tipatat) March 9, 2017

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In March 2016, Oculus announced their Oculus Launchpad program with the idea that in order for VR to be successful, then there needs to be a diverse range of content created from diverse set of creators who are informed by different ethnicities, cultural backgrounds, and gender identities. Oculus brought together over 100 diverse content creators for a one-day training, and awarded scholarships to 11 projects from the dozens of prototypes submitted at the end of the program. Oculus Launchpad participant Dale Henry wrote up a detailed critique of the Launchpad program that provided a lot of constructive criticism for improvements that he’d like to see.

I reached out to Henry to unpack his feedback on the lessons learned from the Oculus Launchpad program, but we also talk what the larger VR community can do to support diverse initiatives such as different community-driven mentorship models. We also talk about his personal journey in using VR to help children on the austism spectrum deal with bullying, and some of his struggles as an aspiring VR developer. We also dive into some deeper systemic issues, and have some difficult conversations about how only 1% of funded start-ups have black founders, larger diversity in tech issues, some of the unconscious biases that women and people of color face in raising funds, and whether or not VCs even know how to evaluate people of color.

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I reached out to Oculus for a comment on the improvements that they’re making for the second iteration of the Oculus Launchpad program, and it looks like they’ve integrated a lot of the specific critiques from Dale and expanded their mentorship program. Here’s the kickoff message from Oculus VR’s program manager for diversity and inclusion, Ebony Peay Ramirez.

Henry would also like to see more transparency in how the money is being allocated, some of the metrics for success, a more detailed road map that shows how to grow and sustain these diversity initiatives, whether there are other external diversity initiatives that Oculus/Facebook is supporting, and some candid feedback of their own internal lessons learned so that other VR companies can learn from these programs. Henry argues that everyone benefits from diversity in VR initiatives, and that he’d like to see more openness and transparency in these efforts to provide more opportunities for feedback, but also the possibility for more collaboration amongst competing VR companies to share insights and combine resources to support larger diversity efforts in the VR and tech ecosystem.

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There was an amazing projection mapped, immersive theater piece at Sundance this year by Heartcorps called “Riders of the Storyboard.” Trained street performers interacted with a virtual projection-mapped 2D objects, and through the slight of hand of magic broke these flat objects into the third as glowing 3D props. There were 15 people packed into a small room with about half a dozen performers for a 13-minute show about a these 2D characters who interact with the performers who are playing Alchemy of Light gods in the third dimension. It was an awe-inspiring performance, and the projection mapping technology provided a shared augmented reality experience. Heartcorps is proving out some of the techniques with projection mapping technology that should also work really well in the future of live performance and immersive theater designed for augmented reality glasses.

I had a chance to catch up with the Heartcorps member and performer dandypunk, who talks about their process, ritual inspiration, and mixture of immersive theater and cutting-edge projection mapping. Be sure to check out the trailer and clips from their show at Sundance down below.

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Here’s the Trailer for the Heartcorps “Riders of the Storyboard” that showed at Sundance New Frontier:

Final three minutes of the “Riders of the Storyboard” show at Sundance

If you’re interested in immersive theater, then be sure to check out Noah Nelson’s No Proscenium podcast. I talked with him in episode #95 about my Elemental Theory of Presence as well as the cross-over between VR and immersive theater.

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VR World NYC is a new VR arcade that opened on June 24th in New York City right next to the Empire State Building. They have three floors with 55 different VR experiences, and they’re using an all-you-eat buffet business model of paying $39-$49 to have unlimited access to play all of the available experiences. It’s a great opportunity for tourists and New York residents to get their first room-scale and 360 VR experiences, but it also has a bar, plenty of places to hang out, as well as a number of different multi-player social VR experiences.

I happened to be in New York for the grand opening of VR World, and had a chance to catch up with Chief Creative Officer Drew Arnold and HR Manager Katya Stepanov to talk about the process of experiential design and curation of VR experiences. I also had a chance to check out the IMAX VR experiences at the AMC IMAX theater, as well as see The VOID’s Ghostbusters VR experience at Madame Tussauds Wax Museum

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The challenge for a business like VR World is to market themselves to first-time users and foot traffic of casual tourists who are willing to explore for a couple of hours, but also have a streamlined system for if and when they do get really popular to still have it be a good user experience. They have a queuing system where you can sign up for a single VR experience if it’s busy, and then you can try out one of the other 50+ experiences that don’t have a line. But if they have too many people and get too popular, then they’re going to face what most VR events & digital out-of-home experiences struggle with is throughput and long lines. But they’re using an innovative approach of buying access to every experience, and then not trying to overplay or schedule it from there.

Other VR arcade options like IMAX VR has the approach where you have to buy individual $10 tickets for each experience that you do. IMAX VR also tends to have a number of premiere experiences not generally available yet, as well as some special VR equipment like DBOX chairs or a helicopter platform simulator with StarVR HMDs for The Mummy VR experience.

Both Sundance and Tribeca have moved to models where you have carte blanche access to all of the available experiences for a limited time, and this is a great blend of scheduled and unscheduled time that I feel like works really well for VR. There’s a certain amount of unpredictability for when a VR experience will begin or end, and having carte blanche access makes it so that you’re not constantly evaluating whether or not the individual experience that you’re having was worth the money that paid for it. With carte blanche access, it sometimes becomes more of question of is it worth waiting for other people to finish an individual experience, but overall you tend to feel like you got your money’s worth when you get to have a variety of different experiences.

VR World is perfect for first-time VR users or even for existing VR owners who want to try out a number of different commercially-available experiences without having to purchase them yourself. The price of admission is about what it would cost to purchase a single high-end VR experience, and there are plenty of the most popular VR experiences available to play. There are also a few experiences that use unique hardware peripherals that you’re likely not going to have at home, and I’d expect to see more and more of these types of experiences over time.

If you know anyone who is traveling to or who lives in New York who is interested in trying out VR for the first time, then VR World is the perfect place to send them. It’s located at 4 East 34th Street, and is open from 11am to 11pm Tuesday to Sunday and extended hours to 1am on the weekends.

#TheArtOfVRNY closing party on Fri was at the latest #VR arcade in #NYC (and largest so far) @vrworldnyc now open to the public this weekend pic.twitter.com/DLGPqXqbKj

— Dario Laverde (@virtual_dario) June 25, 2017

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The process of diagnosing a concussion is largely a subjective process of variations of attention, focus, and balance, which means that the existing self-reporting methods are unreliable and easily gamed. Using foundational research from military research, SyncThink has created a portable concussion diagnostic tool that uses a tablet and either a Gear VR or Oculus Rift DK2 fitted with an SMI eye tracker. They claim to be able to objectively detect symptoms of a concussion within 60 seconds through subtle variations of attention and an impaired ability to make predictions of a moving dot within VR. I had a chance to catch up with SyncThink CTO Dan Beeler at TechCrunch Disrupt SF in September 2016 to talk about the science and technology behind their EYE-SYNC product.

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SyncThink just announced the second generation of their EYE-SYNC product on June 26th with features a “cloud-connected, HIPAA compliant analytics platform that delivers results in under 60 seconds without bias from the patient or clinician.” Watch their promo video below for more information or check out their website. Note that the demo being shown at Disrupt last September was using a DK2, but that their latest promo video shows a Gear VR being fit with SMI Eye Tracking technology.

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Oculus premiered about a dozen games ahead of GDC this year, and one that stood out to me was Mage’s Tale dungeon crawler for it’s distinct art style and passion in using VR to fulfill childhood fantasies of becoming a spell-casting magician. Mage’s Tale is an action RPG dungeon crawler where you search for dozens of different potion ingredients to create over 100 different spells, and then battle enemies with variations of your fire, ice, wind, and lightening spells. I talked with the lead designer David Rogers about some of the core gameplay mechanics driving Mage’s Tale, how they inspire exploration by hiding potions off of the critical path, as well as the tradeoffs between the choices you have to make while progressing your character.

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Mage’s Tale was released on June 20th, 2017 as an Oculus exclusive, but will be eventually released on other platforms as well.

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My favorite narrative VR piece that I’ve seen so far this year is Rose Colored by Adam Cosco that premiered at VRLA. It’s a science fiction morality tale that is asking us to look at a potential future of immersive technology. I’m cautious to say much more without spoiling his experience, and so I’d highly recommend checking out Rose Colored either on Vimeo, Facebook, YouTube, or Samsung VR before listening to this interview.

VR Scout recently named Cosco as “one of VR’s Early Auteurs,” and I definitely have to agree. He has a distinct style with a lot to say about the impact of technology on our humanity.
Rose Colored is his fourth VR narrative piece, and the first one written specifically for VR. There’s a lot of profound ideas explored in the piece that really stuck with me afterwards, and I had a chance to dive in and unpack it with Cosco at VRLA in April. We do cover many spoilers in this discussion and so I recommend checking it out first in order to have the full experience.

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Sprint Vector is an “adrenaline platformer” racing game that relies upon a unique locomotion technique of swinging your arms in order to run through an obstacle course. It’s the latest game from Raw Data developer Survios, but with a much more light-hearted stylized art aesthetic that has a unique mash-up of a game show, extreme sports, and a competitive racing game with an Sonic-inspired obstacle course. It’s also a unique combination of active exercise with a combination of embodied and abstracted gameplay mechanics.

I had a chance to catch up with Sprint Vector game designer Andrew Abedian at GDC where we talked about the mechanics of racing, the internal habits that are being formed by Survios developers, the intensity of exercise and stamina required to play the game, achieving flow states, and it’s potential to evolve into a competitive eSport. It’s a super fun experience to watch other people play either in a tournament competition in mixed reality or just as a quirky form of VR performance art (examples down below).

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Sprint Vector is now ready for Beta Sign-ups here.

Here’s a number of examples of different styles of people playing Sprint Vector

Gameplay footage from GDC

The future of video games is drunken VR goodness! I'm excited ahaha. #e3 #survios @Survios pic.twitter.com/EcNpHySIfg

— Holly Wolf @ Toronto (@HollytWolf) June 15, 2017

@ElWarRoom #VR #gdc17 #Survios corre vato, corre!! pic.twitter.com/5odZc751rf

— El Yeyo (@selizoni) March 3, 2017

Racing game #SprintVector is an INTENSE workout with VR locomotion that just works.
My interview w @Survios designerhttps://t.co/epqzzruUgK pic.twitter.com/ai37LNrty0

— Kent Bye VoicesOfVR (@kentbye) June 15, 2017

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AxonVR was awarded US Patent No. 9,652,037 of a “whole-body human-computer interface” on May 16th, which includes an external exoskeleton as well as a generalized haptic display made out of microfluidic technology. I had a chance to demo AxonVR’s HaptX™ haptic display that uses a “fluidic distribution laminate” with channels and actuators to form a fluidic integrated circuit of sorts that could simulate variable stiffness and friction of materials.

At GDC, I stuck my hand into a 3-foot cube device with my palm facing upward. I could drop virtual objects into my hands, and there was an array of tactile pixels that was simulating the size, shape, weight, texture, and temperature of these virtual objects. The virtual spider in my hand was the most convincing demo as the visual feedback helped to convince my brain that I was holding the virtual object. Most of the sensations were focused on the palm on the hand, and the fidelity was not high enough to provide convincing feedback to my fingertips. The temperature demos were also impressive, but also were a large contributor to the bulkiness and size of the demo. They’re in the process of miniaturizing their system and integrating it with an exoskeletal system to have more force feedback, and the temperature features are unlikely going to be able to be integrated in the mobile implementations of their technology.

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I had a chance to talk with AxonVR CEO Jake Rubin about the process of creating a generalized haptic device, their plans for an exoskeleton for force feedback, and how they’re creating tactile pixels to simulate a cutaneous sensation of different shapes and texture properties. Rubin said that that the Experiential Age only has one end point, and that’s full immersion. In order to create something like the Holodeck, then Rubin thinks that a generalized haptic device will unlock an infinite array of applications and experiences that will be analogous to what general computing devices have enabled. AxonVR is not a system that’s going to be ready for consumer home applications any time soon, but their microfluidic approach for haptics is a foundational technology that is going to be proven out in simulation training, engineering design, and digital out of home entertainment applications.

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