The major players within the consumer virtual reality space seem to be settling in with Valve & HTC Vive, Oculus Rift, Sony Morpheus, Samsung Gear VR, & Google Cardboard. However, none of these HMD manufacturers have expressed any interest in producing a more ruggedized version that could withstand being used by VR arcades or theme parks.
There’s still a market for VR HMD manufactures to fill the needs of the digital, out-of-home entertainment needs of that range from location-based VR arcades, theme park attractions, 4D driving and flight simulators, and other experiential VR attractions.
Kevin Williams is the founder and director of the out-of-home leisure entertainment consultancy KWP Limited, and he’s collaborating with ImmersiON-VRelia to produce a ruggedized VR HMD called the BluSky Pro. Kevin produces a comprehensive newsletter following this space at The Stinger Report. He’s also written an extensive book on the history and current state of the DOE space called The Out-of-Home Immersive Entertainment Frontier: Expanding Interactive Boundaries in Leisure Facilities. Kevin and I dove into that book in a lot more detail in this previous interview.
I had a chance to catch up with Kevin at SVVRCon, which was just a few weeks after The VOID first got announced, which is VR laser tag experience based out of Pleasant Grove, UT. They’re building virtual worlds onto actual environments, and using their own customized untethered mobile VR HMD solution with body tracking.
As an example for how Kevin tracks these developments, here’s an excerpt from his latest Stinger Report newsletter talking about The VOID:
Focusing on a growing interest in “room-scale” VR experiences and a move towards considering an Out-of-Home approach – and just as we were putting the current Stinger to bed – announcements were made from a new Salt Lake City-based start-up. The concept called The VOID (“Vision Of Infinite Dimensions”) proposes to develop what has been dubbed Virtual Reality Entertainment Center (VREC) that will take guests through specially developed environments corresponding to the visuals and movements tracked on specialist head-mounted displays (HMD) and motion-tracking suits. This is stated as being a new development in the field of out-of-home entertainment and free-roaming virtual reality.
This is the latest in a number of new start-ups proposing the development of virtual environments (covered under the VREC acronym for now) where players can immersive themselves in virtual worlds in special environments tailored to their activities. The Salt Lake City start-up proposes to develop some 80 centers round the USA, with the first venue to open in 2017 in their home town. Players pay their fee, estimated at around $35, and once they have donned their backpack ‘Rapture’ HMD will traverse specially developed environments with the surroundings that correspond with the visuals. The company also plans to offer flight simulators using the same principle.
It was revealed exclusively to The Stinger Report, in contact with MaxFlight the leading manufacturer of a range of fully interactive simulators that can perform 360 degree motion over two axes, that the company has been approached by those behind The VOID, towards the development of a special two-rider version of their popular ‘FS3000’ platform, which will also include yaw and heave. This special version of the company’s simulator will be part of the facility being developed by the company, and is expected to be a considerable part of the overall VR experience – players using the proposed HMD while riding the motion simulator…
It is now obvious from the developments in and popularity of new entertainment technology concepts (such as The VOID) that we are on the cusp of a new era of development that could lead to a new approach to location-based entertainment (LBE) – what some have described as a rebirth of an arcade-style experience. We are seeing the creation of a brand new approach, and as the traditional amusement trade convulses, there is a possibility that some in amusement may be able to make the transition, though it is speculated that the majority have played their hand and will reap the results. What happens next will shape everything.
If you’d like to read more, then click here to send an e-mail to subscribe to Kevin’s The Stinger Report newsletter.
Kevin says that he expects to hear a lot more VR-related technology announcements happen at the The International Association of Amusement Parks Attractions Expo (IAAPA) that’s coming up in November. Some of the other big conferences that he’s tracking in this space include CinemaCon, Digital Hollywood, Augmented World Expo (AWE), Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3), Asian Attraction Expo (AAE), and the Park Avenue Openday.
Kevin seemed surprised that he’s starting to hear more about these types of digital, out-of-home VR arcade experiences like The VOID showing up in this phase of VR. Kevin has been involved in the VR scene since 1994, and he sees that we’re currently in the fourth phase of VR. The first phase was in 1968 with Ivan Sutherland’s Sword of Damocles, then Virtual VPL phase, then Jonathan Waldern’s Virtuality machines, and now we’re at the fourth phase that started with Palmer Luckey’s Oculus Rift. But he expects that we’ll continue to hear more about these types of VR arcade experiences, and so if you’re interested in learning more or talking about your own ideas then feel free to reach out to Kevin at kwp@thestingerreport.com
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Rough Transcript
[00:00:05.412] Kent Bye: The Voices of VR Podcast.
[00:00:11.938] Kevin Williams: My name's Kevin Williams. I run KWP, which is the Outer Home Consultancy that focuses on the theme park and the amusement and the location-based entertainment sector. And we're here at glorious, sunny San Jose for SVVR, where we're presenting. And we're just here for the Outer Home side. So I'm the sort of the outsider that comes to these events because we like all of the technology, but we're here to magpie the technology for our sector.
[00:00:40.912] Kent Bye: Right. And so I know that as part of your digital out-of-home entertainment, you go to a lot of conferences that are actually not on the radar of people that are here at, you know, the biggest consumer VR conference. And so maybe what are the biggest digital out-of-home entertainment conferences that you see kind of virtual reality coming up and about?
[00:01:00.090] Kevin Williams: Well, it's interesting you say that. We just came from the CinemaCon, which was the big cinema distribution and publishing sector show, and they're very interested in virtual reality and out-of-home entertainment, but they like to call it immersive engagement. We also presented at Digital Hollywood, which was the big investment event there, a lot of interest in VR. And then, of course, we've got about three or four major theme park shows coming up around Europe, Asia, and then the big one in November, IALPA, which is where you'll be seeing quite a few of the new startup theme park virtual reality technologies being presented. We've already got the first one thrown into the ring, The Void, of course, and we're going to have about two others, one from MediaMation, which I'll be talking a little bit about during the presentation.
[00:01:45.345] Kent Bye: And so maybe you could expand on that a little bit, The Void and MediaMation, what are those?
[00:01:49.830] Kevin Williams: The Void is a theme park company that's decided to produce a kind of laser tag environment wireless virtual reality experience that they're going to launch in 2016 they say. They're building their own HMD, they're building special suits, they're building special environments that you go running around inside wearing virtual technology and that's got a lot of interest from quite a few different areas. Mediamation is a 4D theatre company that has been developing a version of their 4D motion seats that will now incorporate a virtual reality element, which will be getting more coverage in IALPA in November. And there's about three or four other projects. There's a project that I'm working on, of course, which is a commercial head-mounted display that can be used in this environment that's ruggedized enough and able to handle the bacterial issues. So those are the kind of things that we're seeing expand in our sector.
[00:02:40.249] Kent Bye: Yeah, and we also have had, over the last year, the ecosystem is fleshing out a little bit more in virtual reality. We have the mobile side, we have the sit-down experience, and then with the GDC this past spring, we've had the announcement of Valve's HTC with the Lighthouse for fully walkable room-scale VR. And to me it seems like the room-scale VR, if people don't necessarily have the room or space, could be one of those things where VR arcades or things like that would perhaps start to be set up. How do you see like Valve and the Lighthouse system to do this room-scale tracking kind of fitting into the digital out-of-home entertainment ecosystem?
[00:03:19.763] Kevin Williams: We've had three key developments or announcements over the last couple of months. The first one, obviously, was Valve's entry. It surprised a lot of people, but also the technology that they're proposing or purporting to use with Lighthouse's current build is quite considerable. You literally have to dedicate a room to this experience. We've also had the announcement from our friends at Oculus about the specifications of the technology that you'll need to run The Presence, and again, a little bit higher than or price of PC than some people were envisaging. And we've also got other people entering the market that are talking about technology that needs quite a higher bite than I think maybe most consumers would be prepared to do. Of course, most of the people here at SVVR are the prosumers. They're prepared to pay $2,000, $3,000 for a PC and they'll dedicate a room. They'll chuck the kids out of their bedroom and they'll dedicate the room to the lighthouse. Not everybody's in that lucky position and maybe in the short term, well it's one of the things that we're banking on, more people be wanting to see this technology from an out-of-home entertainment where you just dip a toe into it. You pay your X bucks, you go to a facility, you play the best system, you go wow that's great and hopefully in five, ten years that technology has come down in price enough to be then applicable for the home. It's a model that's worked before. This is how the arcade industry transferred into the video games industry. It is a proven model. We have deep pockets in out-of-home entertainment. We can get the best PCs, the best HMDs and apply them because of the rules and regulations that we have about operation, where the consumer sector has to take baby steps to be mainstream.
[00:04:59.629] Kent Bye: And do you see that a lot of these theme park or the void with the laser tag are going to be primarily like augmented reality, so little virtual reality, but also kind of a pass through video to be able to see where you're actually moving around in these sort of physical environments?
[00:05:14.597] Kevin Williams: I think we're seeing already from this sector that the marriage between AR and VR is growing more and more apparent. Maybe in two years' time we'll be talking about something else rather than VR or AR. We'll be talking about a conglomeration of the two. I'm presenting at AWE, Augmented World Expo, next month. And again, we can see people from that sector coming into the outer home. So they're gathering in the middle. You're quite right. I think you're going to use a lot of pass-through technology if you're going to do a kind of laser tag virtual reality environment. No one's going to ever feel 100% happy to be totally blocked in using an HMD. And the other nice thing about the social entertainment aspects of out-of-home is that we need to have that social inclusion. And it's good to be able to see the people you came to the park with. It's good to see the people that you're playing with. You can't really achieve that in pure VR, but you can achieve some of that using an AR component on top.
[00:06:12.038] Kent Bye: And so what are the major points or pieces of information that you want to communicate to the larger community of the virtual reality developers and enthusiasts here at SAVRCon?
[00:06:22.158] Kevin Williams: Oh well, anyone that's interested in the outer home entertainment sector, please contact us and I'm sure you'll be able to drop a link to us at the bottom of this cast. Also, buy the book! Sorry, super plug there, but we've got the book out now. If you want to know more about the sector, then the Immersive Frontier is a great way to read about that and also to gain a little bit more of the history. And also, we love to hear people's ideas and comments regarding out-of-home entertainment applications. I know that there's a lot of interest from people out there regarding VR arcades. We love to hear what they have to say.
[00:06:56.734] Kent Bye: And being at CES this year, I'm just curious, your perspective, you kind of went around and did a video of all the different VR and AR, different technologies, but where do you see we're at in terms of the emergence of the consumer market for virtual reality and kind of what your observations or takeaways are?
[00:07:13.954] Kevin Williams: I've always called this phase four of the virtual reality experience. Phase one was with Ivor Sutherland. Phase two would have been virtual, VPL and Lara. Phase three would have been Jonathan Walden and the virtuality machines. Now phase four is Palmer and Oculus. I'm still a little bit on the fence regarding how far we're going to be rushing towards mainstream. From how I perceive it, and remember I'm an outsider looking in, there is the mobile VR sector, which is the mobile phone, cardboard, gear VR approach. There is the PC and the console approach, represented now by Valve and Oculus and Sony, but we're sure to have many others entering that. And then there's what I would like to farm off my little walled garden, which would be the digital out-of-home entertainment side, the theme parks and the laser tag applications, those type of things. From where I'm sitting, it's easier to put money in in the short term and build bricks and mortar and build a virtual reality entertainment facility than it is to guarantee that you will be able to sell a million HMDs within the next six months. It's very hard and you need very big, deep pockets to do that. I can see Valve doing it, I can see Oculus easily doing this, and I can see Sony easily doing it. But for the rest of us mere mortals, jumping on the consumer bandwagon is going to be very difficult, as we've seen by the number of Kickstarters that have sadly fallen by the wayside in the recent few months. It's going to raise a lot of questions about how this VR community is going to have to change its structure now that it seems that the roadmap has drastically changed so much regarding what will be consumer VR.
[00:09:00.862] Kent Bye: Categories of VR it seems like the one thing that's consistent is content is king in terms of you have to have the content There in order for the platform to be compelling and so I'm curious from the digital out-of-home entertainment side What type of content have you seen being created aside from some of these you know hardware that you're looking at? What on the content side are people doing?
[00:09:21.326] Kevin Williams: Well, we have the four core sectors of application of content for out-of-home entertainment. We have the usual sit-in-a-capsule, pilot your spaceship, pilot your plane. We have the sit-in-your-driving cockpit, control your Formula One vehicle, control your high-speed vehicle, race and challenge. We then now have this new breakaway which is the walk into this facility, put on this special backpack, now play laser tag, now fight Martians, now fight people from fantasy Game of Thrones. That's interesting. That's the interactive side. There's a fourth one that maybe is not as well known by your listeners, which is the experiential. And we have seen a couple of people popping up on the horizon who are using drones and other means to capture vistas and environments around cities and such like. And then you go to a special location, a special retail facility, you pay your money, you put the head mounted on, and then you get an experiential fly over the city kind of experience. There's one of those already in operation in Prague. And we're going to see a number of those type of things happening or popping up onto the horizon. So those are the four kind of content levels. Of course, if I knew where all the content concepts were, I'd be sitting on a beach earning 20%. But we're looking forward to seeing some new ideas. And again, it's the reason I come to events like SVVR to see the next trends and hopefully maybe grab some people that could lead the charge.
[00:10:51.412] Kent Bye: And maybe you could talk a bit more about the HMD, the Rigidized HMD from Immersion, VRLIA. What is it that is happening with that in terms of both production and some of the potential clients that you have for those?
[00:11:04.637] Kevin Williams: Well, Immersion Varelia, we partnered with them to help give them some of the information that we have and some of the contacts we have to produce a ruggedized system. It was obvious last year that the way things were going that there was never going to be a ruggedized suitable candidate from any of the HMDs that were being purported back in 2014. We sat down with a number of companies, Immersion Veralia seemed the logical choice to offer them all of our access to our client base and also to some of the information that we'd compiled over the years past with Disney but also with other projects towards building the best out-of-home entertainment HMD that could be manufactured in the time that we had available. two panels, ruggedized design, very robust construction, and also open to application by many, many developers. And that led to the BlueSky Pro. The first of the BlueSky Pros, hopefully, fingers crossed, touching wood, will turn up about... The prototypes will be going out the end of this month to the first initial early adopters, and then hopefully we'll be sitting at IALPA in November looking at people actually adopting the system into the market. Fingers crossed. A lot of things, a lot of hurdles to go over. One of the big developments, of course, is Immersion Varelia jumped in to a partnership with one of the largest manufacturers of 3D glasses for the cinema sector. So that's brought an incredible wealth of knowledge, but also an incredible deep pocket to the project and has given a big shot in the arm. And we have a lot of people chomping at the bit. I have about four or five key clients from KWP that are just demanding on a regular basis to get their hands on a ruggedized system that they can field into the market. So those are people running VR as an arcade experience. Those are people that want to build theme park attractions around VR. Those are people that want to use simulators with VR components. They need a ruggedized HMD and they can't use what's available at the moment.
[00:13:01.539] Kent Bye: Great. And finally, what do you see as sort of like the ultimate potential of virtual reality and where you see this kind of going from here? Well, that's a tricky one.
[00:13:11.512] Kevin Williams: I'm fascinated about the experiential component. I think the Gear VR, though I'm sorry, I'm sometimes a little bit dismissive about the mobile VR applications, but it's still proven that people have got a lot out of that kind of experience. I think experiential is going to be big, where people not playing a game but experiencing something that is compelling. I think we're going to see a lot of development in the outer home, but you'd expect me to say that. Again, the abilities and the monetarization of just getting a product out in the hands of a large audience that's prepared to pay a flat fee brings a lot of opportunities to the table. And also, I'm looking forward to some directions that we haven't planned for. I'm coming across some concepts which I hadn't thought we would be seeing at this point in phase four of VR, which I think will surprise a lot of us. And I don't mean to be too coy, but, you know, the Void, we didn't know about that until a couple of weeks ago. And I think there's some other projects like that that are in gestation at the moment that could be very big and also take us in some brand new directions.
[00:14:15.455] Kent Bye: Okay, great. Well, thank you.
[00:14:16.771] Kevin Williams: No, no, thank you very much for your time. Appreciate your work.
[00:14:20.135] Kent Bye: And thank you for listening. If you'd like to support the Voices of VR podcast, then please consider becoming a patron at patreon.com slash Voices of VR.
