#908: 22-Year History of Laval Virtual with Founder Simon Richir

simon-richirThe first Laval Virtual Conference happened on 3-4 June, 1999 in Laval France, and had a chance to talk with the founder Simon Richir about the 20+ year history of Laval Virtual when I attended in 2019. It’s an amazing history of the evolution of the VR community in Europe that is not widely known within the XR industry here in the United States (or at least I had not heard much discussion about it until I attended in person).

Richir is also a professor at the Arts et Métiers ParisTech, and he’s the editor of the open access journal International Journal of Virtual Reality, which just published the “ConVRgence (VRIC) Virtual Reality International Conference Proceedings” from Laval Virtual 2020 (link to PDF of complete proceedings).

We talk about the evolution of Laval Virtual over the past 20 years where Richir speculated in 2019 that maybe future editions of Laval Virtual would happen in VR. This something that actually came to pass in 2020 during the global cornavirus pandemic when they moved the conference talks online for Laval Virtual World that took place on the Virbela platform.

LISTEN TO THIS EPISODE OF THE VOICES OF VR PODCAST

Here’s a part of a speech that I made at the Laval Virtual 2019 Awards ceremony reflecting on the community that Laval Virtual has been able to cultivate.

Catching up with Richir a year after this interview at Laval Virtual World:

Here’s my coverage from Laval Virtual World 2020

This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon.

Music: Fatality

Rough Transcript

[00:00:05.412] Kent Bye: The Voices of VR Podcast. Hello, my name is Kent Bye and welcome to the Voices of VR podcast. So on today's episode, I'm going to be going back to a trip that I took to France last year to Laval Virtual. So Laval Virtual is a conference that's been going on for over 22 years now. And they actually brought me out last year to participate in their think tank that they had before the conference and then gave a talk at that conference and then got introduced to this community that's been gathering every year since 1999. this year, they actually had a love all virtual world, which was their virtual conference to replace this face to face gathering that they've been doing for over 20 years. I also had an opportunity to dive in deep into the vol virtual world and actually spend over 18 hours immersed into the virtual world. They're really exploring the future of virtual conferences. And I I hope to unpack that a lot more, but I wanted to just take a step back and introduce Love All Virtual as a community and some of the interviews that I had a chance to do a year ago, especially since I was able to run into a lot of the people that I was able to interact with there last year. So that's what we're covering on today's episode of the Voices of VR podcast. So I'm going to start with someone with sheer who is actually one of the founders of love all virtual and he tells a story of what was originally going to be like a theme park back in 1998, but then eventually became this conference. And then there's a number of different iterations of that over the years. And so he's able to tell that story and give a little bit more context as to what he's been up to as the director of the Institute of Laval. So that's what we'll be covering on today's episode of the Voices of VR podcast. So this interview with Simon happened on Wednesday, March 20th, 2019 at the Laval Virtual Conference in Laval, France. So with that, let's go ahead and dive right in.

[00:02:00.048] Simon Richir: I'm Simon Recher, and I'm a professor at Arts et Métiers Paris Tech. It's an engineering school in France. It's the biggest public engineering school in France. And we have eight campuses and three institutes. And I'm director of the Institute of Laval, which focuses on virtual and augmented reality. We train around 40 students each year, master degree, and they are going to be the specialist of VR, you know, project manager and they know how to develop, how to modelize, to do a 3D object and to animate it and to program it with Unity or Unreal and 3ds Max for the 3D models and also management. And our pedagogy is focused on project pedagogy. In two years, students have 10 projects to manage with companies or for the lab. And we are very close to the students and our PhD students and the teacher, we are all together as in a company, maybe startup mode.

[00:03:14.078] Kent Bye: Could you tell me the story of how you got into virtual reality?

[00:03:18.782] Simon Richir: The story, yes, is simple. I met François Daubert, who was the mayor of Laval, and he was also the Ministry of Research. As I was assistant professor in Angers University, he was my minister. And he was searching for something to develop his department, his county, maybe. And because here in Laval, it's a department where you have 300,000 inhabitants and 800,000 cows. And so he was searching for something. And my boss, who was a professor at Taravelle, who was a creator of Futuroscope, a very famous theme park here in France, told me that François Daubert asked him for such a project. And I proposed virtual reality because I knew that the technology was emerging. Some people said it would have a great avenue. And what year is this? It was in 98, 1998. And so the mayor of Laval asked her to write a report. We had a command. And I wrote a report saying, OK, we could create a theme park, a VR theme park in Laval. But before that, because it's a long time to build a theme park, I propose you to organize an event. And I invented the name. I'm very proud of that, Laval Virtual, you know? And I described all the events, with awards, exhibitions, general public during the weekend, because it's very important to connect with general public. And the mayor said, OK, let's try, let's go. And with 40 of my students of Angers University, we organized one year, the first Laval Virtual, on June 99. And it was a good success because very good press media coverage. We had one of the most famous newspaper in France is Le Figaro. It has a double central page. Where will be the Technopolis? Bordeaux, Lyon, or Laval? You know, Bordeaux, Lyon are very big town. Laval is a small town. Then in Laval, it was a bomb. I say, wow! We have the idea of the century. And they go on.

[00:05:37.932] Kent Bye: Yeah, this is back in 1999, where it's a little bit of the winter of virtual reality, where you had a big surge with the Jaron Lanier's VPL and all the enterprise technologies that were coming up in late 80s and early 90s. But then there's a bit of a crash, a little bit of a disillusionment, like the technology just wasn't affordable enough for people to actually live into the visions that that current hype cycle was going through. starting up in 1999, what else was happening in VR at the time? Like, had you even experienced a VR experience at that point?

[00:06:12.499] Simon Richir: In VR, as you said, it was a disillusioned part of the curve. And at that time, for the 10 first years of Laval Virtual, research was the main issue, and researchers, companies came to the exhibition to sell their product to researchers, to labs. 10 first years. And after that, we saw some company as a car manufacturers, big company or aeronautics, some Airbus or car manufacturer in Germany, who did have a virtual reality. And after 10 years, they say, OK, it's a good technology. You can make money with that. And then the next 10 years, well, there was a research part and more and more industry part with a lot of new uses and so on. and of course 2015 with Oculus and so on, suddenly the starting of the mainstream and it was very surprising to see that all what we saw during the 10th first year as experiment done by our friend Japanese because a lot of Japanese very creative thing All what we saw in the lab was redone, redone again with the new material. Then some pioneers, Skip Rizzo of Bob Stone here in the UK said, OK, but we did already, Carolina Kruznera in the US also, OK, we did already did the study too. Why do you redo that? But OK, it was mandatory to have the adoption of the technology by every people.

[00:07:56.939] Kent Bye: Yeah, and I had somebody tell me that this event of Laval Virtual, which is happening in a town, Laval, is about a two-hour train ride or a three-hour car ride. And they said this is like the largest event of the year in Laval. Is that true?

[00:08:11.593] Simon Richir: Yes, you have two big events in Laval. It's Christmas illumination. All the town and the river is covered by illumination and a lot of people come to see that. And the second main event is Laval Virtual. But it's more than an event. Biggest event of the department is for all the west of France for that event.

[00:08:33.223] Kent Bye: Yeah, it sounds like that you've been able to have a consistent conference here for the last like 21 years, where you've been slowly growing the ecosystem in France. And it seems to be a critical part of getting government support to believe this vision to make Laval this Center for innovation for virtual reality to me. It's just fascinating that started back in 1999 But there seems to be a consistent government support along that way Maybe could talk a bit about the big milestones in terms of the support to be able to sustain this type of ecosystem here in France

[00:09:09.542] Simon Richir: Yeah, and the support was not so far from the government, but more for local, here from the region, La Loire, and all the department, and the Laval agglomeration, and all the local community support a lot. It was very important. They believed in virtual reality, and even if we got changes of the first mayor was right, the second was left, and the third is central, you know, in politicians. But each time when they beat the last one, they come to Laval Virtual and say, OK, keep quiet, don't worry, we go on supporting Laval Virtual because it's a major project. And then it's good to have that support. And even all the politicians, got the support of the Région, you know Région is a big part of west of France, Région pays de la loi, and right now the president of the Région is supporting Laval Virtual because they even decided that, ok, virtual reality is only for Laval, robotic is for one of the part, and ok, vegetal is for the other part and so on. And it's very, very strong support. And another point is we were very lucky when we started in 1999. We got very strong support of Japanese friends, Japanese professors, Tokyo University, you know, Shanghai ranking of university, Tokyo University is high. They believed in our project and so as a nice guy like Skip Rizzo, research community came to Laval and they said always there is an alchemy, a special alchemy. Maybe because we were working with students, a lot of students, then it was not perfect. It was not a very high level class and so on, but it was nice, good food. sympathetic people and okay you remember when you come to Laval it's a good experience. The user experience was good and I think it's maybe it's alchemy and we were lucky and strong support local and maybe that's a secret.

[00:11:22.830] Kent Bye: Well, I'm curious to hear the different milestones that you've had, because right now we're sitting in a building that I guess is a couple of years old, but it's quite a footprint in terms of a building to be able to house a lot of these PhD students and the larger Lava Virtual event. So maybe give me a little bit more backstory and context of the building that we're in right now.

[00:11:47.337] Simon Richir: Yeah, we are very proud to have a building named Laval Virtual Center. It's good. And even if we had to wait 20 years to get that building, I have to say that there were two projects before. After around 10 years, it was the first project. It was the initial project to have a theme park. And the theme park was named the Parc de l'Aventure Virtuelle, Virtual Adventure Theme Park. And a lot of study, more than 1.5 million euro was spent to define that project. And suddenly it was erased because of politicians, because a new mayor came and say, oh no, the project of the other mayor was not good. Then I have a better project. Then we had the second project. It was the city, the virtual reality city. with a museum and my lab, Clarté, and so on. And again, politician, changing of politician, and the new one said, no, the project Cité is not at the good place. The good place is in the campus where there is a other engineering school and so on. Then the third project is this one. Oof, we have the project. We know no changing in politician. And then it's a third project, but we have to wait 20 years, but it's very nice.

[00:13:05.943] Kent Bye: So you could have had a virtual reality theme park or a virtual reality city, but instead you got a lot of really solid infrastructure building to be able to train students. To me, it feels like it was the right thing to happen because it felt like a virtual reality theme park may have been a little ahead of its time, even having one now, but do you still plan to eventually build this theme park of virtual reality? Is that part of the deeper intention for what you would like to see? Yeah, you're right.

[00:13:33.853] Simon Richir: Yeah, maybe if the first project did have success, maybe it would be closed now and maybe all would be done. Maybe because when we launched the 10-pack, we didn't have Oculus and the technology was very expensive and so on. imagine that we if we have done that park and coming suddenly cheap headset and so on we should have invest a lot more money to transform the park to survive maybe then maybe maybe it wasn't good thing but okay let it go It's OK. And of course, the project of now is more realistic because we train students, we train PhD students, and we have a clate also with a lot of engineers developing technological bricks for VR and AR for a lot of companies. And we have also all the Laval Virtual team. At first, Laval Virtual team was five people. Today, it's 30 people because we organized Laval Virtual Asia, third edition in June. and we go all around the world. You have Laval Virtual Day in Dubai, Amsterdam, and so on, and we have to use our trademark all around the world to say, okay, we believed in virtual reality, we still believe in virtual reality, and augmented reality, and mixed reality, x-reality, of course, all of that, and okay, we can say something, and we can maybe teach something to the world, okay. with modesty of course, but maybe our enthusiasm, we share our enthusiasm on that technology.

[00:15:21.632] Kent Bye: Yeah, and I was talking to Sebastian Kuntz, who told me he's been coming to Laval Virtual for 18 or 19 years. And so he's been here for a long, long time and seen it change quite a bit. And I asked him if he's seen some changes recently. And he said that for the last four or five years, it's been near the same scale as you have now, which I think there's around 350 different companies that are showing on the exhibition. We have speakers this year. There's art programs that are there now. Maybe could tell me a bit of like when did it turn a corner where you started to see? with the insurgence of modern consumer VR a kind of an explosion of growth for where Lava virtual was and then where it's at now with the scale of how big it is

[00:16:07.187] Simon Richir: I think we are lucky to have 21 years of experiment of seeing what's going on in virtual reality. At first in 99 we thought that it would be very quick, it would be, but it can be slow, normal maybe. For example, in 1999, we believed in surgery, for example, you know, to duplicate, to have a twin virtual body. But it was very difficult to modelize all the organs and their compartment and very difficult. Right now, we don't have a very good simulator to train surgeon, for example. We saw that a lot of things, as a souvenir for example a Japanese concept when you blow on the screen and two years after you see Nintendo coming with such a game on the Nintendo DS. Another thing that was before the Wiimote, we had maybe two years before Naval Virtual, some people fighting with movement. Of course, there are some wires and so on. But, you know, it was very interesting to observe that progression in uses and progression of adoption. With the Wiimote, people say, OK, you don't need to be a geek or to use a pad. Suddenly, you can interact virtual world. It was very important. After that, you got the Kinect and say, OK, I can interact with nothing in my hand and so on. You know, I think it would be interesting to have a PhD student studying the 22 years of Laval Virtual because I think we can observe a lot of things like that. And of course, when suddenly the headset, the HMD, became less than €1,000, it was an acceleration, of course, because I remember a Japanese headset Very big, I think it was 10,000 euro, maybe it was the best HMD, but very heavy and so on, and whoop, suddenly disappeared because Mark Bolas invented Oculus, and okay. But it's very interesting because now all is affordable, and when I see the creativity of my students who won the contest here in Laval Virtual 2019, It's marvelous to have all that technology and all that uses and that's what we are focusing on now in Laval Virtual Center. Come on, we will invent with you, we will co-develop, we co-invent the future uses of virtual reality and augmented reality.

[00:18:51.684] Kent Bye: Yeah, just a point that you said that Mark Bolas invented Oculus, I think it's largely credited to Palmer Luckey, but I think there was a recent book called History of the Future by Blake Harris, which was telling the story of the resurgence of consumer VR through the lens of Palmer Luckey, and Mark Bolas is mentioned in there, but what I find is that from the United States perspective, there's a little bit of a blindness of the history of the context of Laval Virtual has been running for the past 21 years, consistently doing these VR exhibitions. I think a lot of people will be surprised to learn that. And there seems to be a little bit of gap of what the story of the history of VR is from maybe a US-centric perspective versus what is happening over here. Anyway, I just want to hear your thoughts on that and sort of the perception of people thinking that VR started with Oculus.

[00:19:48.227] Simon Richir: Yes, of course. We are lucky to have been able to observe that process. I understand because you have, for example, IEEE VR. I got the chance, thanks to Skip Rizzo, for example, To be part of the iTropoly VR organization team, I had the opportunity to have a small booth many years during iTropoly VR to promote Laval Virtual and it was interesting. And once, it was early 2000 years, I was in a DAX tool in Germany. We were 40, and I was invited by a French colleague. We had to stay one week long in Germany in a very small town. And I said, what is that? What is that? They said, look at the list of the people here. You have Greg Welch, Henry Fouche, and people from MIT, Carolina Krosnera, and so on. Then you got 40 pioneers of virtual reality all gathered during one week. And then it was marvelous. It was a think tank of one week. And we had to define the three most important challenges to be solved. For example, we got latency. Latency was one of the main challenges. And the other one was how to design a compelling experience. That's what I'm working on right now. It was so amazing. I think I wanted to do a think tank or something like that because it was such an experience. In the evening, for example, we were playing to the werewolf. Everybody was sleeping. And then it was amazing, I was playing with Henry Foosh with the werewolf, but they wanted to kill the French. Okay, okay, maybe it was, you know, you know. I say, oh, what are you doing in our playground? Maybe that was that, why not?

[00:21:46.090] Kent Bye: Are you a villager?

[00:21:47.412] Simon Richir: Yeah, maybe, maybe. Yes, I'm not a werewolf. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[00:21:53.777] Kent Bye: That's funny. I've had many good memories of playing Werewolf late at night at different conferences. So that was just bringing back some good memories. So maybe you could tell me a little bit more about this idea for the Think Tank, because I had the honor of being able to participate in this Think Tank. And so maybe talk a bit about the origins of the Laval Virtual Think Tank and what you're trying to do with bringing these type of people together in that way.

[00:22:18.102] Simon Richir: Yeah, and yeah, it was very great to participate. It was very nice to hear you and to exchange with you. The idea of the Think Tank was one day because after each Laval Virtual, we have a debriefing and we have two or three days not in Laval. We go on the sea or somewhere quiet place to imagine the future and to make, evaluate the event each year. And then I proposed because there is a TV show named Dance with the Stars, you know, Dance with the Stars. And I modified it to Ponce with the Stars, not, but Think with the Stars. And I think that's what I proposed to Laval Virtual General Director. I said, I would like to organize a seminar with the thinkers and industrial, and we would define a vision to share with everybody. And that was the first idea. I said, OK, let's try it. And the idea was using the keynote speakers, of the conference because each year I had 2, 3, 4, 5 keynote speakers and together them to ask them to come on Monday instead of Wednesday and at first we had Monday, Tuesday in the castle as you did and Wednesday a lot of keynote and round table presenting our vision and then it was everybody had fun and good experience

[00:23:51.942] Kent Bye: Yeah, the World Cafe as a process, when I was talking to some of the practitioners of that, you have an invitation where you are inviting people to come and to talk about a very specific issue. And so to me, what was exciting about participating in this think tank was that there was an invitation to gather with these other keynote speakers and to brainstorm and think about different issues that we see as hot topics. And so I was personally glad to see that one of them was ethics and these different moral dilemmas that we have with immersive technologies, just because I feel like the ethical issues, you know it when you see it and you feel it in your gut, but it's often hard to map out the full landscape of all of the moral dilemmas and to come up with some sort of framework to make sense of it, or to come up with some guidelines to help people be aware of some of these blind spots that may not be aware of, and how to either think about them, design around them, but just to have a bigger awareness, because I feel like there's something about the immersive technologies that are bringing up all of these ethical and moral dilemmas, and that it's almost like forcing us to reevaluate our current moral operating system into see where they may be falling down and trying to figure out as we move into the spatial web what's actually changing. And so for me it was just great to be able to brainstorm with everybody and then try to make sense of the different landscape that we were able to think about in that way.

[00:25:18.763] Simon Richir: Yeah, you're right, ethical is real. Because a lot of people that discover virtual reality, yes, some people don't know virtual reality. I was talking a few weeks ago to the French Académie des Sciences, you know, Science Academy. It's a very old professor, very famous professor. And they were asked a question by the government. Should we limit the time of using screen for kids and so on? Should we make a law on that? And I presented them virtuality, augmented reality. And I told them that the problem was not a problem of the screen, blue screen, blue light, and so on. It was a problem of content. And I showed them some experiences in AR, VR, and they was astonished. They was say, wow. And one of the first question was say, wow, with that you can manipulate a lot of people? Are you, have you an ethic committee? Do you, it was the first reaction. And then, oh yes, of course we, maybe when we are in the field such a long time ago, We used to develop something and our students developed something and very often we don't ask questions. We say, okay, but of course we could manipulate. I saw in a conference today a guy made an experiment to provoke motion sickness and say, okay we did that and after that roller coaster and we tried and everybody was sick and it was amazing just they say oh yeah that proves that if you don't move and say you're less sick and okay of course yeah yeah we say okay it's a researcher in informatics and no problem but imagine that in health with medics and say okay I tried to make some aspirin and said, oh, everybody was killed, was sick. I thought, wow, okay, we have to manage the ethic and it's not easy to know how to do it.

[00:27:21.840] Kent Bye: Well, since you're working with so many students, what are some of the hot topics or the open questions you're trying to answer or problems you're trying to solve?

[00:27:31.100] Simon Richir: I think when I see the students, when they are free to decide what project, they question a lot of the, you know, the double, multi-dimension. Maybe you think they like to develop some system when one people is completely immersed in virtual reality and another guy use augmented reality, but in another time. Time Rescue was a winner of the contest two years ago. This year you have another system that developed with multi-parallel dimension, you know, maybe it's the influence of black mirror or I don't know, but a lot of question is like that. It's embodiment, my body, which people I want to be in the virtual world and different dimension and I'm feeling like that. And what I wonder after our think tank is maybe we are going to develop virtual world but not the copy of our world. I think our virtual world will be specific and maybe it would be a big simulation of a world that could save our real world. Maybe we were thinking about the law, the virtual law. I imagine the first virtual law which was I am who I say I am, for example, could be the first law, and to be sure of who you are in front. Maybe we can imagine to have identification, bio-identification with our genomic identification, then we are sure that in the virtual world, it's you. It's you can buy, even if you change your avatar and change your clothes and so on. And I think with that, we could imagine maybe a world without politician or a world without bank and so on. And we could simulate how life would be without bankers, without politician. And maybe there is a solution, say, oh, it's okay. And a lot of liberated companies, for example, and so on. I think the young generations, the Z generation, that my students are ready to test that. Maybe I think it's just a feeling, an intuition, maybe. We'll see if I'm right later.

[00:29:46.558] Kent Bye: What are some of the topics or questions that are really interesting for you to explore about virtual reality?

[00:29:53.843] Simon Richir: Actually, what I explore is I like creativity. I'm a creative man. My profile, you know, MBTI profile and so on, I'm very creative. And then I like to develop my talent. And the question is, I think virtual reality can allow us to let it go and to be more creative and maybe to, for example, if you have a creativity session with your boss, you can be shy or not to say, but in the virtual reality, you can be bigger than your boss. Maybe your boss can be a fly and you can be a hulk, for example, a superhero. Okay, no problem. For the boss it will be reversed. He will think that he is a superhero and you are just a fly. But okay, I think with virtual reality we could, maybe without any drugs, we can free our creativity. I think we need to create something and even we can create with our movement, intuitive movement, and maybe after with artificial intelligence, with EEG, we could imagine to be helped by a little maybe Jiminy Cricket. What I like also is Jiminy Cricket, you know. Maybe in a few times, young boys or young girls or young babies will have a Jiminy Cricket when they were born and it will be an artificial intelligence. Maybe you can see it in augmented reality and it will help you during all your life, you know, because it will know you perfectly, it will know when you are able to work when you need leisure. I think it would be very interesting, maybe a big revolution in training, because you will have your small teacher, your small confidant, your small animals ready with you to train you. Of course, ethical, take care, because you can manipulate people and so on. We have to ethical issue, but I like the Jiminy Cricket idea.

[00:32:02.805] Kent Bye: Great. And finally, what do you think the ultimate potential of virtual reality is? And what am I able to enable?

[00:32:12.211] Simon Richir: Well, ultimate potential, I think, is very, very high. And I like Ready Player One, the book, more than the movie. But the movie is good, because I like very much Steven Spielberg also. And I think, yes, that idea of parallel world and maybe augmented world and I think I wait for HoloLens 8, you know, or Apple Glasses, iGlasses 10, maybe replacing the iPhone and I would like to know that with a new surrounding or you decide because you You can have augmented reality or decreased reality. You can also decrease reality. If I'm in a crowd but I don't want to see everybody, maybe I can erase the crowd. That's the opposite of augmented reality. And I believe also in other modalities because we are all on the ice and our eyes will be tired a little bit maybe. and maybe sound, and maybe, why not, more to have haptics, and more than haptics, maybe touching, feeling, and so on. We have a lot of modality to explore, and I think maybe we are just at the start of virtual reality and augmented reality, even if there is 30 years of work on it, and there's so many things to discover and to invent, and I think it's next challenges.

[00:33:45.913] Kent Bye: Is there anything else that's left unsaid that you'd like to say to the immersive community?

[00:33:50.798] Simon Richir: Come to meet us in Laval Virtual, during Laval Virtual, because what is very interesting is to exchange, to talk, as we do right now. And I think we have so many things to invent, so many things to do together with that amazing technologies. And then, OK, let's share. I think maybe in a few years, maybe, we will have a Laval Virtual completely, you know, in the type of iFidelity, for example, or so on, to be able to have a permanent Laval Virtual in the virtual world and to exchange, to have a permanent think tank and so on. Yeah, but the limit right now is the human limit because we can think only on one thing at a time and yeah, maybe, yeah. I don't know, so many things to do. Wow. Awesome. Great.

[00:34:50.790] Kent Bye: Well, thank you so much. Okay. Thank you. So that was Saman Rashir. He's the director of the Institute of Laval, as well as he's a professor at the Ars Emati Paratech, and also he is the lead editor of the proceedings of the Virtual Reality International Conference. So I have a number of different takeaways about this interview is that, first of all, Well, to me, it was super impressive that Laval Virtual even exists. And I think it's in part because of the local governments that were there to be able to support this vision way back in 1998, 1999. Looks like they held the first Laval Virtual back on the 3rd and 4th of June of 1999. So this would have been their 22nd year, but their 22nd year was disrupted by the global pandemic and the coronavirus. And so they ended up taking a portion of Laval virtual online. Now they have a lot of talks that they normally do at Laval virtual, but they also have this enormous expo with over 300 companies and they didn't do any attempt to try to translate that expo into a virtual conference. I think it was such a short notice that they could only really think about trying to translate the rest of the talks and the social gatherings and whatnot. So, to me, what I was super impressed with was the cohesiveness of this community that has been gathering year after year for over 20 years now. And there was a distinct difference between seeing how these more grassroots community-led organizations, like, say, Silicon Valley Virtual Reality Conference or VRLA, took a lot of passion of volunteers to be able to run it, but at some point, they kind of burn out because there's not a lot of wider support from either the government or even the companies that are running these virtual reality companies. One of the things that was really striking about going to Laval is that I had this sense of there's something very interesting and unique of what has been able to be cultivated there in the European community. They've really been this consistent gathering that has been happening for all those years. In the United States, there's IEEE VR, which is kind of like the equivalent academic conference, but it actually goes all over the world. Laval is centered in a single location and bringing together the entire virtual reality community in Europe. It started with a lot of the academics and eventually expanded out into more of the enterprise applications and so you tend to see a lot of the automobile industry and aerospace industry and Just a lot of the industries where they may have been using virtuality quietly since the 90s But don't necessarily talk about it too much and so a lot of the vendors as well as the companies that end up attending Laval virtual So they started from an idea of potentially having a virtual adventure theme park, which was way ahead of its time. And that ended up getting scrapped. And then they wanted to build the Laval Virtual City, which didn't happen. They ended up having a program at the local university there. And then they waited 20 years and eventually was able to build the Laval Institute, which is the Laval Virtual Center, which is an impressive building where they had the opening night party and is actually where I conducted this interview with Simon. And so they've actually have this infrastructure there that's in the vault to be able to pull in people from around the world to be able to come and see what type of research that they're doing there. So after attending the vol virtual online event, you know, they were able to basically turn that around in like four weeks and turn it into a pretty impressive gathering. I think there's still a long ways to go in terms of what does it take for a successful online gathering. And I'll be unpacking that more by talking to different people from a variety of different vendors of different platforms and my own experiences, and then potentially even doing some of my own experimentation for trying to get the essence of what it means to gather in these virtual spaces. So, that's all that I have for today, and I just wanted to thank you for listening to the Voices of VR podcast. And if you enjoy the podcast, then please do spread the word, tell your friends, and consider becoming a member of the Patreon. This is a list of supported podcasts, and so I do rely upon donations from people like yourself in order to continue to bring you this coverage. So you can become a member and donate today at patreon.com slash voicesofvr. Thanks for listening.

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