stickee opened its doors to the tech world yesterday at its Solihull offices for its Virtual Reality: Beyond Gaming event.
Attendees from Google, Birmingham Open Media and Solihull Council, among others, were treated to hands-on demonstrations of the latest Virtual Reality (VR) kit and even Stephen Spielberg’s VR camera, now operated by the team at Media Dog.
Virtual Reality has been in the making for many years. But with recent innovations in both hardware and software, 2016 certainly seems to be the year of VR. High profile products such as the Oculus Rift (purchased by Facebook for a reported $2 billion), the HTC Vive and Sony Playstation VR have rocketed virtual reality into the public domain. In essence virtual reality is defined as the computer-generated simulation of a three-dimensional image or environment that can be interacted with in a seemingly real or physical way. This involves (currently) the use of equipment such as headsets, to immerse you in 360 degree, 3 dimension environment.
Our very own Korash Sanjideh gave the night’s talk, covering the applications of Virtual Reality away from the obvious uses in the gaming industry. This covered example of how marketing, business, education, publishing and retail have used, and can make use of, Virtual Reality. It also touched on VR’s cousin, Augmented Reality, showing how mixed reality could provide a new world experience in the future.
Stickee’s Technical Director, Karl Binder said: “It’s great to see so much enthusiasm and interest around the subject of VR for applications other than gaming. It really is something that needs to be experienced to fully appreciate and we’re delighted to be able to offer a chance to experience some of these latest devices tonight.”
Demonstrations included an educational step in the human body and an examination of a beating heart, experiencing the moon landing first hand and jumping back to 1666 to the Great Fire of London.
