Metaverse One

Spring is a time of new beginnings. Many plants begin to grow, flowers blossom, and the world comes out of winter hibernation. Yet it goes beyond a season and includes ideas of rebirth, rejuvenation, renewal, resurrection and regrowth. In the tech scene, it is also the blossom of a busy conference season. Let's take a look at some of the 'flowers' that attracted this tech bee the past few months. We start with March. Game Developer Conference - San Francisco, USA The Game Developers Conference or GDC  is THE event for those in the gaming industry and related technologies. As an attendee, I saw plenty of virtual reality on the expo floor. Over the past few years it has been amazing to see how companies like Unity, Google, and Facebook have increased the size of their presence at GDC. VR Gaming Summit - San Francisco, USA Following GDC was the VR Gaming Summit . The VR Gaming Summit is a conference focused on VR gaming and entertainment trends. I was an invited s...

I just had an unforgettable day of VR here in the Seattle area. It started off at Envelop VR's office to discuss an upcoming VR event they organize called SEA VR  and then my buddy Greg and I got to visit both Unity and Epic's local offices. I can't thank Nick and Pete enough for letting us see their VR rigs and try out their VR demos.   I had a great chat with Pete at Unity's office where I got a chance to see their setup and try out the HTC Vive  unit. So far, this headset is by far my favorite HMD. Next up was a visit to Epic Games' office just a few blocks away. While I am not a game developer, I am a big Epic fan. Epic's Unreal Engine is responsible for a variety of games I have loved playing over the years so this was a fan boy dream come true. I also got a chance to see the Oculus Rift Crescent Bay demos that I never stand in line at conferences to see. First up was the super cool demo 'Showdown' that takes the user on slow moti...

I just left Seattle where I attended the first hackathon for virtual reality in that region. Hosted at the University of Washington's Center for Education and Research in Construction (CERC), the Seattle VR Hackathon brought together virtual reality developers and enthusiasts for a weekend of hacking and a whole lot of fun. There was a nice turnout of folks from the local VR community present including people from Samsung, the Microsoft HoloLens team, Unity3D, and Epic to name a few. Here is a nice writeup by one of the VR hacker teams that came from building firm Mortenson Construction (an AEC Hackathon alumni also).  In addition to a weekend of building cool VR demos, there were informative VR related presentations from Unity3D's Pete Moss, Epic's Nick Whiting, and Matt McIlwain from Madrona Venture Group.   A big thanks to Greg Howes, Trond Nilsen, Michael Lenzi, and Lucky Agung Pratama from Seattle's VR community for putting on this great event...