Hacking Virtual Reality in Seattle


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! A huge thanks to organizing partner the Web3D Consortium and the sponsors Samsung, Leap Motion, IDEAbuilder, Sony, Playingmondo, SpiralConcepts, and Unity3D.

There is another VR Hackathon planned for Seattle this coming September. While open to any subject matter and industry, the VR Hackathon will also be co-located with the area's AEC Hackathon.  If you are in the region and into immersive technologies, this is the event for you. Make sure to sign up and I will see you there!

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