Opened in October 2016, Viveland Taipei is a themed VRcade in a high-tech shopping center. Weeks later, Vive opened another pilot center in Shenzen, China. (Credit: Vive)
A wave of public space virtual reality (otherwise known as location-based entertainment or LBE) is breaking, allowing everyone to experience new high-end home VR systems whose requirements puts them out of the reach of most consumers. Unique, large-scale experiences like free-roam VR, which can never be duplicated at home, will soon appear in malls and other retail destinations around the country.
IMAX just opened its first Experience Centre at the Grove, an upscale mall in the Fairfax district of Los Angeles. The system uses an advanced Starbreeze headset, which has a larger field of view than the Vive, and presents experiences available for the HTC Vive room scale VR system. By using Vive experiences, IMAX has greatly reduced the cost of its centers, one of the main obstacles to the financial success of LBE. Vive President Rikard Steiber announced on Twitter on February 14th that the IMAX Experience Centre had already had 5,000 visitors. A visit to the website reveals that the most popular experience is, by far, Vive’s Star Wars: Trials on Tatooine, followed by John Wick Chronicles.
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Like The Void’s Ghostbusters Hyper Reality experience in New York, “Star Wars: Trials on Tatooine” (released in July 2016) is a cinematic virtual reality experience set in a universe with which users are already familiar. (Credit: TK)
In an interview at CES in January, Steiber told me that HTC planned to open over 5,000 VRcades, starting with 1,000 Viveland VRcades in China (see my article HTC’s Plans for World Domination). He compared this stage of VR’s development to the early days of the Internet where, lacking an expensive computer and high-speed Internet, millions became familiar with the benefits of personal computing and the world wide web through Internet Cafes, which are still a staple in many countries. There’s a practical consideration here, which shows HTC’s laudable understanding of its own product: the current model of the Vive is for gamers and hobbyists, not mainstream consumers. For everyday people, HTC Vive VR is much more satisfying as a curated, attended, human-supported experience.
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Like a movie theater, IMAX VR Centre in LA offers an ever changing variety of experiences for the Vive at specific showtimes. (Credit: TK)
In addition to the new LA IMAX center, the Vive is being used by new VRcades around the country. Exit-VR of San Franciso has a fleet of panel vans (the kind used as food trucks) that bring the Vive to your event. Google search turns up dozens of such venues in the U.S. and abroad. At the same time, major retail chains are closing stores, leaving mall owners around the country with excess inventory, even forcing some malls to close. New VRcades might help revitalize them — if they can generate the hits needed to grow the audience. The challenge VR faces is not only convincing the public to drink Coke, but to embrace of the very idea of soda.
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Courtesy Sega | New mulitplayer arcade game Sega Showdown Deluxe. (Credit: TK)
Traditional providers of arcade games like Sega, Capcom, Bandai and Namco, have been providing multiplayer motion based simulation platforms to high end arcades like Dave & Busters since the early ’90s. Make no mistake, even without a headset (which many new systems now feature) these games, which network multiple players into a virtual environment, commonly a race track or battlefield, are truly immersive virtual reality experiences. Despite their high cost relative to the other arcade games, these attractions are among the most popular in their venues. They’ve been carrying the torch for public space VR for twenty-five years, and not because they’re nice guys. Someone is making money.
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Courtesy IAAPA | The newest in moon bounce, cotton candy, carousel, and VR technology share the convention floor at IAAPA in Orlando. (Credit: TK)
VR was once again one of the big themes at this year’s International Association of Amusement Parks and Attractions (IAAPA) show, which takes place in November. IAAPA is where theme parks and arcade operators from around the world come to sample and buy new public space technology, as well as cotton candy machines. This year, free-roam VR pioneer Zero Latency won IAAPA’s prestigious People’s Choice Award. Free roam VR, with 2,000 – 4,000 square foot centers in Orlando (at Main Event mega arcade), Brisbane, Australia (a company owned location, which opened in 2015), Orlando (where it’s part of Main Event, a huge family entertainment center (FEC), Tokyo (with Sega), Madrid, and an outpost branded “The Arena” at massive Kalahari Resort complex in the Pocono Mountains of Pennsylvania, about 90 miles New York City. The Kalahari location opened February 3rd.
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Source: Forbes