San Francisco, California - Virtual Reality Developer Conference

Dear Friends:

As you may have read in my last post, I was in Dallas, TX.  After the Adele concert, I woke up at 4am to catch a flight directly to San Francisco.  The weather in SF was absolutely gorgeous when I arrived:

I was there to attend the Virtual Reality Developers Conference (VRDC).  My company had a booth, and I was there to greet developers and see what was going on in the VR development community:

At VRDC, Google had a strong presence.  They had recently announced their Google Daydream VR device.  It's a headset that works with specific smartphones to create a virtual environment.  This was the first time I saw actual units...as they haven't been released yet.  They aren't your typical consumer electronic device, in that the materials are not just plastic and metal...they're fabric and comfortable materials:

Overall, there were about 700 people at the event. At the "expo" portion of the show, we set-up a booth to show developers how my company was involved in the VR ecosystem:

We gave away these little goodies to visitors.  They are an inexpensive form of VR, where you put your smartphone into one end and view it with lenses on the other end - like binoculars.  It's a system called Google Cardboard, because the earliest versions were made from actual cardboard ; )

There were several other companies showing VR products. It seems like a company is making announcements every single week.  This time, it was a company called "Fove" that will attempt to introduce a new VR headset to the public:

The new VR system for the Sony Playstation looks like it might be very successful - because there are over 30 million PS4 systems out there.  They have some great games for people to try - you should be seeing this demo set-up at your local Best Buy very soon:

Finally, we presented a special talk to developers, helping them improve their VR applications for a mobile environment.  It was standing-room only...and was a big success:

While this was a really, really short trip...it worked out well.  I'm amazed at the level of interest in VR - at least in the development community.  Hopefully, the general public will also embrace it - soon ; )