Power 106 had the pleasure of attending the TechCrunch Session AR/VR seminar held on the campus of UCLA. It featured discussions from Disney, Snap, Oculus and more! The seminar kicked off with discussions from John Snoddy, a Walt Disney’s Imagineer, who informed the packed crowd that VR and AR aren’t really ready for prime time just yet. “I don’t feel like we’re there yet. We know it’s extraordinary, we know it’s really interesting, but it’s not yet speaking to us deeply the way it will.” Says John.
One of the coolest features we saw was the Holographic 3D visualization display. Shawn Frayne, from the company Looking Glass, explained how his company built the technology they saw a growing demand for. In his display, there was a 3D character that you could touch using AR and VR in place for your hand. Hard to explain but very cool to see!
Next up was the Executive Producer, Yelena Rachitsky, from Oculus. She explained how Oculus is getting serious about non-gaming experiences in VR. She then explained how the company is looking expand new hardware to deepen the interactions users have in VR. The idea is to go beyond the capabilities of 360-degree VR video. As a fan of VR, we are all curious about the future of VR videos.
We would like to thank TechCrunch and UCLA for the opportunity to check out such cool displays and talks.