How Virtual Reality can enhance your events

Technology continues to advance by leaps and bounds. At this point you’ve probably already heard about the Oculus Rift or the HTC Vive.

If not, you probably do know about Google Glass. These are systems that are making a big impact in the world and are poised to become a trend, so we will explain in more detail about these innovative devices and how they could influence the event management industry.

Let’s define two very important concepts: Virtual Reality (VR) and Augmented Reality (AR):

Virtual Reality

It is a fully computerized three-dimensional environment.

Users generally need to use a device similar to a pair of glasses that can come with accessories such as gloves to interact with this virtual world. This is not to be confused with the 360° photos and videos that are very popular today, because these are static images captured. Virtual reality is fully interactive.

Augmented Reality

This technology combines computerized elements and reality to create something akin to a parallel world.

Users interact in digital spaces while moving in the real world. Recently the world was rocked by Pokémon Go, making augmented reality popularly known. This app generated 30 million downloads, $1.6 million in revenue per day from the iOS App Store alone during its “boom” and grew Nintendo’s value by $9 billion. This was achieved with a game that aroused the nostalgia of the public, but demonstrated that many people are willing to use augmented reality as a technology for entertainment.

Impact on the organization of events

You might be wondering what these two technologies have to do with that industry. The answer is that they have a lot of potential to create interaction with attendees at such events. This VR and AR offering will not only play an important role in the ever-changing world of technology, but will also provide much more interesting, entertaining and unforgettable experiences for users.

Virtual places

When you are the planner of an event, you could be spending a large portion of your budget on speakers, lodging, food, beverages and other miscellaneous expenses. However, if you decide to direct that money to a virtual or augmented reality space, many of these costs could be eliminated and replaced by a better experience for participants. Of course, this technology is only just gaining ground and these costs are likely to be high today, but once it has been further developed it will be much more accessible and feasible for the organizers.

Virtual participation in events

To give an example of non-face-to-face ways to attend an event, there are devices called Double Robotics which consist of small remote-controlled robots that come equipped with an iPad, making it possible for people to be at the event remotely while interacting with people who are present. These robots are usually available to VIP participants who could not attend in person.

Augmented experiences

How would you like it if people at an event could have accurate indicators of the other participants? There are devices in the form of glasses with facial recognition software that could provide them with additional information about the other people present at the event. They would then be able to interact with a deeper and more accurate level of data. This is possible with AR technology.

Product testing

The places where the different events and fairs are held must reinvent themselves to make their product demonstrations. To give an example, when it comes to showing cars, they need too many cubic meters to place several vehicles. With augmented reality they could save all this space. Work is already underway on ways to get potential consumers to interact with cars through devices with complementary parts for sight and touch. This will completely change the way cars are displayed.

New opportunities

Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality should be leveraged by event organizers to create unique experiences and capture the hearts and minds of their participants. There is a lot of potential to design different scenarios that allow users to understand the functions of the products and to better understand the speakers and other attendees.

From TwoReality, virtual reality company, we continue to create the best content and applications for different devices. Tell us about your project.