The VR Journey

A brief look at VR Reality and how it has shaped the enterprise and consumer industry within the last few years. The focus is mainly on the gaming and entertainment industry and not on enterprise or training. With the advent of Oculus DK1 in 2012, VR was truly reborn after the failure in the 80s and 90s due to limitations in technology. By 2014 companies like Facebook, Sony, Samsung, Google, and Microsoft have heavily invested in VR. By 2015 with the introduction of HTC VIVE in partnership with VALVE, VR finally had all the components necessary to be a medium that can be embraced by consumers and businesses alike. By 2020 though there are VR HMDs (Head Mounted Display, a fancy name for VR Headsets) that were affordable, except for a few experiences and games, consumers did not fully embrace VR, and compared to the console gaming industry, VR was lagging fairly behind. There could be many reasons but the biggest was space, expensive setups, multiplayer was not feasible among friends or family, and affordability.

The biggest surprise in all this is the proliferation of VR Entertainment centers given the failure in the consumer industry. A new industry was born where entertainment locations were created dedicated for VR or existing locations were allocating space dedicated to VR. These locations provided consumers the space needed to play with friends and family safely and the ability to try the latest tech and entertainment without having to invest heavily.

In the past few years, the focus was heavily on room-scale VR entertainment, where a certain space is allocated per player and single-player or multiplayer games were offered but by 2019 the focus is shifting towards Free roam arena-based entertainment, Simulation-based entertainment, and much more.

SynthesisVR has been a part of this journey from the beginning, and to read more about how we began click here. Here we take a look at how SynthesisVR is at the forefront of Free Roam and providing the right solution given our experience working with hundreds of locations and developers over the years.

What is Free Roam VR?

Free Roam or Arena VR is a form of VR entertainment where players experience VR by physically walking and interacting with the virtual world giving the players a heightened sense of realism than other forms of VR entertainment. Unlike using buttons to teleport (walk-in VR) and using controls to interact, in FREE ROAM players will physically walk and games are programmed cleverly to give the players a vast sense of space and realism. For location-based entertainment centers, this opens many possibilities. The return of investment (ROI) is higher room-scale VR since multiple players can use the same allocated space. Another big advantage FREE ROAM has over other forms of VR entertainment is this cannot be duplicated in a home or consumer environment. Games and experiences are created specifically for location-based entertainment centers (LBE), space and specialized equipment are needed which in most cases will not be feasible in a consumer setup. This allows LBEs to focus on providing amazing entertainment to consumers and increases customer retention.
Early FREE ROAM was expensive and required a setup that required expertise but with technology improving and SynthesisVR working closely with the industry leaders we are able to provide a solution that is easy to setup and feasible for business.