Monday, December 5, at 9:30 in the morning, the second edition of Spain VR Startups on a working day at the gates of the long-awaited bridge. With almost twice the number of attendees compared to last year, this year’s event once again brought together great Spanish and international professionals, such as Nicolas Burrus, to review the current state of virtual reality and publicize the work of all participants. Without missing, in addition, the opportunity to network among all attendees.
The morning session was characterized by the 20-minute presentations that took place throughout the morning and that you had the opportunity to follow through our tweets that we were compiling in this news. The person in charge of opening the talks was Diego Bezares, VR professional and U-tad professor, who showed Presence Camera, a solution for 360º stereoscopic video capture that does not require subsequent manual stitching.
Eduardo Acosta, from Raiz New Media, held a talk entitled “Virtual reality and art”, two united concepts that we have recently seen gaining a lot of ground with applications such as Tilt Brush or Kodon, among others. Acosta surprised us with art created in the 90s for virtual reality, an initial stage that did not come to fruition since the technology was not prepared. The possibility of virtualizing monuments or real places is another interesting application that can be achieved with photogrammetry or gigapixel, Acosta pointed out.
Nestor Viña, from Future Lighthouse, he told us about Raymarching, a not very well known technique capable of creating clouds with greater realism, among other things, as he explained to us. Its name is similar to Raytracing, since it is also based on shooting rays from a point, but Raymarching can be executed in real time for certain parts of an application. The goal is to get more realistic graphics to achieve greater immersion, and this technique helps a lot.
Xavi Conesa, from Visyon, it was who provided the most data about the virtual reality ecosystem that we have in Spain, highlighting that we are one of the main producers of VR content, that virtual reality is expanding, that next year will be the consolidation and that collaboration between companies is being the pillar of growth of this great community of professionals. A point on which Roberto Romero, later, again stressed.
Nicolas Burrus, from Occipital, introduced us to Bridge Engine, a solution capable of offering absolute positioning of virtual objects in the real world. What comes to be mixed reality, something very similar to Microsoft’s concept with Hololens. The sensor, currently, can only be used with iOS, and is capable of scanning the environment to offer augmented reality or grant absolute positioning in virtual reality.
Eva Pastor, from BlueAttack, gave a talk about virtual reality as a marketing tool, something that we have seen increasing given the greater impression that VR content makes than another traditional one. Pastor also stressed the importance of content for the success of this medium. Something well known not only to professionals, but also to users.
Roberto Romero, from Future Lighthouse, he told us about some of his future releases such as Ray, a new story that combines stereoscopic video with photogrammetry, or Project Tokemi, a graphic adventure that they had already told us about in one of our RoVCast. Throughout the talk, Romero was also contributing some reflections such as that 360º video is not virtual reality or that it is a medium and not a device. Finally, I also reflect on 2017, a year in which the key for startups and current companies will be to survive the initial boom.
Joan Llobera, from i2cat, presented Immersia TV, a project designed to redefine the way programs or events are broadcast to accommodate HMDs, providing multiplatform experiences. José Luis, from ImMediaStudio, and Javier Alonso, from Atanga, introduced us to the world of construction and indicated several reflections such as that the work methodology is more important than the tools.
César Urbina, from Iralta Films, he had words about VR Narrative, and it is that in this new adventure a good tip could be to unlearn what was learned in traditional media, Urbina pointed out. Carlos López, from Oarsis, presented the function of the virtual and augmented reality startup incubator. Pablo Fernández, from Fanlex, talked about data protection in the capture by any device such as HMDs, walkers and controllers. Finally, Iván Gómez, from VT-LAB, he pointed out about BIM and immersive technologies.
During the afternoon two panels were held, the first formed by members of Iralta, InmediaStudio, Estudio Future, XperienciaVirtual and moderating Visyon. This panel analyzed the situation of virtual reality and the future for the coming year, giving as winners HTC Vive and Gear VR in 2016 and indicating that there is still time for VR to be mainstream. The last panel was a fight between developers to know the current situation with the presence of Nestor Viña, Eduardo Acosta, Arturo Paracuellos, Diego Bezares, José Infantes and Gonzalo Ruipérez, and Asier Arranz moderating.
Both in the morning and in the afternoon, there was time to enjoy the stands that some companies took advantage of to show their products to the attendees. We were able to get to know first-hand the Occipital Bridge Engine prototype, working with a tablet, giving very good results in scanning and positioning, very similar to those of Hololens. A motion capture suit from the company Technaid, Azken’s server offering, Lumion’s architecture applications, i2cat’s Immersia TV solution, Eureka mobile viewers with fresnel lenses, or the bike from ImMediaStudio that collected session data for later use in Big Data.
Spain VR Startups consolidates itself as the event for virtual reality startups in this second edition. An opportunity to get to know the current and future panorama of virtual reality, and it is that Spain continues to bet on this revolutionary medium.
