RefugeVR

11:08PM Apr 7, 2020

Speakers:

Kit Martin

Keywords:

headset

virtual reality

inhabit

nielsen

high

create

released

space

required

inherent value

oculus headset

android operating system

stripped

sold

oculus

soundscape

sidequest

vr

virtual

experience

It's been almost six years since Facebook released its first Oculus headset. It bought Oculus in 2014 for $2 billion. That's twice as much as it paid for Instagram, which had a much higher inherent value because they already had like 30 million people doing the free task of sharing pictures with each other and getting likes. Unfortunately, virtual reality requires a multiple hundreds of dollars headset to put on your face. The number of people willing to do that is much smaller.

But that's not to say there's not a possibility for virtual reality, to create unique experiences for users. What virtual reality needs is to create space that people want to go to like any great experience. Needs that draw people. Up till now about 2.6 million Oculus VR headsets have shipped, according to Nielsen's. That's about what the PlayStation 4 sold in the quarter of its first year. And while the VR seems a perfect application for video games, the high cost of the gear, coupled with the fact there just aren't that many games due to the difficulties and need for new paradigms in the space leads to less use.

The Oculus Quest headset addresses some of these things, it's a standalone headset, no wires required powered by the ubiquitous Android operating system. It goes on the head in a lightweight fashion and is easy to use, right out of the box. Its controllers are seamlessly integrated and come with it and there's no off headset sensors required. It's also been relatively popular completely selling out during the Christmas of 2009 and into the early parts of this year. Again Nielsen's data estimated about 400,000 of the units sold prior to the Christmas seasson, which is higher than the previous headset, the Rift at this point in its lifecycle. And as we said the holiday season was strong.

However, this goes back to the central tenant of what virtual reality needs to do. We don't live in reality, because it has wonderful games, we live here in spaces, because we'd like to inhabit them. Therefore, we need to create virtual experiences that let us inhabit. As such, we have been working over the last year on RefugeVR, a virtual reality meditation experience. We create it using photorealistic 3D video and movie. With the Technology, we've created places that people want to go, with an Aweome soundscape. We also stripped away some of the mechanics of VR, to create phenomenologically engaging, navigation, where the navigation in the space happens with the objects in this space. We've stripped away the overlay of the graphical user interface, and instead allow you to be in the space and hear the space. In short, we want you to inhabit this virtual space, as a Refuge.

We're releasing this on SideQuest, which is a way to get indie content on to this high end, curated headset. We've released today through SideQuestVR, and Itch IO. Its an exciting grassroots effort to bring peace of mind to people in this time of need. We hope you will ask us questions and reach out to us to find out more. Thank you, RefugeVR.