The American leg of the Immerse Global Summit (IGS) series opened in Miami, Florida today. Self-billed as the “most immersive tech event of the year”. Hosted by the VR/AR Association (VRARA), “an international organization designed to foster collaboration between solution providers and end-users that accelerates growth, fosters research and education, helps develop industry best practices, connects member organizations and promotes the services of member companies”, the IGS America event comprises three days of immersive technology talks, workshops, exhibits and events.
VRARA’s Global Executive Director Kris Kolo and VRARA and IGS President Nathan Pettyjohn kicked off this year’s proceedings with opening remarks from the main stage. Following that we heard from Head of Virtual Reality at Lenovo, Jason McGuigan, who we last saw at Immerse Global Summit Europe on the island of Madeira. Jason was there to discuss Lenovo’s new ThinkReality VRX extended reality (XR) headset. This was followed by a panel with Meta and Toyota, who discussed how organisations are integrating XR into their work culture as well as future opportunities and challenges related to XR business deployments, and a talk by HTC’s Pearly Chen, on the importance of an open Metaverse and how HTC’s VIVERSE is creating a Metaverse ecosystem that is both accessible and exciting – VIVERSE allows users to travel “seamlessly” between different (HTC) virtual worlds via an in-Metaverse portal.
Tomorrow sees panel discussions on the role of XR in theatre production, perspectives on the Indian Metaverse Ecosystem, talks on Everdome’s Mars-themed Metaverse, how augmented reality (AR) will impact real-life music festivals, the role of XR in the corporate Metaverse, how we will communicate in the Metaverse, and much more.
Before things close on Wednesday were looking forward to hearing Unity Digital Twins Senior Vice President and General Manager Dave Rhodes, Nathan Pettyjohn and Unity’s John Cunningham, also recently seen at Immerse Global Summit Europe, discussing how to prepare the real estate industry for the Metaverse, as well as Case Western Reserve University’s Executive Director Nancy Farrow, who will be talking about the university’s HoloAnatomy Suite, a virtual reality platform that is helping instructors teach human anatomy to students.
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