VR will change the way we see live events
By Jim Bask
Get a Samsung Gear VR, connect to the Samsung VR service on August 17, and experience the magic of Coldplay’s performance at no additional cost, while sitting comfortably at home.
Samsung Electronics America and Live Nation will broadcast Coldplay’s “A Head Full of Dreams Tour” live in virtual reality from Chicago’s Soldier Field for the first time ever. It’s promised to be a unique experience, and it may well set the path for new explorations of Virtual Reality, and maybe change the way many people participate in live events. Or should I write live virtual events?
The idea of a VR broadcast of a concert may appear to some as something completely new and revolutionary, but it is only the result of a long path we’ve walked since the first virtual experiences, whether in virtual worlds or games, were introduced by computers.
Virtual events are nothing new to me, as I started covering them in Second Life, an online world that was all the rage back in mid 2000, and a mandatory destination for every newspaper and TV, some of which had virtual offices there – CNN, Reuters, BBC or Sky News. Journalists from the real world were also “embedded” in Second Life, writing real news about a virtual world accessed through a computer…[continue reading]