My experience at virtual V2EC 2020 (VS real VEC 2019)

Yesterday, I attended the Vive Ecosystem Conference, the annual event by HTC, that his year was held completely inside ENGAGE. Last year, I was there physically in Shenzhen for the same event. Having attended both events, I thought it could be interesting telling you about my experience from yesterday, comparing it with the same experience from one year ago. This is also a good way to understand the difference between virtual and real events.

V2EC 2020

Due to Coronavirus concerns, most companies are canceling their events, while others are deciding to transform them into virtual versions. The first major company to have the courage to take its whole event fully in Virtual Reality has been HTC, that has held yesterday its annual VEC event completely inside the ENGAGE platform.

The event required an astonishing effort from all the people at Immersive VR Education, that had to rethink completely a platform made mostly for events of 50-100 people so that it could be able to accept a maximum of 5000. In the end, they did a great job, and I want to publicly compliment Chris, Steven and all the others working on ENGAGE for what they have done.

My experience at V2EC

When I entered the password for the VIP room, I found myself into the very beautiful environment designed by Vive (a bit similar to the ones you can find on Vive Origin or in Vive Sync), with Chris Madsen welcoming me and giving me a few instructions on the event. He made me tour the environment and showed me a little area when there was a little expo of many headsets from the past (like the Stereoscope) and the present (like the Vive Cosmos).

The environment was very well crafted: there was a little amphitheater for the speeches, with a big display and many seats around it, and then outside it, there was an area where people could hang out. Apart from some goodies like the headsets I have described above, there were also many tables where people could sit down and chill out during the pauses. I could see various interesting things on the walls, like the agenda of the event written both in English and Chinese.

While I was admiring all the cool people I had around me (like the big bosses of HTC), I was immediately forced to sit down and the event began. It is not my first event in VR, so well, I am not surprised by the technology anymore. But I think that this was one of the most well-crafted VR event I’ve been in, thanks to the willing of ENGAGE and HTC’s people to astonish everyone. Usually, events in VR a bit rough, and just feature one person showing a PowerPoint presentation and speaking over it, while the audience listens. But in this case, there were plenty of animations, both before the speeches and also during them.

One of the best moments has been when Alvin Wang Graylin, best known as Mister President, showed us one of the first movies recorded in history, the one about a train arriving at the station. He told us the famous story of the first time this movie was projected in a cinema when all the people run away because they were afraid that the train was real and it was going to enter the cinema and kill them all. While he was telling this story, arrived at the end end of the movie, a real 3D model of a train broke the virtual screen, jumped out of it and crashed close to the front row of the audience of VEC. An unexpected turn of events that amazed me.

And when Mister President talked about the pandemics, suddenly we all found themselves dressed in white biohazard suits, surrounded by coronavirus particles. This was a bit shocking and made us realize immediately the danger of the current situation.

When Peter Diamandis talked about Plato, someone impersoning Plato came out from the floor, moving with Peter on the stage. This and other tricks made the experience more original and more memorable than other VR events I have participated in (or that I have organized myself).

As in all VR events, there have also been problems, of course. For instance, I have had issues in seeing some people talking on the stage, and I experienced some visual glitches. But all in all, it was nice.

Mister President has had its usual inspiring speech, and it was a pleasure to me to listen for the first time to a live speech by Tom Furness and Peter Diamandis.

But honestly speaking, without detracting the speeches at VEC, the best moment has been the networking during the pause. While there was the “coffee break”, I’ve been able to speak with some people from the VR communities I have never met or that I don’t see since a lot of time: I have finally spoken with Kent Bye, one of the people I esteem more in our community; I have met again Richard Lai, Steven Sato and Chris Madsen; I have spoken with Vic DeLeon and Hall Davidson; I have met with people at HTC I interacted with for some experiments like Dario Laverde and Jad Boniface; I had so close to me HTC’s CEO; I have had a quick chat with Tom Furness! Of course, I have also high fived with Mister President.

I had so much fun. After all these days in Quarantine, being able to finally speak with so many great minds, and also having had a “virtually physical” interaction with them, has been so good. I have hugged Steven Sato, and it felt so special, since it’s a lot in Italy that we are not allowed to hug other people because of the pandemic. That hug felt so real, so warm, even if it was happening with someone from the other part of the world. We had fun with selfies and played around with the objects made available in the virtual world, like some coffee cups.

The coronavirus has been the main topic of the speech of Alvin, and also the main topic we were talking about among us. At a certain point, there was me (from Italy), Richard Lai (from Hong Kong) and Kent Bye (from the US) talking together… three people from 3 different parts of the world, with three 3 different stages of the pandemic, united by VR. Only this technology could give me these great moments.

It was 5am in Italy during the networking. I was screaming and laughing in the kitchen, moving my hands like a crazy man, and with my noises I made all the people in my house to wake up. But man, it was all worth it. VR made me feel alive again.

The announcements from VEC

I haven’t been there the whole event because, well, I need to sleep as well, but I watched all the keynotes. This year HTC was mostly focused on giving an event that was inspirational and educational, and less in making announcements on its products. Mister President talked about how XR can be useful for the transformations caused by CoronaVirus; Tom Furness explained the differences between AR/MR/VR; Peter Diamandis talked about disruption and innovation. It was something different from the Oculus Connect, that is instead focused on announcements by Facebook.

The few interesting announcements that I have spotted have been:

• HTC seems to see the Proton as the substitute of PC VR headsets. In his typical slides where Mister President shows how XR will substitute all the displays we have at home, it is possible to see that the Proton substitutes the Vive Pro and not the Vive Cosmos;

• HTC has partnered with the ENGAGE platform and it will become its official distributor in China;
• HTC bets a lot in 5G: this is something that doesn’t surprise anyone, anyway the CEO has highlighted this many times. The company has just partnered with China Mobile telco company to develop 5G solutions;
• Vive Sync will have an AR mode enjoyable through the Vive Cosmos XR. In a video shown during the keynote, it was possible to see two people collaborating in AR on the same 3D model of an environment;
• HTC has shown some videos of some developers using early devkits of the Vive Cosmos XR. And since they have also shown a couple of experiments of mine, let me show you the cutest experiment I did with my Cosmos XR devkit. We of New Technology Walkers have also some interesting announcements about the Cosmos to share… stay tuned!

I was hoping for a full launch of the Cosmos XR, but I think that the coronavirus has scrambled the plans of all the worldwide tech companies. I wonder when it will be launched…

Virtual VEC vs Real VEC

So, having attended both a real and a virtual version of VEC… which one has been better?

Honestly, I can’t tell, since they have been different experiences.

The pros of the real VEC 2019 have been:

• I traveled to China, so I could enjoy my time in Shenzhen, eating Chinese street food, drinking 奶茶 (bubble tea), practicing my terrible Mandarin… and finishing as always on the toilet. All the weirds situation I found myself with Enea Le Fons are something I won’t forget;
• The event was… well, more real. The stage, the smoke, the audience… it was all there, it was real all around me. It was incredible, my first big VR event!
• I have not attended only the event. In those days I was in the hotel with all the other speakers, and we also had various networking dinners. I met with so many people at HTC (Bill, Leo, Steven, Levan, etc…) and we all became friends… I met with people at bHaptics and 7Invensun. I also had a breakfast with Nolan Bushnell! It was so incredible;
• There was a showcase area where I have been able to try new hardware (like bHaptics suit) and software (like many VR games);
• I was there to launch our game HitMotion: Reloaded, so I went on the stage of a big event to launch a product of ours… a once-in-a-lifetime moment! My heart beat so fast, I was so excited;
• Even if I love VR, meeting and hugging in real life is still a much better experience. We are born to feel the love and the touch of other human beings, and VR still needs decades to give us all those sensations. After the VEC, I had so many new friends.

The pros of the virtual VEC 2020 have been instead:

• I had no need to travel. Going to China usually requires me 20 hours of travel in total, and this is pretty stressful. I also spend always a lot of money for travel, accommodation, taxi, food, visa. Being able to attend the event from my home, while dressed in pajama, has been so comfortable, and made me spare a lot of precious time and money;
• There were people from all over the world. Many people don’t feel like going to events in China, because China is distant and has its own rules. So, at the physical VEC, there were mostly Chinese people. But at this virtual one, there were people from all over the world and this was fantastic, it was a much more open event. I loved meeting so many diverse people from the VR community. Even the speakers were more international, and we could also enjoy a panel with the king Charlie Fink;
• The talks had many more special effects. The talks at VEC 2019 were… talks: slides and voiceover. At V2EC, instead, there were many special effects, like the ones I described to you above. This is something that is just impossible in whatever physical event you could attend. Only VR can give you this magic.

So, in the end, which one did I prefer? It’s complicated, and I can say that I loved both for different reasons. The king Charlie Fink always says that “people” are the killer app of VR, and I agree. Of both VECs, what I remember most is my interactions with other people, and in the last one, considering that now I can’t meet people anymore, I remember my virtual companions even more. Because you can listen to a speech even just on a Webinar platform, but those hugs in the networking moments, real or virtual that they may be, are something that no livestream platform can give you.

Probably the real VEC has still an edge for me, not only for my experience on the stage, but also because of everything that has happened in my trip to Shenzhen. The virtual VEC has begun and finished with the event, and probably this is something that virtual reality has still to understand how to cope with.