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The Free Roam VR Cage Fight

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Free roam VR allows users to walk around inside a virtual world as they would in the real world, albeit wearing a backpack PC and a VR HMD. Inside out tracking allows participants to see their real hands as virtual hands in the digital world. Some free roam VR attractions deepen the illusion with props and sensory elements like heat, wind, and smells. Many believe this is the only true form of VR, and it's coming to malls, theme parks, and other public spaces around the world. 

The VOID

The race is on to become the movie theater of the future. Of course, in the end, it’s always better to own the original intellectual property. But, in the beginning, the power, and the expense, belongs to the platform.

VRStudios

LBE expert and VR specialist Kevin Williams and I huddled up one night at the hotel bar while at the Future Port Prague Conference last week. We tried to make a list of the all free-roaming VR  companies and could not do it. Kevin, for all his consulting and writing, was banging his head in frustration because we could only come up with fifteen companies. Kevin shared his list with me after we got home. There are 42 free roam VR companies.  

Zero Latency

Twenty of these companies operate one or more retail entertainment venue, and the other 22 are right behind them. And I’m sure this list is incomplete.

Free Roam LBVR Leaders (more than 5 locations)

VR Studios (65)

Zero Latency (19)

The VOID (9)

Huxley by Exit VR (9)

TrueVRSystems (6) (Swiss & German)

SandboxVR (6)  

Less than 5

Anvio

Eclipse (3)

Tick Tock Unlock (UK)

Enterspace VR

Dreamgate

Pilots, Pop-Ups, Single location

Dreamscape Immersive (original IP Alien Zoo)

SPACES (Terminator)

Alien Descent (Fox Next)

Nomadic 

MassVR (Chicago)

Battleverse AR (Toronto)

Hyperverse XR

Golem VR (DiVR)

ModalVR (Nolan Bushnell backed)

Holodeck VR (Europa-Park project)

Beyond The Gate (Milan)

Smaller Footprint Free Roam VR, Optimized for FEC locations

Hologate (faux free roam)

WePlayVR (AiSolve)

YDreams Arkave (Latin America, expanding north)

Atom (VRStudios)

Private Label

VR Nerds (with Sega and Zero Latency)

AiSolve

Asia

Bandai-Namco (Ghost in the Shell, Dragonquest VR)

Globalcore

SLQ VR Park

InOwize (Japan)

Tyffonium (Japan)

GLO Station (China)

SoReal

SKonec Entertainment

NINED

LEKE VR

Wild Cards & Unknowns (to us)

ABAL - game called 'Dinosaur', using GearVR and trackers JP

Skonec Entertainment - Mortal Blitz, working with SEGA and other venues

Dark Realities - funding raising UK project

EXA VERXUS - in dev with DJM and Capcom JP

VoodooVR - in joint development with Springboard VR

PolygonVR - part of VRTech who have Russian licenses

Venturion - developed by Tapps VR

ARenaSpace - Russian developer free-roaming

CinemaVR - Russian developer free-roaming

Hypercell

Hologate

We haven't even talked about the expanded tracking abilities and wireless capabilities of the new Vive Pro, which has the potential to transform the humble, low-cost VRcade into a free roam platform as well. That would turn our forty-two into five thousand!

On the surface, free roam VR appears to be booming, but underneath there is turbulence. Mundane retail operations, marketing, and group sales are relentlessly difficult. The production of a VR experience, or anything, is full of difficulties and problems that must be solved, but they only have to be solved once. Companies building stand-alone locations they own and operate are not doing either business, production nor distribution, any good. In fact, they’re dragging them both down. Everyone has to do both out of necessity, but it won't scale. Retail and production need to be separated.  

Charlie Fink

There need to be standards for free roam and, like movies, and there need to be hundreds of retailers using that standard operating system. This is why it makes sense for the multiplex to remove screens to accommodate VR. This way can do what they've traditionally done: program for their audiences, and mix and match titles, take tickets and sell popcorn (or gourmet popcorn, as the audience warrants). They, not software production companies, should be the experts in group sales.

This will not be a panacea, as the cruel gravity of retail cannot be outrun even by the most experienced operators. Utilization and throughput will continue to plague LBVR. Unlike a 300 seat movie theater, you can't make up a whole week with a few good shows on Friday and Saturday night. There has to be a bigger idea afoot here than a single branded free roam location.

Who's making it work? Dave and Buster's, Rec Room, and perhaps the new Two Bit Circus. This way you're not going to The VOID, or Sandbox, you're going to an experiential entertainment destination that might include a movie theater or two, a multi-title free roam area, an Arcade and/or VRcade, redemption games, food and beverage, and even a big footprint simulator like Jurassic World. And/or bowling and ping-pong.

Dave & Busters

We hope HoloGate, WePlayVR, and other small footprint free roam (or free roam - ish) attractions will be sustainable long-term within FECs as it would prove our thesis: LBVR needs to be part of something bigger, and have multiple, frequently changed titles so people will ask, as they once did about movies, "what's playing there this weekend?"

NOTE: This story relies heavily on research provided exclusively by Kevin Williams, who was kind enough to lend the author his deep expertise and thorough note keeping, without which this reporting would have been a much shorter.

Links to my other recent Forbes stories on LBVR:

How To Use VR To Travel Back In Time (Golem VR), September 2018

Sandbox VR Free Roam LBVR Opens in LA, NY, SF, August 2018

VR Wave Breaking Outside The Home, May 2018

Location Based VR Revs Up New Year, February 2018

 

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