WHAT IS OCULUS RIFT?
So today has already been quite an adventure for me and it’s barely 10am! You won’t even believe it! First, I went on a thrilling roller coaster ride with daring drops, crazy fast corkscrews and intense loops at a cool amusement park in Europe. Total adrenaline rush! Next, I actually got to run out onto the field at a pro football game during player introductions with the starting lineup. It was insane with the fans going crazy and star athletes and cheerleaders running all around me. What an experience! And then I had the best seats in the house – they were on the 50-yard line where I had celebrities sitting in front of, behind me and beside me as I looked around. What a day!
And you know what is even crazier about my morning? I did all of this from my office here in Atlanta, Georgia at Ninja Multimedia while playing around with our Oculus Rift virtual reality goggles. So, what is Oculus Rift exactly? Let me fill you in a bit on the history.
At the early age of only 16, a young man by the name of Palmer Luckey, made his first set of virtual reality headsets. Three years later, Luckey founded his company, Oculus VR. And then on March 25, 2014, Facebook bought Luckey’s company for $2 billion, when he was only 21 years old, opening up a whole new world for virtual reality.
David M. Ewalt of Forbes Magazine explains what Oculus Rift is in his article Through The Looking Glass: “To the layperson an Oculus Rift doesn’t look much different from the VR headsets we’ve seen in sci-fi movies. It’s a pair of goggles on an elastic strap; pull it down over your eyes, and it protrudes a few inches from your brow. Inside there’s a set of lenses pointed at a high-resolution OLED screen. The display shows two slightly different images, one for each eye, producing a stereoscopic illusion of depth. Motion sensors in the headset track which way you’re looking, as does an external infrared camera set a few feet away, so when you move your head, the system can update the display to match.”
Essentially, Oculus Rift is the next generation of virtual reality headsets that allows people to step inside virtual worlds looking all around them as if they are actually physically located within a space without actually being there.
AND WHY DO I NEED IT FOR MY BUSINESS?
Utilizing technology that creates immersive, three-dimensional virtual environments is a way to fully extend the user experience lending itself to a fun atmosphere, while teaching people about your company and products.
Ninja Multimedia completely agrees with Adweek in that “Oculus isn’t just an oxygen mask for fantasies—it has the potential to do nothing short of inventing a whole new universe of marketing. Indeed, Oculus Rift—Facebook’s $2 billion baby—this year could be shot out of a cannon (think of that view from the headset, literally speaking). The device is quickly losing its obscure-curiosity status after a couple of years of generating media coverage and lots of buzz at the Consumer Electronics Show and South by Southwest. And as that excitement spills over into the mainstream, Oculus may well become for virtual reality what the camera obscura was for photography two centuries ago.”
Wow! Now, imagine your company getting involved in something that has this much buzz and potential for your brand at the onset! As one of the first companies within your industry to incorporate the Rift into your marketing and communication strategies, you will have a competitive edge to really stand out from your competition! Taking advantage of the novelty while it still exists is a huge reason why companies need to get involved quickly to be on the forefront of this cutting edge technology which is proven to draw a crowd.
And speaking of crowds, for just a second, let’s talk about trade shows and events. The key to a successful event is to drive extensive traffic to your booth, capture contact information and provide memorable experiences for your guests. What better way to do so than to create an eye-catching atmosphere by incorporating the Oculus Rift into your booth? It seems that at every event or trade show, there’s typically a booth that seems to be the “it-factor” booth of the show. There’s something happening at that booth that generates a huge buzz sparking interest of attendees all around. Everyone feels that they have to go check it out and see what all the hype is about. Wouldn’t you love for that to be your booth at your next event?
Ninja Multimedia has been that booth at multiple events! As a matter of fact, at every event that we have demonstrated our Oculus Rift virtual reality experiences, we have always had a line of people waiting to try it out. It is awesome because it gives us an opportunity to start dialog with individuals who might not have talked to us otherwise. Often times, they don’t even know who we are or what we do until they get up to us – they just know that they have to try out The Rift! They can’t help themselves!
Oculus Rift founder, Luckey, initially created a Kickstarter campaign to raise money to launch the company. According to Forbe’s feature, Palmer Luckey: Defying Reality, we learn that his experience at events was the exact same as our own. “During the first day of the fundraiser Luckey was in Dallas, Texas at the annual QuakeCon gaming convention, running demos of the Rift. “We didn’t have any signage, just a black table,” says Luckey. “And we had a line that was over two hours long the entire weekend. That’s when I realized, ‘Oh, man, this is gonna be huge. Ordinary people are interested in virtual reality, not just us crazy sci-fi nerds.’ ”
The ways companies can use the Oculus Rift inside their trade show booths is virtually endless… Imagine a 360 degree panoramic video tour of your facility or venue. And the Rift can even be used for architecture and pre-sales of a building that hasn’t even broken ground yet by creating a virtual environment using 3D models allowing for a virtual walkthrough of the building. What about for product visualizations? Let’s say you manufacture mountain bikes. Using virtual reality, you can showcase your top of the line bicycles in action placing your product anywhere in the world! We can even help individuals with anxiety through exposure therapy. Or maybe you aren’t scared of heights, but would never actually jump out of an airplane, even though you really want to experience it. Well, now you can experience the things you normally wouldn’t through the power of these goggles.
And there you have it – that is exactly why your company needs to get involved with Oculus Rift too – it intrigues ordinary people – everyone – and is a brand new, unique and creative way to reach and captivate your audience! There’s applications for basically anything you can imagine!
Contact us today so that we can start brainstorming together how to tell your brand’s virtual story using the Oculus Rift.
