New website, featuring 24 themed channels, is dedicated to helping VR visor owners find and share all types of great virtual content.
VRNation.TV, a unique online community where virtual reality, augmented reality and mixed reality enthusiasts can share cool virtual experiences, has officially launched.
Founded by 29-year veteran high-tech journalist Scott Lehane, who has written thousands of articles for dozens of publications around the world, the site is designed to solve one of the biggest problems new VR visor owners face – finding great content.
“While VR video games are awesome and we’ll be covering that sector closely, that’s just the tip of the iceberg. VR is vastly bigger than that,” Lehane said. “Considering it a game platform is like judging computers based on 1977’s Atari 2600 or 1979’s Intellivision. We’ve scoured the web to put together 24 channels of curated 3D and 360-degree content giving you the lean-back, passive experience of TV under our VR Sherpa section. Think of it as cable TV for VR. Put on your visor and just watch.”
VR Sherpa will be updated regularly with new 360-degree content. The channel lineup includes sports, games, music videos and concerts, science, nature, technology, museums, travel, news and documentaries, cinema, animation, comedy and horror, as well as more quirky channels that suit VR particularly well, like Cuteness Overload to relax; Heebie Jeebies to face your phobias; The Daily iDose for psychedelia, and The Zen Den for virtual meditative experiences. There’s even a special VR Sherpa channel for cat lovers called Kitty Corner.
VR Live gives users a calendar of upcoming live VR events based on Google Calendars so users can easily add an event to their own calendar and set a reminder.
“Live VR streaming is still nascent, but there’s an intensity to it that can’t be denied,” Lehane continued. “And with 10s of millions of visors already in consumers’ hands, I see it as a technology that will really come of age with next year’s Olympics in Tokyo.”
VR Hotspots is a showcase of breathtaking Street View panoramas from around the world. It was developed with a little help from WP Google Maps (https://www.wpgmaps.com/) who provided some custom code to make it work.
If you don’t have a visor, you can get the mobile experience by panning around with your cell phone or tablet, or you can click and drag on the video on your desktop or laptop to look around.
The site also offers daily news headlines to keep users up-to-date on the latest developments in the virtual world as well as an email newsletter.
While VRNation.TV is open to the public to view, registered members are encouraged to contribute to a unique crowd-sourcing experiment, sharing their own favorite videos, playlists, VR Hotspots or even helping each other out with technical issues. “Our Community section lets you create your own personal profile, add friends, communicate with other members, join the forums, submit your own VR videos and 360-degree stills, enter contests, comment on posts or sign up for our newsletters,” Lehane revealed. “We’re also looking for members to share their own VR Mixtapes. Let’s see what you’ve got!”
"But of course, if you want to just lurk, you can," he added.
The Flatlanders section includes helpful how-to tutorials and reviews, as well as gameplay teasers and unboxing videos from around the web.
In the coming weeks, the site will be launching a Buyers Guide covering hardware, software, games and accessories.
Lehane is joined by business development director Erik Schrobilgen, an old-school veteran animator from the days of cel animation. His credits include such classics as Magic School Bus and other animated educational series from Hanna-Barbera, Nelvana and FOX. Having run a number of successful entrepreneurial ventures over the years, he brings an acute business acumen to the team.
Monique Craig, who has overseen a number of social campaigns for community interest groups and bricks-and-mortar retail outlets, rounds out the team as social media coordinator. She will take the lead on all-things social for VRNation.
Source: VRNation.tv
