Spain celebrates World VR Day with a focus on the metaverse

Specialists in these technologies Immersive XR, GDG Zaragoza, Neàpolis and XRHub Pamplona have organized the Spanish edition of the VR Day, which is celebrated all over the world.

The past 20 November different cities around the world celebrated the Global VR Day to value virtual reality technologies, extended and metaverse. In Spain, Immersive XR – Extended Reality Association of Spain, GDG Zaragoza, Neàpolis and XRHub Pamplona organized the VR Day Spain.

Non-profit, VR Day is an initiative open to all the public interested in knowing the potential of virtual reality. It is a call in which events are held in different cities around the world, with the aim of promoting the knowledge of this technology.

The Spanish edition of VR Day had a positive reception, both in its online and face-to-face version. In the first format, the event started with The Speaker, in which Spanish virtual and augmented reality projects are given a voice, such as the one presented by Jose Luis Perez, content director of Lyceum VR, on the advantages of learning based on experience and how school-age children retain information much better with this technology.

In the environment of Video games, Enrique Martinez, CEO of Entalto Studios, company based in Zaragoza that has developed its own movement system in VR, so that the player does not get dizzy even if he flies through cyberspace in his video game NeonHAT.

Jorge Esteban BleiN, co-founder and creative director of Fourth Wall VR, presented the group of immersive theatreor interactive from which they investigate the importance of storyliving. "VR is not a passive medium like cinema," he stressed., but people live the stories and an emotional magic is created between the actors and the participants".

These technologies are also emerging in the retail. That's why, Alvaro Monzon, CEO of DeuSens, explained how e-commerce processes improve at the point of sale, where AR "turns the purchase process into a true hyper-experience".

As for the debate on legislation whenever a new technology emerges, Paul F. Bourgeois, NewLaw attorney from PwC Tax and Legal, presented the solutions of Legal Tech and Tax Tech to apply them to artificial intelligence, NFT and Extended Reality.

Applications in the medical field showed them Ibai Baron, consultant Bless you in IB Healthy Movement, who uses a video game to get his patients moving and not remembering their pain or what their body position is. It also offers educational content regarding pain neurophysiology so that they understand why their bodies hurt..

In VR Day Spain there was also space for the metaverse, a topical issue after the change of name from Facebook to Meta, with the presentation of two Spanish projects.

Ivan Rubio, marketing senior manager of Acciona Energy, recounted how they solved the halt in customer visits to their Renewable Energy Control Center during the pandemic, thanks to the development of a virtual tour in real time.

A platform in WebVR, which they describe as 'the big brother of renewables', thanks to which they arranged more than fifty guided tours, added more than a thousand to the public version, that have opened the door to new projects.

For its part, Infinitum is the project of Virtual Voyagers, whose CEO and creative director, Edgar Martin-Blas, presented as "one of the examples of what the metaverse will be". A digital twin of a residential complex at scale 1:1 that allows "to live in it before it is built".

With the use of Web3D and VR technologies they have managed to create a real-time experience that goes beyond a virtual tour, in which it is possible to "arrive by yacht, cook, and even play paddle tennis or golf", Explained.

The round table in which several professionals debated about the metaverse, which was broadcast live from Barcelona, put the finishing touch of the day.

"The big leap won't be Facebook., but the 5G technology that allows us to compute in the cloud," he said. Emili Blanque, innovation consultant at Visyon-, in addition to glasses with opacity levels, with which you can switch between virtual or augmented reality".

for Patricia M. Val, executive producer at Future Space, "Facebook is going to dedicate itself to capturing the user because it wants to sell Ads in the virtual world”. Whereas Cai Felip, CEO of Linking Realities, advised that the important thing “is specialization. Let the metaverse be decentralized, with open standards and connected worlds. Just like they use the web to connect to private and public companies, this must be possible in the metaverse."

All talks are available online on the event's website, as well as the workshops given by different companies.

Other articles on Acciona Energy, B Healthy Movement, Fourth Wall VR, Deusens, Entalto Studios, Future Space, GDG Zaragoza, Immersive XR, Linking Realities, Lyceum VR, Neapolis Barcelona, PwC Tax and Legal, Virtual Voyagers, Visyon360, VR Day Spain2021, VR Days, XRHub Pamplona