Virtual reality technology creates real-life collaborative industry

Global Business

Virtual reality is about to make a big splash. The highly touted HTC Vive and Oculus Rift Virtual Reality headsets both hit the market within the next month. But whether Virtual Reality, or VR, lives up to its promise will also hinge on the quality of its applications, many developed by startups.

CCTV America’s Mark Niu reports from Silicon Valley.

Two years ago, San Francisco Venture Capital firm Rothenberg Ventures decided that in order to better understand virtual reality, it needed to build its very own VR studio and launch the first startup accelerator exclusively for VR companies — River.

Across town in Silicon Valley, the BoostVC accelerator has 15 startups working on virtual reality.

John Voorhees is building software that will allow teams of programmers to literally go inside their computer code to collaborate in a virtual world. He draws inspiration from sci-fi movies such as Tron.

And also at the Boost accelerator, Sculptr VR is taking the MineCraft concept to a whole new level. Strap on the headset, pick up the controllers and you can create your own virtual world.

Next door, startup Realities.IO uses real photos to generate virtual travel destinations.

“There are a lot of people who can’t actually get out of their chairs so there’s old people who can’t travel to other places, there’s people who just don’t have the finances, we enable them to go to these places and see them once in their lifetime,” Realities.IO Co-founder and CEO Dominic Eskofier said.