The Silicon Valley Virtual Reality 2016 conference and expo was held April 27-29. Featuring hundreds of speakers and demos, attendees were offered s wondering what is next for VR. Some of the most exciting developments came from exhibiting companies demonstrating new ways for people to interact in virtual reality.

Companies Demonstrate How VR Will Enable New Social Interactions

Many developers and content creators are focusing on creating social capabilities for VR in the form of multi-user environments. Currently VR experiences are solitary in nature, but shared experiences will grow an industry in size and structure.

One of the biggest announcements of the conference AltspaceVR’s news it will partner with Slack, a real-time messaging platform for teams, to make calls  in VR. With the integration, teams using Sack can now use AltspaceVR to hold meeting in a VR space with or without a VR headset. Team members can make a "VR Call" and even can view a VR room through desktop mode without a headset. AltspaceVR CEO Eric Romo stressed the importance of having interfaces with non-VR applications.

Credit: AltspaceVR

While AltspaceVR had users congregate in a virtual reality room, Noitom’s Project Alice uses motion capture cameras and hand-held controllers with tracking sensors for users to interact with the VR environment. Users are able to fully interact with the world they are in with the body and hand tracking capabilities. The most exciting part of the demo was the multiuser capabilities. Multiple people can be in the space together and interact in the VR world. Unlike AltspaceVR, Project Alice won’t be available for consumers and is intended for corporate use.

High Fidelity showcased two people interacting with an environment by having a tic-tac-toe game on a white board. High Fidelity also announced a new open-source development program. The San Francisco-based company will begin letting developers create 3D objects and upload the assets to a sandbox engine. This will allow creators and storytellers to experiment with VR content.

To see full details on the emerging virtual reality landscape and highlights from our latest research, be sure to order Greenlight VR’s 2016 Industry Report. The report was published April 2016 and is available for download here: greenlightvr.com/reports/2016-industry-report