The Gaming & Virtual Reality Marketplace at CES 2017 will offer the largest showcase of VR technologies in history, with more than 70 companies, a nearly 50 percent increase in exhibitors from CES 2016. The Augmented Reality Marketplace also returns to CES 2017, illustrating the latest real-world applications from 20 exhibitors and a nearly twice-as-large exhibition footprint. Both marketplaces will incorporate AR, VR and mixed reality (MR) to allow users to view movies with cinematic clarity, drop inside immersive 3D games and be amazed by new worlds of invention and productivity.
“This is a pivotal point in consumer technology history, as AR/VR and other emerging tech categories are driving the entire industry forward,” said Karen Chupka, senior vice president, CES and corporate business strategy, CTA. “From gaming to GPS apps, military applications to medical treatments, innovations in AR are changing our lives for the better. And rapidly-evolving VR technologies are allowing doctors to enhance traditional therapies, architects to design stronger buildings and travel agencies to simplify vacation planning.”
CTA also announced its AR/VR Working Group has finalized a set of industry definitions to help companies better explain to consumers the spectrum of experiences their technologies deliver:
- “Virtual Reality” (VR) creates a digital environment that replaces the user’s real-world environment
- “Augmented Reality” (AR) overlays digitally-created content into the user’s real-world environment
- “Mixed Reality” (MR) is an experience that seamlessly blends the user’s real-world environment and digitally-created content, where both environments can coexist and interact with each other
- “360° Video” or “360 Video” allows the user to look in every direction around him/her
- “Immersive Experience” is a deeply-engaging, multisensory, digital experience, which can be delivered using VR, AR, 360° video, MR and/or other technologies
“The collaboration from across our industry to develop and align on these consumer definitions is the kind of joint effort across the value chain that will ensure the success of this brand new industry and art form,” said Mark Turner, vice president, Corporate Partnerships & Strategy, Technicolor; and chairman of CTA’s AR/VR Working Group. “AR, VR and MR offer consumers a remarkable world of interactive and immersive engagement – whether that’s incorporating information and imagery into our everyday environment or submerging ourselves completely into another world. And these emerging technologies are being applied beyond the entertainment sector, to help patients recover from a myriad of healthcare challenges such as dementia, PTSD and even paralysis. Many industries will be transformed by the way the innovative applications of these immersive technologies. AR, VR and MR are now changing our lives for the better.”
In addition to Technicolor, the CTA AR/VR Working Group includes member companies Amazon, AMD, Dolby Laboratories, the Fox Innovation Lab at Twentieth Century Fox, GoPro, HTC Vive, Intel, Meta, Microsoft, NVIDIA, Samsung, Sony, STRIVR, Technicolor, and Translink Capital.
CTA’s pending U.S. Consumer Technology Sales and Forecasts industry report, to be released Jan. 3 at CES 2017, shows AR/VR technologies will be among the tech sector’s overwhelming leaders in year-to-year growth in 2016. VR unit sales in the U.S. will skyrocket 593 percent over 2015 to 1.4 million units, and total revenues will leap 362 percent to reach $462 million.
The Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality Marketplaces can be found at the Las Vegas Convention Center, South Hall 2. At C Space in ARIA, AR and VR companies will engage marketers and content creators on how this technology will help brands tell compelling stories about their products and why VR is the content marketing trend for 2017. CES will feature eight conference sessions on AR/VR technologies, from Hollywood’s Very Real Virtual Reality Push to AR, VR and the Future of Content. Also, check out this CESTV clip to get excited for a “new reality” at CES 2017.
