Immersed Europe: Murcia, Spain Plays Host To VR/AR Conference

The Immersed VR/AR/3D conference landed across the pond, in the city of Murcia, Spain. Probably unknown to most of our readers, with nearly half a million inhabitants, Murcia is known mostly for its food and weather. Located in the southeast of Spain, with over 300 sunny days per year, it can be a paradise for tourists looking for warm weather, or a nightmare for its citizens, especially in the summer. However, these days Murcia has reached a major milestone: It has become the first European city to hold a major virtual reality event.

The first Immersed conference took place last year in Toronto, Canada, but the Immersive Technology Alliance and its Executive Director, Neil Schneider, wanted to have a similar event in the old continent, and Murcia was chosen as host. So, the University of Murcia has held the first Immersed Europe event, on September 3 and 4 -- two days where some of the biggest names in the immersive technologies industry have been enjoying this Mediterranean city. But also, the general public had the chance to see a glimpse of the future, because on Friday, Sept 4, it was open for all from 7-10pm local time.

In these two days, people like Crytek's Fran Vitz, Sony's Simon Benson, AMD's Richard Huddy or Epic's James Golding, among others, spoke extensively about virtual reality, in both keynotes and interesting round tables. Besides the talks, everybody had the chance to try out very interesting virtual reality apps, like the impressive photogrammetry demo created by David Finsterwalder from realities.io that played on the HTC Vive; the Walking Dead experience by Starbreeze Studios that played on its impressive StarVR HMD with a field of view of 210 degrees; the Mission Impossible demo that played on an Oculus Rift DK2; the collaborative VR metaverse from Nucleus VR on CastAR, and several others in devices like Google's Project Tango, Gear VR and even some Google Glasses.