Celebrate New Year's Eve in Virtual Reality

This year, you can celebrate New Year’s Eve in Virtual Reality. While you hopefully have plans of you own, check out the celebrations in other locations in VR. It’s been an incredible year for VR developments and cities around the globe will be offering 360 videos.

Here’s a quick guide for an immersive experience of New Year’s Eve in Virtual Reality. Just remember to keep in mind the time zone difference!

London Fireworks Display. Tickets for London’s New Year’s Eve show have long sold out but the BBC network has come to the rescue with a 360 virtual broadcast tonight. The live stream begins at 11:50 GMT and you can use this YouTube link or the video below.

Eye Heart NYE in San Francisco – December 31st, 2016. If you’re in San Francisco, check out the Virtual Reality playground. According to Virtual Reality Reporter,
Sponsored by UploadVR, HTC Vive and Syber this is an awesome opportunity to experience VR as you usher in the New Year. Live music from Klingande, Viceroy, Kill Frenzy, a giant Ferris Wheel, plus food and drinks will make this a New Year’s to remember.
Madrid New Year’s Eve Celebration from a GoPro. Here’s the countdown in Madrid from the vantage-point of a well-placed GoPro camera for the New Year’s Eve countdown.

AlSpaceVR. Once again, the Social VR platform will be hosting an event. And if your family and friends are not around, you can still celebrate virtually with others. And since AltSpaceVR can bring in live video feeds, you can still watch the ball drop in New York City and check out the events in other cities around the world.

New Year’s Eve in Virtual Reality and Real Life

However you celebrate tonight, we wish you a wonderful New Year! See you in 2017!

Emory Craig

Emory Craig is a VR consultant, writer, and speaker with years of experience in art, new media, and higher education. He is actively engaged in innovative developments for AR and VR at the intersection of learning, games, and immersive storytelling. He is fascinated by virtual worlds, AI-driven avatars, and the ethical implications of blurring the boundaries between the real and the virtual.

News, Media, and Events

Maya Georgieva is quoted in The Economist on Using augmented reality in marketing.

Join us today at the iLRN Conference where we'll present as co-authors the Executive Summary of the State of XR Report at 1:00pm (EST), June 23rd - immersively in VirBELA.

Maya Georgieva is quoted in The Atlantic It’s Cool to Look Terrifying on Pandemic Instagram on the use of AR during the Coronavirus.

Emory Craig did a keynote at the GESSDubai Conference in Dubai, UAE, "Reinventing Learning for the Future: A World of Virtual Reality and AI Avatars."

Emory Craig spoke at the XR in Education Summit at Yale University on "The Future of XR."

Maya Georgieva was on a panel at the Saleforce conference, "The Evolution and Power of Disruptive Technologies" in San Francisco.

We'll be at the EDUCAUSE Annual Conference in Chicago with a Preconference workshop and other sessions the week of October 14th.

We'll be at the OC6 conference and reporting on the latest news from Oculus in San Jose on Sept. 25th and 26th.

We're on an XR and Learning panel at the The Chronicle of Higher Education and HP Leadership Summit, September 17, 2019, at The City University of New York (CUNY) The Graduate School.

We're at several conferences this summer, including AWE, SIGGRAPH 2019, and Singularity University's Global Summit.

We're delighted to be joining faculty in the College of Nursing at Sacred Heart University for a full day Professional Development Workshop, "Augmented and Virtual Reality Applications in Nursing Education." June 2019.

Ready for a discussion on "Ethics and Digital Fluency in VR and Immersive Learning Environments"? Join us at the NYS-CIO Conference in June 2019.

AR? VR? XR?

There are multiple terms covering the broad spectrum of immersive technologies from AR, which superimposes data and images on the user’s space to VR, which is a digitally simulated immersive environment where users can look, move around, or interact with virtual space or objects. Mixed Reality (MR) is a hybrid of the physical and the virtual that feels more immersive than AR since digital entities can be occluded by objects in the real world. And then there is XR (or Extended Reality), which is an umbrella concept covering augmented, mixed, and virtual reality. XR does not refer to specific technologies but how the entire category of immersive technologies extend and enhance human experience.

Terminology is organic and fluid, more an act of convenience than accuracy (especially in technology). A good example is the portable computer you hold you in your hand but continue to refer to as your “Smartphone.”

You Can Celebrate New Year’s Eve in Virtual Reality

New Year’s Eve in Virtual Reality and Real Life

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