XR is more and more popular around the world. In Japan, a lot of meetups accelerate XR growth for various domain. "xR with Anything Meetup" is one of them. The meetup has started since April in 2021. The main differences between it and others are that it covers not only technologies but also use cases.
This blog post introduce feature of the meetup.
1. What is "xR with Anything Meetup" ？
The meetup covers XR technologies, knowhow, creative works, marketing, AI and so on. Participants can also share these creative works.
@xR_NakanoHito organizes the meetup since April. Due to COVID-19, all events had been held in VR spaces.
Vol. 00- Vol. 05 meetups has been held so far and over 1,000 persons participated.
These screenshots are scene of actual xRAM meetups. These are held in cluster.
Most of past events are available for You Tube channel.
2. Popular presentation categories
2.1 Markets in VR notifications utilizing VRChat, NeosVR, etc..
Several presenters organize markets that they can purchase digital items in VR worlds.
Examples :
2.2 Live shows and stages in VR
It is one of my surprises that live shows and stages could be held in VR world.
Panda Revue (ぱんだ歌劇団) is a theatre company that every actors act in VR world.
Actual actors use VR HMD, controllers, and motion captures (if necessary). Their locomotion and movement synchronize avatars. Audience watch these avatars in VR world.
VRChat or cluster are generally used for the stages.
Here is a stage PV by Panda Revue.
"蓮托" (Rentaku) is a new music unit since 2020. Two singers is belong to the unit. When they start to have the unit, bad effects of COVID-19 made them given up to open live shows at physical spaces.
But they found another solution to hold live shows. The answer is VR. They adapted "Rec Room" and held several live shows since April 2021.
Here is one of examples of their live shows in Rec Room.
2.3 VR DJ (Disk Jockey)
Due to my lack of knowledge of VR solutions, it was almost first time to know VR DJ. As long as I heard from several lightning talks, "VR DJ" is recognized as events that some persons control music and events at VR world and several persons attend the spaces. All members attend it as avatars.
Let me introduce popular VR DJ events in Japan. Some of events seems not have web sites.
クラブ&バー 羽休め
MODAY RELEIF
火曜ドラムンベース部 (#火ド部)
Novice
Virtual Dream Evil
Sunday Live Party
A presenter in xRAM meetups said VR DJ events are held five or six times in every week.
You can check popular events in the following twitter account.
2.4 Technologies
Presentations regarding technologies are of course included. But not so much so far.
Organizer of xRAM said technological presentations were also welcomed.
2.5 Others
Various topics are included in the meetup. I think one of valuable presentations is VR and law (copy rights).
In meetup #05, a lawyer had a presentation regarding VR and copy rights.
A circle activity in Waseda University had a presentation regarding how to promote their activities with utilizing VR.
3. Conclusion
In this blog post, I introduced a meetup regarding XR. The "xRAM" covers various categories.
According to organizers of the meetup, they plan to have several meetups with abroad communities.
If you have interested in it, stay tuned the web site!
