Pointwest to Host Virtual Reality Development Seminar

Jig
May 27, 2016

Pointwest, one of the country’s largest IT-BPM firms, will host a Virtual Reality application development seminar on 29 May 2016 at the Pointwest Building in UP-AyalaLand Technohub.

Co-organized by Samsung Mobile and VR Philippines, the event, “Hello, Virtual World”, aims to introduce people to app development for virtual space, particularly for Samsung’s smartphone-based virtual reality gadget, Gear VR.

“Hello, Virtual World” is also being done in preparation for the Philippine Mobile VR Jam on June 10-12, a “hackathon” where participants are challenged to make apps for Gear VR in 48 hours.

Anyone interested in the emergent industry of virtual reality are welcome to participate in “Hello, Virtual World”, and the forty expected attendees are composed of students, professionals, and artists alongside IT specialists.

“Pointwest has long recognized the kind of impact new technologies have, and few developments have as much effect on the industries we move in as virtual reality does,”
Rene Canlas, Pointwest’s Technical Security Officer and a leading member of VR Philippines.

“We’re honored and excited to contribute to the development of VR here in the Philippines by hosting ‘Hello, Virtual World,” added Canlas.

Progress in Virtual Reality

Virtual Reality in one form or another has long been a staple of science fiction. It was only with the successful crowdfunding through Kickstarter of the VR gear called Oculus Rift back in 2012 that VR stopped being a sci-fi fan’s dream, and started becoming feasible. Attempts were made earlier to produce viable virtual reality gear, but it was only with Oculus Rift that many of the challenges of the technology got addressed.

Even with such developments, people thought that commercial-grade VR gear will still be decades away (each Oculus Kit Dev Kit 1 was introduced at $300 USD), until social media giant Facebook bought Oculus VR, the maker of Oculus Rift, for $2 Billion USD in March 2014, which started off a developmental race in VR.

Today, other technology giants like Microsoft, HTC, Google and even Mozilla are all racing to get VR gear out to the general public given its potential impact on information consumption, entertainment, and in various professions like medicine and the arts.

Samsung’s Gear VR, designed to turn a Samsung Galaxy smartphone into a virtual reality system, was developed with the help of Oculus in November 2015. Samsung gave its latest version of Gear VR to those pre-ordering the Samsung Galaxy S7.

“Every generation comes with a ground breaking technology that changes the way people communicate. From the Gutenburg printing press, to the telegraph, to radio, television, personal computers, mobile phones, the Internet, smartphones, and now the IoT phenomenon,” Gabriel Enriquez of VR Philippines

“I believe that virtual and augmented reality are the next contenders in the sequence. It’s very exciting to be a pioneer of a technology that has the potential to revolutionize a lot of industries.”