This year marked a huge turning point for virtual reality, with the release of Facebook’s Oculus Rift, HTC’s Vive and Sony’s Playstation VR. After the technology had been in the fringes for years, it’s now on its way to disrupting every kind of media out there, from gaming, video and news.
Strapping on a headset and visiting another world may be the most common use of the technology, but as Mark Zuckerberg showed in a demonstration earlier this year, pretty soon we’ll be visiting friends and holding meetings in virtual spaces. With the three biggest headsets only on the market for less than a year, it truly is the beginning for VR — and the possibilities are virtually endless.
Related: How Virtual Reality Will Change Storytelling and Marketing in the Next Decade
To get a pulse on the biggest trends and to see where VR is headed in the immediate future, we reached out to Jenna Seiden, head of content acquisition and partnerships for HTC Vive. She will discuss the field at CES during a panel discussion on Jan. 5.
Her responses have been edited for length and clarity.
What’s surprised you in the past year in the VR field?
What has surprised me the most about VR is just how much enthusiasm and energy for this medium there is out there, and how it’s coming from a range of categories. For me, there are some unexpected places that VR is being applied, for instance,…