NEWS

From November 28^th to December 1^st, the ACM Symposium on Virtual Reality Software and Technology (VRST) was held, and this year it was Tokyo’s and Waseda University’s turn to host the event. Kelvin Cheng, one of Rakuten Institute of Technology’s researchers, attended the symposium to represent his submitted paper and hold a demo presentation at one of the sessions. The name of the demo was Using Mixed Reality for Promoting Brand Perception, and focused on how we use the technology to spread awareness of who we are and what we do.

VRST is one of the major international symposiums for the presentation of new research results, systems, and techniques among researchers and developers in the field of augmented, virtual and mixed reality (AR/VR/MR). VRST brings together the main international research groups working on these technologies, and the world’s leading companies that provide or consume systems for these. To be able to represent our research and solutions at this event is a great honor.

The conference is mainly focused on academics to share their latest research results, but there is also a heavy industry presence, particularly from major companies that are active in the field of AR, VR, and MR. Examples of these are Square Enix and Polyphony, who attend to showcase their latest work to give the academics a look at how the technologies are used in industry to create user focused experiences. The opening keynote was held by Bandai Namco, talking about the conception of VR Zone, VR arcade centers created by them as a testbed to introduce VR gaming to the general public. It started as a test in Odaiba, Tokyo, and became such a success that the concept is now starting to expand internationally.

VRST did not only let us present our achievements, but it also gave us invaluable insights into other research breakthroughs and applications in the real world that is sure to spur us on going forward to create even better experiences.

For more information on VRST, see the link below.

VRST 2018