The PR challenge companies have is that VR can be a social experience.

It is not like Netflix, where friends can watch the same show together it is more personal. That makes VR a very reclusive experience, which people cannot participate and enjoy. They are:Īn antisocial experience – VR is effectively strapping a big slab of metal over a face, to see pictures privately. How does all this relate to PR? Currently, VR has several image issues which it must deal with to really hit mainstream appeal. In the centre of the storm was Oculus, who pushed out the Oculus Rift in 2016, Oculus Go in 2018, and Oculus Quest in 2019. Other start-ups went big and pushed high-spec headsets, such as Pimax with 4K screens per eye. HTC diversified its portfolio and made the HTC VIVE, a competitor to the Oculus Rift which can handle user applications. Google came out with Google Glass before the product folded (and re-emerged again in 2019). One by one, more companies entered the immersive race. This single acquisition prompted what I call the Immersive Reality Revolution, a spurt of VC investments into software and hardware that promotes virtual reality. Which company was it? Was it a data analytics firm, to better process the shooting messages of its platform? An encryption service to protect the privacy of its users? Or perhaps an augmented reality start-up to bolster the quality of its filters? Even though all of the above can be connected, and Facebook’s core products, Facebook invested in an entirely different area which was beyond its remit as a social network company: Oculus, a VR start-up.

In 2014, Facebook shook the world by buying a company for $2bn.

Keep calm and nobody explodes vr