Alongside the implementation of the metaverse, virtual reality (VR) has quickly become one of the hottest trends in the event industry. After two years of perfecting the virtual event strategy, companies have started developing new and innovative ways to excite and engage their attendees.
By adding a virtual reality experience to an online event, companies are offering a new way in which audience members can interact with each other and the event platform itself. VR enables people to enjoy some of the physical aspects of virtual events that they might be missing otherwise.
For example, online concerts have been a thing for a long time now, but virtual reality can transform those concerts into a completely different experience. Instead of sitting in front of a computer, you can stand in what seems to be a crowd of people as you watch your favorite artist perform.
Much like virtual events, VR doesn’t completely erase the need for in-person events. There will always be people who prefer to attend events in real life, but that doesn’t mean that virtual reality is insignificant or pointless. VR has the potential to be huge in the event industry, especially as people become more and more interested in the idea of the metaverse.
In this blog, we’ve compiled a list of the most interesting and innovative virtual reality events we’ve seen in the past few years. Hopefully, this list will help inspire you to implement virtual reality in your upcoming event.
Here are the best examples of events held in virtual reality
Burning Man
Burning Man is easily one of the most well-attended events of the year. Over 70,000 people annually make the trek to Black Rock Desert in Nevada to participate in activities, meet new people, and watch the planned events. However, when COVID forced many people into isolation and made traveling nearly impossible, the event was put on hold for the majority of its attendees.
This led to the event announcing “Virtual Burn” in 2021. Burning Man took on the multiverse last year in order to allow all of its dedicated audience members to attend, even if in-person attendance was impossible. This enabled viewers to attend the
Secret Sky 2021
Secret Sky 2021 was a virtual music festival hosted by Porter Robinson, who has attempted to popularize virtual concerts for the past few years. According to Jordan Olomon of NME, Porter Robinson “recreated the most meaningful parts of a physical festival. The virtual reality and browser-based event was an ode to the power of live music. The website teleported fans to a lush field full of robed avatars representing real people.”
Most attendees and critics labeled this event as one of the best examples of the power of virtual reality and how it can completely transform digital experiences.
Quills Fest
For the past two years, many people have been missing out on physical experiences. Going to the movie theater, shopping in malls, and even visiting museums are all things that people haven’t been able to do easily for the past two years. Quills Fest was an innovative event that invited art-lovers to virtually visit their diverse range of art exhibits.
The virtual walk-through was accompanied by a two-day event in which the artists held discussions and lectures based on their exhibits. This inaugural event shows the immense shift that has taken place in our society, as well as the benefits our ‘new normal’ has to offer. This event was attended and hosted by artists from around the globe and brought together so many different people from all different walks of life.
LiveNation’s Meet the Band
With huge names in the industry like Billie Eilish and Kanye West hosting virtual concerts, these digital experiences have grown in popularity immensely. LiveNation quickly caught onto this and began hosting virtual ‘Meet the Band’ events with other big names in the music industry.
Grammy award-winning band Imagine Dragons was one of the first bands to take part in this online experience with LiveNation. This event offered VIP tickets to guests that gave them exclusive backstage passes that allowed them to meet their favorite band. The backstage passes also enabled guests to view interviews and access specialized content that no one else could see.
Montero Xperience
In the same way that virtual reality has gotten so popular in the past few years, augmented reality (AR) has also become a hot trend in the technology industry. Lil Nas X, one of the biggest artists in the industry since his debut in 2019, hosted his album release in augmented reality in September of 2021.
Augmented reality allows users to essentially enter into cyberspace via their mobile devices. By scanning your phone around your room, you’ll be able to see different objects and environments in a 360-degree view. This album release indicated the start of a new trend where popular artists began implementing augmented or virtual reality aspects into their albums, concerts, and other endeavors.