West coasters are a lucky bunch, the growing popularity of virtual reality has brought forth plenty of great community gatherings to choose from—SVVR, VRLA, SFVR, and OCVR—just to name a few. Now, the East Coast is getting into the spirit. VR Philly will hold Philadelphia’s first public VR Meetup next week on July 2nd.

The East Coast VR community continues to grow. New Yorkers have a local VR chapter, Virtual Reality NYC, along with North Carolina’s RTP Virtual Reality Enthusiasts, and now the “City of Brotherly Love” can represent. The VR Philly Meetup, co-organized by Chad Jordan and Tyler Roach, two local VR developers and enthusiasts, is free and open to anyone interested in virtual reality, whether you’re an experienced developer or a total VR newbie. The Meetup will be attended by myself on behalf of Road to VR, and feature a number of Oculus Rift demo stations for the public to try, along with three presentations by guest speakers. The event details and schedule are listed below:

devnuts philly
VR Philly’s first Meetup will be held in the Devnuts hackerspace.

VR Philly is an open group for anyone interested in virtual reality in the Philadelphia area. Whether you’re a developer, artist, entrepreneur or just interested in VR, we encourage you to join and meet other like minded individuals. Please RSVP so we have an accurate headcount for refreshments.

When: Wednesday, July 2nd, from 7:00 – 10:00 PM

Where: Devnuts, a tech-oriented community center located in Northern Liberties. Their address is 908A N 3rd St, Philadelphia, PA 19123.

Registration: Please join and RSVP on the VR Philly Meetup page: http://www.meetup.com/vrphilly/

Parking: Limited street parking should be available. Public transportation will be a more ideal option but not required.

Special thanks to our media sponsor, Road to VR, for all of their assistance with our first meetup.

The list of speakers for this event include:

Ben Lang, Founder & Executive Editor of Road to VR

How Virtual Reality Can Teach You to Fly: True Virtual Reality is about more than just visual immersion. Come with me on a thought experiment where using commercially available brainwave-reading devices, some interesting psychological tricks, and a haptic suit, you could fly free as a bird.

Yuval Boger, CEO of Sensics

The market evolution of VR goggles: The talk will discuss the evolving differences between professional-grade and consumer-grade VR goggles. It will cover the sources of innovation in the market and examine methods and opportunities for individuals/enthusiasts to make significant contributions to the VR “state of the art

Daniel Hellerman, Local Game Developer

Virtual Reality, Sculpting Worlds in 2014 + Beyond: Presenting on the future of VR. Daniel’s presentation examines what technologies are required for truly immersive experiences, how we got here, and what the future of Virtual Reality will be like.

Road to VR is a proud media sponsor of VR Philly!

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Ben is the world's most senior professional analyst solely dedicated to the XR industry, having founded Road to VR in 2011—a year before the Oculus Kickstarter sparked a resurgence that led to the modern XR landscape. He has authored more than 3,000 articles chronicling the evolution of the XR industry over more than a decade. With that unique perspective, Ben has been consistently recognized as one of the most influential voices in XR, giving keynotes and joining panel and podcast discussions at key industry events. He is a self-described "journalist and analyst, not evangelist."
  • sponge101

    These vr meetups will flourish because unlike other big convention like E3 or CES that requires excessive amount of space and resources, vr demos can be set up almost anywhere with a laptop and power. Hell, you can do a demo in a starbucks if you wanted to.

    I expect vr is going to follow the format of convention like PAX, where there’s a major gathering on the west and east coast–oh, and Australia too.

  • VRMatthew

    Nice to see more and more of these popping up. I would like to put another west coast VR meetup on the map. This one is in Vancouver, Canada which has already had several great meetups. The last one on June 23rd 2014 featured a motion capture studio that any Unity VR environment can just plug and play right into. Amazing! Best part is, it is for rent at fantastic prices. Trying it myself really underscored how big VR Arcades are going to be. Walking up to a chair in VR felt so real that I felt the urge to sit down on it. Glad I did not in a room full of watchers and a newspaper reporter. Full motion and the freedom to walk around, definitely adds yet another layer of immersion and presence. I was not expecting that. Here is a photo of me trying it out. If you look carefully, you can spot some of the motion cameras. https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=654218834661308&set=pcb.654219181327940&type=1&theater

    The next VanVR meetup is July 21st. Details can be found here. http://www.meetup.com/VanVirtualReality/

    Cheers,
    VRMatthew