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Businesses redefine innovation, creativity and capabilities through virtual reality
- Thrilling VR experiences were created and adapted to support others through COVID-19
- View the full winner’s list at: https://vrawards.aixr.org/winners-and-finalists-2021/
London, UK – 18th November 2021 – The Academy of International Extended Reality (AIXR) has announced its 2021 VR Awards winners following a fully immersive virtual reality awards ceremony in AltspaceVR. MC of the night, Mike Butcher (M.B.E.) of TechCrunch led the ceremony and drew in the attention of hundreds.
With over 128 international nominations, 98 finalists went before a panel of over 70 expert judges, undergoing a rigorous judging process.
With almost 10,000 public votes cast across two categories, the community came out in force to show their appreciation for their favourite VR Social Influencer of the Year, and for the first time ever, the VR Game of the Year category too.
Studio 3DAR were awarded Film of the Year for their stunning submission, Paper Birds. Paper Birds is the story of a short-sighted child with an exceptional talent for music. He must find his way through the world of darkness to bring back his sister, who was taken away by the shadows.
Osso VR have received the award for Healthcare of the Year for their project Osso VR – Cinematic VR Surgical Training Platform. The medical training platform is for medical professionals of all levels – and offers a realistic, hands-on training environment.
Showcasing how VR can push the boundaries of remote learning, Vale VR received the award in the Education and Training category. Their innovative use of VR targeted workers and offered training before they even got underground at a mining site. Launching in early 2021, the team meticulously studied the machinery so they could reconstruct its virtual counterpart. This experience prepared the team with the knowledge to perform their job underground safely and effectively.
It was a big year for VR Hardware with finalists including Facebook and the Oculus Quest 2 and Pico’s Neo 3 Pro but the award on the night was collected by HP for their Reverb G2 Omnicept Edition. Referred to as the world’s most intelligent VR headset, the HP Reverb G2 Omnicept Edition captures physiological responses for a unique user-centric experience; Developers can now design applications that adapt to each user and take VR experiences to the next level. It was clearly a favourite amongst the judges.
Open to public voting for the first time to make up 10% of it’s overall judging score, Game of the Year was awarded to Demeo by Resolution Games – the team missed out on a double gong in the Innovative Company of the Year category which was awarded to Virtualware. Demeo is designed to be a gaming experience shared with friends as it centres around interacting with their minifigure within a virtual tabletop.
Other notable winners include:
- The winner of the Accenture Lifetime Achievement Award – Tom Furness. The Academy of International Extended Reality (AIXR) unveiled the winner of this year’s ‘Accenture VR Lifetime Achievement’ award winner: Thomas A. Furness III, American inventor, professor at the University of Washington and pioneer in human interface technology. Tom will holoport live into the VR Awards ceremony on the 18th November through Altspace VR to formally accept his award.
- Current Rising took the award for Out of Home Entertainment, which, given the challenging year for all location-based entertainment due to Covid restrictions – still opened as one of the first major VR location-based experiences in Europe. From London’s Royal Opera House, the users are immersed in an artistic 15-minute‘ poem’, enhanced with 4DFX technology.
- For the first time, the public was able to vote for their VR Social Influencer of the Year Award. For the second year running, Thrill Seeker took home the prize after receiving 1000’s public votes.
- VR Experience of the Year was awarded to judges favourite Madrid Noir
The user is taken through the story of Lola, as she digs through her late uncle’s memories and follows the shadowy trail to attempt to piece together the mysteries of the past. This charming mystery unfolds across a city that lives in the night, a Madrid now lost to time.
Daniel Colaianni, AIXR CEO commented: “Last night, we were delighted to have been able to celebrate the year’s achievements within the Metaverse once more and through our completely bespoke 5th-anniversary world-hop experience – the amazing team here have created a one-of-a-kind virtual journey through the history of the VR Awards and the founders, an event like this is truly a world-first for an awards ceremony. Our guests were transported into 5 distinctly designed worlds that represent the 5 years that the VR Awards have been recognising VR excellence all across the globe.”
“For the first time, we witnessed our Accenture VR Lifetime Achievement Award winner: Tom Furness enter the stage through holoportation and this highlight of the night left the audience in absolute awe, his joy and passion to uphold creativity and innovation within the XR industry for the generations after us, resounded with everything the VR Award’s has stood for from the very beginning. The future is bright and bold for Virtual Reality – and I am immensely proud to announce to stand on the precipice of something so fundamentally life-changing to the way we work, live and grow.”
The live stream is still available to watch here: https://vrawards.aixr.org/
For event highlights, backstage interviews with all the winners, clips of the nominated projects and all the latest images from the night’s events will be available at https://vrawards.aixr.org/.
The full list of 2021 winners are detailed below:
VR Film of the Year:
3DAR – Paper Birds
VR Social Influencer:
ThrillSeeker
VR Hardware of the Year:
HP – HP Reverb G2 Omnicept Edition
VR Game of the Year:
Resolution Games – Demeo
VR Experience of the Year:
ATLAS V & NO GHOST – Madrid Noir
VR Marketing of the Year:
Geometry Ogilvy Japan – Shibuya Virtual Halloween
Rising VR Company of the Year:
triple A code
Innovative VR Company of the Year:
Virtualware
VR Education and Training of the Year:
NORCAT – Vale VR
VR Healthcare of the Year:
Osso VR – Osso VR – Cinematic VR Surgical Training Platform
Out-of-home VR Entertainment of the Year:
Figment Productions Ltd.- Current, Rising
VR Social Impact Award:
Accenture – AVEnueS – Race Equity in Child Welfare
VR Enterprise Solution of the Year:
Masters of Pie – Hyperbat – World’s First VR Design Review over 5G
Accenture VR Lifetime Achievement Award:
Tom Furness
The VR Awards is at the centre of recognition and celebration of outstanding achievement in virtual reality. Previous winners include Oculus, Vodafone, Virtualware and HTC.
About VR Awards
The VR Awards is at the centre of recognition and celebration of outstanding achievement in VR. Combined with year-round international initiatives, the VR Awards brings together a night of red-carpet highlights, the celebration of excellence and unique access to the world’s most influential names in immersive technology. The VR Awards is an unmissable awards ceremony for a wide range of decision-making professionals from various industries across the world. The VR Awards are overseen by AIXR’s independent Steering Board.
About AIXR
Internationally, AIXR identifies, celebrates, and exemplifies the very best in immersive technology. By connecting people, projects, and knowledge together AIXR enables growth, nurtures talent, and develops standards, bringing wider public awareness and understanding to virtual and augmented reality industries. Officially founded in 2019, AIXR’s not-for-profit, full time team now boasts over 100 company members, supports a growing network of over 12,000 people internationally and work’s across North America, Europe and Asia. Learn more at https://aixr.org/
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VR Awards/AIXR press contact:
Lisa Mach, Marketing Manager
Tel: +44 (0) 1206 598 016
Email: [email protected]