Sketchfab VR Night Paris

This week we invited 10 of our top community members in Paris to a small VR party at the Sketchfab office to experience their work on a high-end VR system. We always love the opportunity to connect with our community, and we were also super curious to hear your reactions to VR!

Our offices (in Paris and New York) are equipped with HTC Vives and Oculus Rifts, and using our WebVR capabilities viewing your model in VR is as simple as clicking the VR button in the viewer. We also had the new Microsoft HoloLens, and although it doesn’t support WebVR yet, it’s an awesome Augmented Reality (AR) experience.

So, we started by giving everyone 15 minutes to set up their scene for viewing in VR and then ‘discovering’ it all again.

Here are some things that we heard during the evening:

• ‘Now that I have experienced real VR, I finally understand how to design a scene for it.’
• ‘I discovered details in my scene that I had completely forgotten about!’
• ‘I’m glad I had the opportunity to talk with you all and try out some VR Stuff, I had a really nice time.’
• ‘Thank you for the invitation. That was a mind-blowing experience. I was skeptical about VR but now… I love it!!’
• ‘I’m afraid I’ll have to break my piggy bank now and get my own VR system!’
• ‘When will you add sound?’ (yeah, we know 😉 )

Once everyone had had their turn we booted up Google Tilt Brush. It’s VR drawing capabilities are astonishing: imagine waving a paint brush in the air and the paint just staying there! It’s at once purely science-fiction and also a completely natural way to draw – everyone grasped it instantly. We were curious to see what would happen if you put such a tool into the hands of an artist. Here are some initial results (keep in mind that these are quick sketches – made in just 5-10 minutes each):

VR Night Paris by Bart on Sketchfab

We had originally planned to close the event at 8.30pm, but everyone was very reluctant to leave. Many drinks and experiments later, we left the office well after 10pm – a night well spent!

In the future, we’ll host more such events. Would you like to participate? Let us know in the comments below!