Virtual Reality is exploding in California
The first virtual reality group in Los Angeles was VRLA, which was created by a film production student at the University of Southern California by the name of Cosmo Scharf. He then recruited Music Video and Commercial Director Jonnie Ross to help organize events in Los Angeles. Their 1st meetup was help in April 2014 at Digital Domain, which is an American visual effects and digital production company based in Venice, Los Angeles, California. Exhibitors included E McNeill with Darknet, Matt Sonic with VirtualReality.io, Ed Mason with Gameface Labs, and many many more. Even Philip Rosedale showed up to present HighFidelty.io
This strong sense of community was ever-prevalent at an Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) afterparty hosted by VRLA. Enthusiasts came from all across the world to be there. New games were demoed before their upcoming releases at this VR mixer including the Mario 64-style third-person cartoony run-and-jump platformer game called Lucky’s Tale (created by Playful Corp). The energetic team with Survios floated in and out of the crowd. In-between all the commotion were the founders of most of the California Virtual Reality meetups. Some travelled from Silicon Valley, while others flew in from the United Kingdom just to be a part of the scene. Callum Underwood, the Development Relations Manager for Oculus, was present. A few reporters showed up as well including Imad Khan with the Daily Dot and a gonzo-style blogger for HackerTrips. Ben Lang, Author at Road to VR and VR podcaster Reverend Kyle was there too.
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