Road to VR will be landing in sunny Barcelona, Spain for its very first Mobile World Congress (MWC) this year, bringing you all the latest news to come out of the world’s largest exhibition for the mobile industry—and quickly becoming a showcase for the latest AR and VR tech.
We’re expecting some pretty big updates to come out of this year’s MWC from hardware manufacturers, including news of the upcoming HTC Vive consumer version and VR prototypes from Acer, not to mention Samsung’s mysterious Galaxy S7 ‘Unpacked’ teaser that heavily features Gear VR.
Don’t let the curiosity grate at your nerves for too long though, because this year will kick off with Samsung’s pre-MWC Unpacked event on February 21st at 7pm CET (click here for local time). You’ll not only be able to watch the event live with us via Samsung’s YouTube channel, but Gear VR owners can also watch the Unpacked event in virtual reality with the Unpacked 360 View app for Gear VR.
Last year’s MWC saw the unveiling of the HTC Vive Developer Edition. Now with a more refined version—dubbed the Vive Pre—already in the hands of developers, the platform not only sports improved headset and hand controller ergonomics, but now has a pass-through camera so you can keep a watchful eye on kitties and coffee tables in your play space. And with the consumer version soon to go into pre-order, we’re hoping to hear exactly what we’ve been missing: pre-order date, price, final specs, and what sort of bundles we can expect as pre-order customers.
See Also: Every Developer at Vision Summit is Taking Home an HTC Vive
The Taiwan-based tech giant Acer is also eyeing virtual reality as CEO Jason Chen told reporters on Tuesday that the company “has been conducting research and development of VR technologies for a while,” and that the company would be “planning to introduce some new technologies to surprise everyone.”
We’ll also be visiting a number of stands and seeing everything from VR and AR apps, to the latest in computer vision that companies like Movidius that just signed onto ‘Eyes of Things,’ (EoT) a multi-disciplinary tech initiative that aims to develop a computer vision-based platform for mobile devices.
MWC will be held from February 22-25, so check back this week for the latest news in all things virtual and augmented.
