VR Veteran Tony Parisi is Leading Unity’s AR & VR Strategy Beyond Gaming

The keynote from Unity’s Vision VR/AR Summit yesterday showcased just how far Unity is reaching into non-gaming content when it comes to augmented and virtual reality. The person who is in charge of Unity’s xR strategy is Tony Parisi, who is a co-founder of VRML and a long-time open web advocate. Tony has long been interested in using VR for artistic expression and storytelling, and the keynote speakers highlighted the range of diversity of immersive technologies ranging from NASA JPL to car companies to the NFL to graphic novel comic books to immersive storytelling to construction to the big tech players including Facebook, Google, and Microsoft.

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I had a chance to catch up with Tony at Sundance earlier this year to talk about his approach to leading VR & AR strategy at Unity, and moving immersive technologies beyond just entertainment. Anyone who knows Tony can say that he wouldn’t have taken this job at Unity if there wasn’t some long-term open web strategy involved, but he wasn’t prepared to provide any specifics on it yet. But it’s safe to assume that it’s on the roadmap, especially with the recent news that the co-creator of WebGL & WebVR, Vlad Vukicevic recently joined Unity’s emergent technology group.

Here’s the full two and a half hour 2017 Unity Vision VR/AR Summit Keynote, hosted by Parisi and below a some of the news that has come from the event thus far:

• Google Announces New Tools to Develop High-performance Daydream Apps
• New Unity Tools Bring Interactivity and Real-time CGI to 360 Video, Now in Beta
• Microsoft Shows Windows in VR, Gives Acer VR Headset to Vision Summit Audience
• Google Bringing Native ‘Tango’ AR Support to Unity Later This Year

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