A New Era of VR: From the Court to the Classroom

The a16z Show

a16z

Software Eating The World, Science, Technology, Innovation, Culture, Disruption, Business, Entrepreneurship

4.2 • 1.2K Ratings

🗓️ 13 October 2023

⏱️ 34 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

As VR technology inches forward, completely new experiences loom on the horizon. In today’s episode, we expose listeners to the very real-world use cases already present on these devices, from fitness to education. First up is Gym Class VR, one of the top-rated apps on the Quest. Cofounder, Paul Katsen, shows us how to dribble and dunk in the metaverse, but more importantly, discusses the social impact of VR, the technological prerequisites to get there, and the role of AI as we progress. Following on is a founder on a mission to revolutionize education. Anurupa Ganguly from Prisms VR, explores how virtual reality has the potential to close the gap – one where 70% of US 8th graders are not proficient in foundational math. Head over to our YouTube channel to see two a16z Podcast firsts: a full interview in VR, and host Steph slam dunking on an NBA court.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello, hello, hello, welcome back to the A16C podcast. This is your host
0:06.7	Steph Smith and look we are always trying to experiment here and this week is no different. In the past we've taken you straight to the people
0:15.6	building top AI models or even into self-driving cars. But today we take you into the
0:22.2	Metaverse or whatever you want to call it because today we
0:26.1	take you into an episode that was fully recorded in virtual reality. We actually
0:30.9	recorded this episode in anticipation of Meta Connect, which was around a week ago,
0:35.3	where Meta announced a bunch of things, from releasing their first mixed reality headset
0:40.1	to AI powered smart glasses.
0:42.1	Plus a pretty incredible podcast recording,
0:44.7	or Mark Zuckerberg joined Lex Friedman in the Metaverse
0:48.2	using new hyper-realistic VR avatars.
0:51.9	And like many of you, I listened to that full episode where one line stood out in particular.
0:57.2	We're kind of sitting in a dark room which is familiar for your podcast but I think part of the vision for this over time is, you know, not just having this be like a video call. I mean, that's fine. It's cool or it feels like it's immersive, but you can do a video call on your phone.
1:13.2	The thing that you can do in the metaverse that is different from what you can do on a
1:17.1	phone is like doing stuff where you're physically there together and
1:20.0	participating in things together and we could play games like this.
1:23.3	I couldn't agree more.
1:25.2	As this technology evolves, there are going to be so many new experiences that are unique
1:30.9	to mixed or virtual reality.
1:33.0	Things that cannot be done on a phone
1:35.0	and that benefit from that extra dimension.
1:38.0	So we wanted to give you a glimpse of these very real world experiences
	...

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