E45 | CES 2019 Interviews Part 1 | HTC Vive Announcements

I went to CES 2019 to check out all that’s new in AR and VR and to interview vendors, professionals and creators involved in the Immersive Technologies industry. I was invited into the HTC Vive private booth, which was located at the Venetian, to come check out all of the great new announcements they made during CES, including the new Vive Pro Eye, Vive Cosmos, Viveport Infinity, Origin, Vive Reality Systems and much more. What follows are four interviews starting with Dan O’Brien, the General Manager for HTC Vive US, Jeff Marshall, the founder and creator of Ovation VR, Christian Langenberg from Fidelity Investments and Kaden Nugent, from BigBox VR. I hope you enjoy these interviews.

DAN O’BRIEN FROM HTC VIVE QUESTIONS:
- What do you do for HTC Vive?
- What does a General Manager do?
- Tell us about the 2 new HMDs (Vive Pro Eye and Vive Cosmos) that HTC Vive announced.
- How is HTC Vive helping the enterprise market?
- Why did you guys decide to add eye tracking to the Vive Pro now?
- Explain foveated rendering and how that helps VR.
- Tell us about the Vive Cosmos.
- Tell us about Origins and “the lens”.
- Tell us about Viveport Infinity.
- Will you guys provide a Viveport store for the enterprise to share their apps behind the firewall, privately?
- Tell us about Vive Sync. How can enterprises use this VR app?
- What is the Vive Reality System?
- Is there an SDK or API that gives you access to the Vive Reality System?
- In the future, can we buy one VR app and have it run on all devices without having to purchase a separate app for each device I own?
- Explain Vive Wave and how that be harness by other HMDs.
- How will publishing Amazon Sumerian experiences to Viveport work?

JEFF MARSHALL FROM OVATION QUESTIONS:
- Why did you partner up with HTC?
- Tell us about your app, Ovation, for training how to speak in public?
- Tell us about the Speech Tool Stair Coloring tool?
- How did you come up with the idea for this app?
- What tool set did you use to create Ovation?
- Did you use photogammetry to create this experience?
- What equipment did you use for the photogammetry?
- Would you consider yourself to be an indie developers?
- What tips can you provide to other indie developers wanting to get into VR development?
- How did you find people that were both passionate about VR and your subject matter?
- How do you find quality VR developers?
- How did you get investors for your VR experience?
- Who’s your target market?
- Tell us about your subscription model?

CHRISTIAN LANGENBERG FROM FIDELITY LABS QUESTIONS:
- Tell us about Fidelity Labs.
- Tell us about your new VR experience using Amazon Sumerian Labs.
- Tell us about how you used the Amazon Lex and Poly services to enable 2 way communications inside of VR.
- Why did you choose Amazon Sumerian instead of Unity or Unreal engine for this particular project?
- Is Amazon Sumerian multi-device and browser agnostic? How does that work?
- What ‘s your ultimate goal with this project and what’s the roadmap look like?

KADEN NUGENT FROM BIGBOX VR QUESTIONS:
- Tell us about your game, Population One.
- Guide us through your development process.
- How do you find the balance between give the user full agency but not bloating your game with too much interactivity?
- What challenges did you experience during the development of your game?
- How can eye tracking and foveated rendering help you solve some of those challenges?
- Is foveated rendering and eye tracking the future of VR?
- What one tip can you provide to up and coming game VR developers?
- What’s the most important skill a developer should have?