The people behind the Coachella music and arts festival are putting a bit more care into the packages they're sending to whoever is going this year. Along with tickets, Coachella is sending a Cardboard virtual reality viewer and a link to an app that will help attendees prepare for the festival.
Coachella hasn't spelled it out, but it would appear that the VR app will be available to both those who attend the festival in the flesh and those who'll be there in spirit via remote viewing.
What's clear is the delivery format of content to the Coachella VR app, which was developed by VR livestreaming service Vantage.TV. The content will be streamed to the app, so users will want to stay within range of a Wi-Fi connection that is 5 Mbps or faster.
"Before, during, and after the festival in April, fans from all over the world can be immersed in performances from top artists, experience 360-degree panoramic experiences from around the festival grounds, and watch VR experiences created by other festival-goers," states Coachella.
Coachella VR only supports Android 4.3 devices and iPhone 5S and later right now. Though Coachella has indicated that it plans to support Samsung's GearVR, Facebook's Oculus Rift and HTC's Vive headsets in the future.
"With much more awesome content on its way, this is something you don't want to miss out on. See you in the desert," it says.
This is far from Coachella's first foray into cutting edge tech. Some may recall the festival's 2012 revival of Tupac, an eerie feat that accomplished using mixed reality tech to project the rapper's hologram onto one of the stages.
While augmented reality tech may still be a few years out, virtual reality is here and the heavy hitters have been ramping up their efforts in the nascent sector.
The flavor of Coachella VR is expected to account for about $800 million this year, according to the latest projections from our friends over at SuperData Research.
"As expected, mobile device adoption will be highest due to accessibility to hardware, lower price points and forced adoption," said SuperData Director of Research and VR Lead Stephanie Llamas in a report about the VR industry. "This will be the key audience for entertainment, the second largest segment, while VR gaming's $6.9 billion market in 2020E will mostly center on PC and console."
Just four years from now, the market for mobile VR, both hardware and software, is expected to swell to about $40 billion. So it may not be wise to keep calling this a fad.
