The annual South by Southwest Festival in Austin, Texas has always been a huge event for music and film lovers since 1987.
But organizers have expanded its content to include technological exhibits and conferences to satisfy curious minds, as well as a venue for companies to make product announcements or releases.
In 2017, SXSW will continue to wow tech lovers who will attend the festival as it showcases some amazing virtual reality products and helpful gadgets, including more virtual assistants.
Virtual Reality
VR has already been featured in previous SXSW Festivals but the organizers saw it fit to open up a dedicated section for the technology where 38 projects are showcased.
In this section, everyone's inner geek can celebrate as they immerse themselves in amazing VR experiences like a virtual meeting with astronaut Buzz Aldrin, connect with the stars by hitching a ride on the Hubble Telescope-complete with an operatic composition as background music-or watch a new anime by Hayao Miyazaki, among other amazing VR films.
There's also an incredible parent-child shared virtual experience with Samsung's Bedtime VR Stories which takes both parent and child into a virtual world to chat and explore stories together. The catch is that parents will have to own and wear a Samsung Gear VR headset while the child wears a Google Cardboard headset especially designed for the experience.
Rise Of The Bots
A panel on bots and virtual assistants titled "The Bots Have Risen! is also featured in the SXSW. The festival organizers even released its own virtual assistant named Abby, which is designed to answer questions about the program and recommend events to attend or booths to visit.
Executives from Assist, Facebook, Pandorabots, and Yahoo! will talk about how consumers search for and find new information and discuss the rising trend of human interaction with virtual assistants (or bots).
Gadgets And More Gadgets
SXSW 2017 will feature some amazing and helpful gadgets you may just want to get your hands on as soon as possible. Below are two of the devices.
3Doodler PRO
3Doodler Pro is an amazing little 3D printing gadget that every designer would want to have-especially those who want to see immediate results for their conceptualized designs. The carbon fiber pen 3D prints your drawings so that you can see and feel what it would actually look like instead of just drawing it on paper.
It's not only design professionals who would greatly benefit from the 3Doodler PRO because those who love building scale models of their ideas would enjoy creating too.
HiMirror
HiMirror is a mirror, smart gadget, and skin care consultant in one device and those who want to take better care if their skin but has no idea where to start or just need to be reminded would enjoy using it. HiMirror tracks your beauty regimen and tells you how much your skin's health has improved but it also makes suggestions and recommendations on what else you can do to take care of your skin.
Watch the video below to learn more.
