Virtual reality (VR) is going to be the next biggest thing in technology – whether we like it or not.
Coachella Valley Music And Arts festival is introducing VR programming to its festival experience this year. It was announced today that Coachella will ship out a custom Google Cardboard headset to this year’s festival attendees in the “welcome boxes” that contain their tickets. Paired with the Coachella VR app for mobile devices, festival-goers will be able to flip through 360-degree photos from previous Coachella festivals, old interviews and performances from this year’s artists. It will also provide a virtual tour of the festival grounds.
The mobile app will be updated regularly until the festival’s first weekend in mid-April. It is still unclear, however, whether home viewers will be able to stream the festival in virtual reality or 360-degree video through the app, according to The Verge.
Coachella has offered many different virtual user experiences in previous years. Some of these experiences included a Tupac hologram, projection mapping, radio-frequency identification (RFID) engagements and augmented hearing.
As a music fanatic, I think this is pretty cool. Technological advances aside, I think these new festival features will bring music fans closer to their favorite artists and certainly provide festival-goers with an experience that is absolutely worth those hundreds of dollars spent on weekend-long Coachella tickets.
