Chip Pedersen, Director of Product Production USA for ZeroLight, talks about his VR experience for BMW and how VR Is expanding outside of gaming. The following is a transcript of our interview with him.
3E: Can you tell us about yourself and the company you’re here to represent?
CP: Hi, my name is Chip Pedersen, I’m Director of Product Production USA for ZeroLight.
3E: Tell us about ZeroLight and what makes you unique.
CP: ZeroLight is that VRX here today working with BMW. So we created a demo for their M5 Tour, and they wanted a custom experience for M5 owners to be able to see the new M5. So they invited M5 owners to come to the event. They can then go into VR, customize the new M5: colors, alloys, interiors, interact with the steering wheel, and then kind of go on a simulated drive. So, it shows off our latest technology, shows off how we can customize the car, and it helps BMW interact with their customers, and then upgrade to the latest BMW car.
3E: What have you seen at VRX that excites you and why?
CP: The one thing I like about VRX expo – it’s a small kind of boutique expo. So we get to spend a lot of time talking to people going through the demo, it’s not a rush-rush like at some of the bigger conferences, and also we can schedule time. So we know when they’re coming, you can set aside time to actually do a longer demo for them. We’re seeing more and more people using VR outside of games. It’s really going into the enterprise, it’s really starting to go mainstream. So that’s exciting to see that it’s breaking out of its niche, and really going into a larger market, and different markets that you saw before are now embracing VR and AR, so that’s very exciting for us. We’ve seen a lot of people from the auto industry here, which has been really helpful. We’ve also seen people from large corporations – aerospace, construction, Google, Microsoft – that help us with creating the VR experiences that we do.
