Virtual Art in the Airport
If you have yet to experience Periscape virtual reality art then you may soon have the chance if you’re landing in JFK airport in New York City anytime soon.
Called the Periscape VR Experience Centers, these “towers” as the company dubs them give travelers the opportunity to experience VR while waiting for their flights. In an almost natural marriage of location and convenience, the Periscape VR Experience Centers operate in highly trafficked areas like JFK airport’s terminals where people not only congregate but some of which may be there for quite some time.
Company founder and CEO Lynn Rosenthal called this a “captive audience” in an interview with Forbes boasting of the Periscape experience. Sporting an aesthetic that looks like an imagined future with arcades, the Periscape VR Experience has draw ads and shows off the machine’s capabilities to lure in customers. In addition to this, the Periscape towers are also advertising displays and show a wide variety of products and brands, a segment of the business that Rosenthal hopes to expand in the future.
In an interview with Forbes Rosenthal explained that some 21 million people walk by a Periscape VR Experience tower annually providing unparalleled opportunities for advertisers to sell their products. Some imagined partnerships include real estate companies and other venues where a virtual reality rendition would not only add value but sell a product at the same time.
For those users that are concerned about the hygiene of using a public VR unit the Periscape towers dispense hygienic clothes and the company touts their ability to be completely self-operating though, as Forbes notes, the JFK airport towers do have brand representatives on hand.
Currently, the Periscape offers seven titles with a goal of 12 to be on offer in the future.
Among these include the beloved “Fruit Ninja,” a game that began as an app for tablets and smartphones but which is now part of the Periscape VR Experience.
Even if many of the titles on the platform remain relatively unknown to the larger game’s press, Rosenthal hopes to add more titles over time with those of increasing prominence coming as the platform grows. Periscape hopes to capitalize on the growing popularity of VR experiences and the decreasing cost of offering those to the general public.
Though the terminals at JFK serve as conduits for conducting travelers to and from their destination they also serve as massive shopping mall type locations. Periscape’s business model, for its part, resembles that of the old in-mall arcades but with a high-tech slant.
While it remains to be seen if public use of VR towers is the way of the future, Periscape’s willingness to expand the field and give it a shot should prove an interesting experiment to watch. One of the major benefits of companies like Periscape for the greater virtual reality industry is that it acts as an educational tool and can help spread enthusiasm for VR to new audiences thus benefiting the whole segment in the process.
