Virtual Market 2021 " (Vket2021) was held from December 4 (Sat.) to 19 (Sun.), 2021.
This event allowed visitors to visit the booths of creators and various companies in a venue prepared in the metaverse and buy and sell many products ranging from avatars and accessories for the VR space to real-life PC parts, interior decorations, and apparel.
In addition, each venue during the event was crowded with many events, both official and unofficial, such as live performances, talk session broadcasts, and campaigns.
The " Virtual Market" is the world's largest VR event and has been held many times, and this year's event is the fastest-growing event ever, with a record number of about 80 sponsors.
Metaverse has been attracting a lot of attention in recent years. Our editorial staff, who has experience as a private exhibitor at the "Virtual Market," visited " Vket2021," which is attracting more attention than ever from various fields.
The list of exhibitors includes Toppan Printing, Namco Bandai, Sega, Docomo, Sony Entertainment, Lawson, and many other well-known companies!
The high affinity between the venue and the booths is breathtaking. Immerse yourself in a fascinating world!
One of the most attractive features of " Vket2021" is the way the venue is designed to complement the booths lined up side by side: one of the attractions of VR is that you can be whatever you want to be, and that's why there are fantasy, cyber, military, toon, Japanese style ...... The needs of exhibitors and visitors are very diverse. To meet these needs, the event will feature 23 venues in 11 categories, each with its own unique theme.
The venue, " Almea, the City of Beginnings, " is idyllic, fantastic, and gorgeous, just as its name implies.
The vivid greenery, red bricks, and floating city in the sky reminded me of the original landscape of fantasy RPGs.
The booths that respond to the concept of the venue will showcase cute and cool avatars that look as if they could appear in a game, as well as items that realize magical visual expressions using shaders and particles.
Vket's exhibition style is like a theme park, with the venue and booths reinforcing each other's worldview and creating a fantastical atmosphere.
The experience of walking around and feeling the different worlds created in VR with your whole body is something that many people would love to experience firsthand.
Craftsmanship shines through in the creation of the venue. What is the state of the virtual exhibition?
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One of the major differences between this event, which uses virtual space, and a real-life exhibition is the way the booths are lined up on the undulating terrain.
In a real event hall, booths are lined up on a flat surface due to space and cost limitations, whereas in a virtual space, booths can take basically any shape.
However, in contrast to reality, virtual space is not good for a situation where booths are crammed together in a forest. This leads to an overload of the drawing process and creates a point where the operation becomes slow. The frame drops that occur when motion becomes heavy can cause VR sickness, so one way to reduce the load is to distribute the booths to some extent. For this reason, the " Vket2021" venue is not merely aesthetically pleasing, but is also designed to divide the field of view moderately with backgrounds and height differences in order to reduce the excessive rendering load caused by the many booths being displayed at the same time.
The venue, thus shaped by ideas that simultaneously realize beauty and reduce the load, is the result of craftsmanship and functional beauty that has continued since "Virtual Market 2" (held in March 2019), and can be said to be the event's 18th specialty.
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Company booths lined up in a prime location in Metaverse
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In the " Paralytic City," a world for corporations, Akihabara and Shibuya were recreated in a virtual space.
In one of the venues, "Parareal Akihabara," visitors can parade through a freely renovated pedestrian paradise, just like in the Metaverse, and visit the corporate booths that line the streets.
Akihabara is all about PC parts!
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In addition to PC parts, you can also try on "Genin Shui" sunglasses featuring the Genin Shui logo at the Genin Shui booth at Para Real Akihabara!
Experience the layout at the Bauhutte booth!
Bauhutte, the gaming furniture brand favored by the Saiga NAK editorial staff, will also participate as a sponsor.
The well-known " Secret Desk Base Project" seems to have taken its first steps into the Metaverse as well, allowing visitors to experience their ideal desk layout by freely taking the actual products provided in the booth with them.
This is a much easier way to get a real feel for the size of the product than just looking at numbers on a mail-order website, and it also has the advantage of allowing visitors to try out layouts without hesitation, which is a future form of VR that I hope will increase in the future.
I already use a standing desk from Bauhutte, but as I tried out the layouts at the booth, I became interested in the Energy Wagon BHS-430EW......, which will be an unexpected expense.
See the future of the Metaverse in the "Virtual Market" created by VR love
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The " Virtual Market" started in August 2018 as a meeting place to connect avatar creators and users, with users of the virtual social networking service " VRChat " themselves setting up the event.
In the more than three years since then, " Vket2021" has been held for the seventh time, and the scale of the event has been expanding as the know-how and ideals of those who spend time deep in VR, from the creation of spaces to how to play, are expressed in the ideas and innovations.
Yasushi Funakoshi, representative of the organizer " HIKKY Co., Ltd.", spoke of this event as "a world created together with people who have been active in the VR space for a long time", which showed his pride in the fact that this event was born out of the virtual world.
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At the closing ceremony of the event, it was announced that the next " Virtual Market 2022 Summer" would be held next summer.
Let's hope that the " Virtual Market " will continue to attract more and more people to the popular metaverse and show us the future shape of the virtual world!
This event has already closed, but the general venue will be re-opened to the public in February.
If you are interested, please check out the official " Virtual Market 2021" website for more details!