Join the 2021 VR NOW Awards Grand Finale on June 22

The VR NOW Awards are taking place this year online, and live on Youtube! The German ceremony dedicated to immersive worlds rewards the best applications of our industries every year.

See below the nominees for the 2021 ceremony. The jury was composed of Alysha Napels (CEO Tin Drum), Joanna Popper (Global Head of Virtual Reality for Location Based Entertainment at HP), Tupac Martir (Creative Director/Founder Satore Studio), Thomas Bedenk (VP Extended Reality Endava), Judith Okonkwo (Creator Oriki Coaching Model, Co-Founder We Will Lead Africa), Lucas Rizzotto (Creator u.a. von “Lucas Builds The Future”, “Where Thoughts Go”).

Join the live streaming June 22, 7PM CET

Best VR Technology

• ALPHAView by ALPHACIRCLE (KR) / ALPHAView intensively increases the number of pixels for divided images corresponding to the particular field of view and dramatically elevates its resolution to 8K 3D quality.
• DARK BAY by DARK BAY (DE) / A 55-meter-long, 7-meter-high and 270° curved LED wall consisting of a total of 1470 state-of-the-art ROE LED panels, allows for 2D and 3D worlds of any kind to be displayed.
• META.SPACE VR by INVR.SPACE (DE) / A user centric and customizable Social VR platform for festivals, conferences or special events with several advanced technical features.

Best Immersive Cinema

• Kusunda by NowHere Media (DE) / KUSUNDA explores what it means to lose a language and what it takes to preserve one. The experience contrasts two generations set apart by their lifestyles and brought together by the struggle for their indigenous identity. The experience is co-produced by INVR (DE), Poké Poké (TW), Fasad (SE), ZHdK (CH).
• Bystanding by Shapira and Lev (US) / Bystanding: The Feingold Syndrome is an interactive docufiction using volumetric capture, photogrammetry, animations, and 360 videos. It explores the confessions of people who witnessed a kayak-rower drown and did not jump in. The experience is co-produced with AnotherWorld VR (DE) and KngFu (CA).
• African Space Makers by INVR.SPACE (DE) / Choose which film director you want to be and experience urban Africa with your crew. This is your assignment, this is how you are going to understand what it means to be an African Space Maker, a real urban hero!

Best Industry VR

• Wondder by wondder (DE) / The goal of this VR training is diverse, inclusive, fun work environments through diversity and inclusion. You become somebody else with a different skin color or gender and experience the world through their eyes.
• Suicide Prevention by Moth + Flame (US) / In the Suicide Prevention training the storytelling and true-to-life environments engage the participant immediately. They’re presented with a fully crafted story about the subject’s current situation and encourage them to seek help.
• AVATARS by Breakpoint One (DE) / AVATARS – Advanced Virtuality and AugmenTed Reality AppRoaches in Seeds to Seeds is a VR lighthouse project making Big Data more effectively accessible to researchers and partners in industry. One aim is to make crop plants more resilient to the effects of climate change.

Best Industry Entertainment

• EURYDIKE INFECTED by Evelyn Hriberšek (DE) / EURYDIKE questions the patriarchal high-tech society and liberates the female from her shadowy existence through an interactive gameplay between reality and virtuality: With the interactive exploration of a retrofuturistic venue – a silent, voiceless place – is made resound: The unheard gets a voice.
• Puzzling Places by realities io (DE) / Puzzling Places is a relaxing and wholesome 3D jigsaw puzzle game where you put together hyper-realistic miniatures of beautiful places from around the globe. Each puzzle is created from a unique Photogrammetry 3D scan, whether it’s of a room in a museum, a city on a side of a hill, or an ancient monastery.
• Symphony of Noise by Kloos & Co Medien (DE) / A world of exploration with high-end spatial sound design. Going through four sonically and visually surreal landscapes, the user creates sounds through their body via breathing, voice and movement, while discovering the world around one-self and within one-self – building their own symphony of noise.

H@LY SH1T!

• Proper Motion by High Road Stories (DE) / Proper Motion is a joyful reflection on the search for significance in natural structures that connects us all, throughout space and time.
• Wraith: The Oblivion by Fast Travel Games (SE) / A horror game made exclusively for VR, focusing on exploration, storytelling and atmosphere rather than cheap jump scares. Play it as a Wraith!
• Maskmaker by Innerspace VR (FR) / A magical VR adventure game featuring spell-binding puzzles and scenic environments. Take the role of a Maskmaker’s apprentice and unravel their mystery.
• Biolum by Reynard Films (DE) / An interactive, narrative VR sci-fi experience which immerses you in the mysterious beauty of deep sea life on a dive that takes a shocking turn for the worse.