It’s currently awards season for many industries and XR is no different. Last week the VR Awards held its event and today Raindance Immersive revealed its slate of award winners, highlighting some of the best virtual reality (VR) content you should look out for.
The Raindance Film Festival is held every year in London, UK, with Raindance Immersive now in its sixth year. Like many events trying to adjust to a more remote way of working the festival presented most of its works through VRChat and AltspaceVR, enabling a global audience to enjoy virtual worlds, art exhibitions, private tours, and previews.
Unlike a lot of awards events, Raindance Immerse keeps things fairly simple, with six jury awards and the Spirit of Raindance Award that’s selected by the festival team. Probably the most well known out of all the award winners is ARVORE’s YUKI, a roguelite shooter that won the Best Immersive Game category.
Next was the Best Narrative Experience which was won by The Severence Theory: Welcome To Respite, consisting of a live theatrical performance with two actors inside VRChat. Kusunda, a voice-driven interactive VR experience about the Kusunda language in western Nepal was awarded the Best Documentary experience, whilst Olympia, a VRChat world took home the Best Immersive World award. In the Best Multiplayer Category, The MetaMovie Presents: Alien Rescue secured the top spot with a cinematic VR adventure supported by live actors.
The Discovery Award: Best Debut was a little more unusual in that there were two winners, The Pirate Queen: Night of Succession and VRium: Nymphs & ArtSpaceVR Presents: The Popovy Sisters. The former is a puzzle-based VR adventure by Eloise Singer, with the latter an exhibition of Fine-Art-Dolls created by the Popovy Sisters inside AltspaceVR. Going a step further, the Spirit of Raindance Award actually had three winners in total; Magic Heist, Mycelia and Noir – Nocturne.
“We were the first festival to recognise virtual world builders as artists, creating an award for Best Immersive World,” says Raindance Immersive curator Mária Rakušanová in a statement. “Last year we focused on VRChat as a platform. This year we additionally curated virtual worlds, art shows, and live theatrical and dance performances on other social VR ‘Metaverse’ platforms such as Neos VR, AltspaceVR and Engage. It’s therefore fitting that our two Raindance Immersive Awards Ceremonies took place virtually at the Raindance Embassy world in VRChat, and were simultaneously live-streamed to YouTube and into virtual worlds in AltspaceVR and Neos VR, connecting the communities of these social VR ‘Metaverse’ platforms – another first for Raindance Immersive.”
Next up will be The Game Awards where the likes of Resident Evil 4 and Lone Echo II will be competing in the Best AR/VR category. For continued updates keep reading VRFocus.
via Mint VR