The Academy of International Extended Reality (AIXR) announced the winners of its 2021 annual VR Awards ceremony, which featured over 128 nominations from firms, content creators, and organisations across the world.
A panel of 70 judges selected winners from 98 finalists for a prestigious evening of virtual and real-world discussions.
The event, hosted by Mike Butcher MBE of TechCrunch, was attended by hundreds on social media as well as the event’s AltSpaceVR virtual awards ceremony experienced on Oculus and HTC VIVE headsets as well addition live streams on YouTube.
The event received nearly 10,000 public votes for the awards’ VR Social Influencer of the Year and inaugural VR Game of the Year titles.
Studio 3DAR took the prize of ‘Film of the Year’ for its Paper Birds short film, which featured an heartwarming story of a child searching for his sister kidnapped by the realm of shadows.
Other winning firms such as Osso VR received the ‘Healthcare of the Year’ award for its virtual training platform used to remotely instruct surgeons and medical professionals in realistic virtual environments.
Vale VR also earned an award for the top solution in Education and Training, which educates mining staff prior to working on-site at facilities with digital twins to boost staff employee readiness.
HP’s Reverb G2 Omnicept Edition headset also surpassed finalists such as Meta’s Quest 2 and Pico’s Neo 3 Pro VR, which judges widely believed to offer the most user-centric experience.
The AIXR also selected Resolution Games’ Demeo as ‘Game of the Year’, which was chosen with a 10 percent net vote from the public, and Virtualware scored as the event’s ‘Innovative Company of the Year’.
Tom Furness III, inventor, University of Washington Professor, and Key Designer of Human Interface Technologies, won the acclaimed Accenture Lifetime Achievement award.
Furness, who founded the Virtual World Society, teleported to the virtual ceremony to claim the award.
Daniel Colaianni, Chief Executive of the AIXR, said that his organisation was “delighted” to celebrate the year’s achievements in the Metaverse with its 5th annual “world-hop experience.”
He continued, adding,
“The amazing team here have created a one-of-a-kind virtual journey through the history of the VR Awards and the founders, an event like this is truly a world-first for an awards ceremony”
He explained guests could enter five bespoke worlds representing five years of the VR Awards’ operations, and lauded the event’s first-ever Accenture VR Lifetime Achievement Award, which “resounded with everything the VR Awards has stood for from the very beginning.”
He concluded the future of the VR industry was “bright and bold” and that he was “immensely proud [to] stand on the precipice of something so fundamentally life-changing to the way we work, live and grow.”
The London and San Francisco-based organisation honours talent and achievements in the XR industry. Founded in 2019, the organisation hosts 100 members along with a massive and expanding network of more than 12,000 people across Europe, North America, and Asia.
For the full list of award winners, event highlights, and additional footage, kindly visit AIXR’s website.
