Red Rider VR

Bringing VR to the People.

In February 2018 I was seized with the idea of creating a mobile virtual reality arcade. The idea was to offer a service that would bring a virtual reality feature to corporate events, parties, classrooms… anywhere.

By April I had setup a new LLC, produced marketing materials, acquired the necessary insurance and licenses, setup domain name and website stuff, secured release copy, commissioned or hacked up graphic art, purchased hardware & software and launched the platform with a booth at Wizard World Portland.

We were back-to-back busy every day, from show open to show close. The platform, the layout and the equipment all performed flawlessly.

At the show we offered free sessions courtesy of HTC’s Ready Player One Arcade program promoting the film with a collection of studio titles provided by HTC, the manufacturer of the Vive headset. I sent photos to HTC. They called me from Seattle the next morning and we celebrated how awesome their products are.

We also ran pay-to-play on our licensed libarary of VR content.

While the show was not in any way a financial success, we were busy throughout the show and had many repeat customers.

More importantly, in the entire 3 day show, the platform’s subsytems worked flawlessly, supporting the 2-station VR platform by delivering:

• Game session management
• Payment processing
• Guest waitilisting and SMS notification through the Internet.
• Electronic Release signature capture.
• Wifi and 4g connectivity

I continue to market this service and tune the platform. I am currently writing software to replace some of these 3rd party solutions to save on subscription fees and get best-fit functionality.

You can view more info on this venture at www.RedRiderVR.com