Ep. 56: Leveraging VR for Product Design and Marketing with Tony Parisi of Unity Technologies

VR is not just for gaming anymore. Other industries are starting to take advantage of immersive technologies for applications like product design and experiential marketing. Ford is using the technology to create virtual prototypes of new vehicles and Lionsgate is experimenting with VR experiences to promote movies. When Unity Technologies realized their platform was already being used by the auto and film industries—among many others—they brought in Tony Parisi to help the company expand its reach far beyond gaming. Tony is a virtual reality pioneer, serial entrepreneur, author and angel investor. He currently serves as Head of VR and AR at Unity Technologies, where he is responsible for designing the company’s strategy for extended reality. Prior to joining Unity, Tony mentored VR and AR startups and worked as a consultant developing solutions for WebGL, virtual and augmented reality. He co-created the VRML and X3D ISO standards for networked 3D graphics and did the specification editing for the new 3D file format standard, glTF. Tony joins us to discuss Unity’s storied background in extended reality and how the company is expanding beyond gaming to support product design, medical and data visualization and non-gaming entertainment applications. He shares his interest in AR and VR that touches the consumer, the factors that have made immersive marketing scalable, and how Unity is working with brands to explore possibilities in the space. Listen in as Tony speaks to Unity’s potential collaborations with developers as well as the company’s current work on a lightweight playback system and scriptable render pipeline. Connect with Tony Unity Technologies https://unity3d.com/ Unity on Twitter https://twitter.com/unity3d Tony on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/tparisi/ Tony on Twitter https://twitter.com/auradeluxe Tony on Medium https://medium.com/@tonyparisi Resources ‘VR Ads Are Almost Here’ in Wired https://www.wired.com/story/vr-ads-are-almost-here/ Interactive Ad Bureau https://www.iab.com/ W3C https://www.w3.org/ Connect with Boost VC Boost VC Website https://www.boost.vc/ Boost VC on Facebook https://www.facebook.com/boostvc/ Boost VC on Twitter https://twitter.com/BoostVC