It's a title that's near and dear to Parkes' heart - he produced the first four 'Men in Black' movies together with his wife and partner in crime Laurie MacDonald - and one he thinks holds a good lesson in how to build better VR experiences. Dreamscape hopes to be up and running with ASU within the next six months.īut Dreamscape never gave up on location-based VR, and the company kept working on bringing 'Men in Black' to VR through the pandemic. 'Students come in and use like a big virtual laboratory, where they can actually operate as scientists and explorers,' Parkes said. Some of that work includes a partnership with Arizona State University to develop an educational VR experience.'We had a lot of wind in our sails to accelerate the work we were doing in education and training,' Parkes said. When Dreamscape was forced to shut down its VR centers amid the pandemic, it quickly doubled down on other business areas.The company is now selling as many tickets as before the pandemic, he said. 'We hit our highest post-COVID numbers last Saturday,' Parkes told me this week.

The AMC-backed VR startup opened up its locations a couple months ago, and just debuted a new 'Men in Black' VR experience this week. There appears to be light at the end of the tunnel, though, according to Dreamscape CEO Walter Parkes.

Sandbox VR was forced into bankruptcy restructuring, Spaces sold and The Void shut down permanently. Local health restrictions forced VR centers to shut down for months, and using shared VR headsets in a space occupied by strangers wasn't very appealing in the face of a deadly virus. Location-based VR lives on: What's next for Dreamscapeįor a moment, it looked like the pandemic may kill location-based VR once and for all.

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