If you were like us this weekend you didn’t go to Coachella and were in a “No-Chella” zone, or so you thought until you looked at your social media feeds. No matter what feed you were looking at: Instagram, Twitter, Tumblr, or even Facebook, it seems like you definitely could not hide from the Coachella posts.
Here at VRScout we were intrigued to receive a tip that clothing and fashion retailer H&M was launching a virtual reality experience at the Coachella festival. After getting maximum exposure on their Coachella collection and pop-up shop, surely a virtual reality addition would round out the perfect fashion experience. No matter how great an H&M virtual reality experience at Coachella sounds, there was nothing but crickets on social media.
H&M’s tent — dubbed “Transformation”— contained heavy technology, including a 360-degree selfie station and a scanner that produced photos claiming to capture a person’s aura. Festival visitors were also able to use their bodies to create music via an installation from digital artist Aaron Sherwood. What we were in search for was the virtual reality experience using technology from Nanotronics and Oculus Rift.
Thanks to a VRScout friend who scoured the grounds of the festival, we were able to finally get some insights on the experience. When we asked her to describe the H&M experience she said, “I completely missed it the first time around because it was off to the side in the tent. It was a fun flight in space that had a twist at the end where you’re flying through the fabric of an H&M dress.” Finally some eyes and ears on the ground!
Our VRScout friend later contacted us to let us know that there was another virtual reality experience that she spotted at the festival for Samsung Gear VR. We were surprised to even find out that Samsung was promoting their Gear VR virtual reality headset at Coachella. She mentioned this was a much better immersive experience with two viewings: A Coachella Festival experience or a Snowboarding Adventure. She picked the snowboarding one and after was told “the experience can be yours at home for the price tag of $200 all powered by the Samsung Galaxy phone.” We would like to mention that the $200 price tag is for the headset and does not include the Samsung Note 4 or Galaxy phone.
Both H&M and Samsung Gear VR experiences went unnoticed with festival attendees as seen by the lack of content on social media and press. There could’ve been a number of factors on why they may have been overlooked, or Coachella just wasn’t the right forum or even.
Let us know if you were at Coachella and checked out the experiences. We will continue to update this story as we get more information.
Images Courtesy of H&M, Gabby Ballard, Michelle Cortese
I was at Coachella and just never went into the H&M Tent since there didn’t seem to be any point to. I also never even saw the Samsung tent/display. My guess is that neither was mentioned on social media because the displays were not prominent or even noticed. I own a Samsung Gear VR and was actually very curious what Coachella would have related to VR.
I’m one of the technicians for the H&M Gear VR experience. You used my Instagram photos in this article. Contact me if you want to know more. Also I would like to be credited for those photos.
I’m a big VR fan and actually looked for these tents across multiple days. I looked at maps, asked coachella staff about “VR stuff”, nobody knew. I gotta say – pretty big failure.