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This year the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity was the worlds largest gathering of digital creators and innovators from the communications and advertising industries.

A multitude of speakers were at the festival, and there were a multitude of prizes for Film, Film Craft, Media, Press, Outdoor, Cyber, Promo & Activation, Direct, Design, Radio, Mobile and more.

So what was the next big thing everyone was talking about? That would be Virtual Reality although the technology is still in its infancy.

VR makes life virtual, it mimics real world scenarios, usually in a 3D environment, so that people could potentially walk around the Louvre Museum in Paris, without having to physically be there. Or they can learn how to operate in a hostile environment, such as one of the frontlines of the conflict in Syria, without having to put themselves in danger. And thats not to forget the most obvious VR vehicle computer games where the technology is at its most advanced.

Virtual reality is dominated by visual media, and for most people youtube is currently the main platform people go to to look for video on the internet. Debbie Weinstein, the managing director for YouTube and video solutions, told Euronews what this brave new world might be like.

I think the possibility of virtual reality is really having these deeply immersive experiences. Its as if you are there, as if you are in the front row at the concert So its as if the two of you, or three of you, or a group of you are at the front row of a concert of your favourite artist. Youre all experiencing virtual reality at the same time, but you are not actually there, she says.

The possibilities are endless because ultimately VR is simply another media, but there are some very valuable real-life advantages to contemplate. In medicine surgeons may in the future gain valuable experience practising on virtual organs when its clearly unethical for them to practise on a real-life patient. Or police officers may be able to train in a 3D simulated terror attack environment. It will never be quite the same as real life but technology will bring us ever closer to the real thing in the future.

Other big things to take away from Cannes Lions? Taking data privacy more seriously came up repeatedly.

Today we only need our smartphone to work, to get a car, order food, watch video, listen to music, read and so on. Many of us can spend days with our smartphones only and cant survive for too long without it.

This trend will not change much in the future all the companies at Cannes agreed on that. But it will raise the issue of data privacy soon, according to Alex Cheeseman, the Chief Strategy Officer at Storyful, a company which trawls the internet looking for newsworthy content to sell to its subscribers.

I believe there is going to be a major shift in consumers wanting to own their data. But for now people arent that interested. Consumers dont really care about their data, theylI give it to any website. Theyll tick the box, they dont even read it.

And when people do realize their data has been compromised, or theyre worried that it could be,what can they do about it?

The only way for me to protect that data is to take it back myself, hold it, and wrap it up in my own layer of protection, Cheeseman said.

And when the publics trust in how safely their data is stored by countless web sites and servers begins to erode, many industries may face a sober reckoning.

Once people have their own data, what does that mean for advertisers, what does that means for social platforms? There is going to be a value exchange. Within the next two to five years this is going to be a massive trend. I think it will impact the industry massively.

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Virtual Reality excites Cannes Lions festival - euronews

Online shopping is on the riseits fast and ships directly to your doorstep, sometimes overnight. But with online shopping, you miss the experience of going into a store and picking up items. Enter virtual reality shopping, which tries to give you the convenience of online shopping and the experience of being in a store.

People are already shopping through virtual reality, but its still in its beginning stages. In late 2016, Chinas Alibaba launched Buy+, a virtual reality experience that could be accessed with a virtual reality headset. With Buy+, people could wander around a store, look through items, and add things to a cart by staring at a product for long enough. According to Vice, 30,000 people had already tried Buy+ an hour after its launch.

To use virtual reality shopping, youll need a virtual reality headset, which could range from a $10 Google Cardboard to hundreds of dollars for an Oculus Rift. Like online shopping, theres usually a virtual shopping cart and you can buy things by giving your credit card information upon checkout.

Big companies like Amazon are also working on adding virtual reality shopping in an attempt to increase sales. In May 2016, Ikea let users design their own kitchens with a HTC Vive. Audi also used the HTC Vive to present cars in showrooms. Later in 2016, eBay Australia teamed up with Myer to create the first virtual reality department store, but it simulated a web of floating objects rather than a physical store.

Earlier this month, Ikea started using virtual reality in Australia. You can see the experience for yourself on Android, iOS, and desktop (though the desktop version doesnt have virtual reality).

The Ikea version of virtual reality shopping feels like a more immersive version of Google Street View. You can wander around the store and in between furniture. You can select objects marked with floating blue dots, revealing the items description and price. Most of the furniture isnt marked, though, so youll have to zoom in on the tags and remind yourself to search for it later.

Smaller companies like Gatsby, a startup that creates virtual reality stores, are also looking to create virtual reality shopping experiences.

Were really trying to get close to what its like being there, and we want it to be very intimate, said Anastasia Cifuentes, co-founder of Gatsby. All the little details on how you move, were really focusing on how to have that just right. Gatsby has been experimenting with virtual reality for less than 6 months but hopes to launch an app in the fall.

Using Gatsbys shopping app to buy furniture feels like playing a game. You can look around a room from a fixed point (you cant move around the space yet). Theres a button that let you click on objects and rotate them. Once you select an object, details about the objects length, width, height, and price appear. If you want an item, you can add it to your cart.

The demo I tested was animated rather than based on real photos, which made the experience less realistic. The app is still in development, but Gatsby hopes to use real photos of objects and rooms once the app is finished. Gatsby will be free to everyoneyoull only need something, like a Google Cardboard, to view it through.

Theres an efficiency factor that being online satisfies, but weve lost something in traveling to that, which is just being able to hold the product, said Cifuentes. There are still things we need to see and touch that we have to go to the store for, like furniture.

Virtual reality doesnt completely replicate the in-person shopping experience, but its getting there. Its also getting cheaper and more accessible: now you only need your smartphone and a $10 Google Cardboard set to experience it.

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Virtual Reality Is the Future of Shopping - Lifehacker

City Hall and New York University are looking to tag team their way into another realm - a time and place where the citys virtual reality sphere rivals the tech scene in Silicon Valley.

City officials announced Tuesday that NYU Tandon School of Engineering has been selected to operate a virtual and augmented reality lab in the Brooklyn Navy Yard that is expected to open in late 2017.

As part of its agreement with the city, NYU is organizing a workforce development program with CUNY that will direct graduates from the Lehman Colleges Virtual Reality Training Academy and Development Lab to the 15,000-square-foot lab in Brooklyn.

City officials said the government invested $6 million in the project - making it the first publicly funded virtual reality lab in the country focused on growing the industry - because they believe it will help create 500 jobs over the next decade. These positions are part of Mayor Bill de Blasios plan to create 100,000 jobs that pay at least $50,000 annually over the next 10 years.

By training the next generation in [virtual reality] and [augmented reality], its really making sure that we are having people trained in New York, who stay in New York and work in these fields, said Media and Entertainment Commissioner Julie Menin.

NYU Tandon School of Engineering Vice Dean Kurt Becker said the lab would admit fledgling startups to an accelerator program meant to help them through their first few months and more established firms to a two-year stay.

The accelerator program will help companies conduct market research and glean how their ideas could fit consumers needs, attract seed funding and craft a viable business plan.

All firms admitted to the lab will receive legal, intellectual property, human resources and accounting services on top of help meeting investors, according to Becker.

We will host pitch days; we will host demo days; we will host networking events to bring the companies in front of people with money, Becker said.

NYU will likely charge a per-desk rate for firms using the lab, and will likely receive a stake in the firms going through its accelerator program in lieu of charging for the program, Becker said.

He said NYU has not yet heard from groups looking to join the lab, but has already lined up some partnerships with corporations looking to support its occupants.

NYU and Lehman are still finalizing the details of the workforce development plan.

The university beat out 14 other applicants looking to run the lab, in part, because of its approach to training New Yorkers for the field, according to Ryan Birchmeier, a spokesman for the citys Economic Development Corporation.

One of the foundations of the citys plans to establish a VR/AR lab is to make the industry more accessible to New Yorkers from diverse backgrounds, Birchmeier said in a statement. NYU Tandon was selected to develop the lab, largely due to their commitment to workforce development, and the breadth of significant efforts they outlined in their proposal to drive accessibility.

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Virtual reality lab in Brooklyn, an NYC-NYU joint, to open in late ... - amNY

Virtual reality is much more than just a new form of entertainment, it is increasingly being used in a wide range of medical applications, from treatments to training. Here are a few of them.

1. Pain management

There is good scientific evidence that virtual reality (VR) can help relieve pain. The parts of the brain that are linked to pain the somatosensory cortex and the insula are less active when a patient is immersed in virtual reality. In some instances, it can even help people tolerate medical procedures that are usually very painful.

Other studies have shown that amputees can benefit from VR therapy. Amputees often feel severe pain in their missing limb, which can be hard to treat with conventional methods, and often doesnt respond well to strong painkillers like codeine and morphine. However, a technique called virtual mirror therapy, which involves putting on a VR headset and controlling a virtual version of the absent limb,seems to help some patients cope better with this phantom pain.

2. Physical therapy

VR can be used to track body movements, allowing patients to use the movements of their therapy exercises as interactions in a VR game. For example, they may need to lift an arm above their head in order to catch a virtual ball.

Its more fun doing exercises in virtual reality than it is in a gym, so people are more motivated to exercise. It can help in other ways too. For example, we found that for patients who are anxious about walking, we can control their virtual environment so that it looks as though they are moving much slower than they actually are. When we do this, they naturally speed up their walking, but they dont realise they are doing it and so it isnt associated with pain or anxiety.

Virtual reality can be used in physical therapy (Wendy Powell)

Studying how people perceive and interact with VR systems helps us design better rehabilitation applications.

3. Fears and phobias

If you have an irrational fear of something, you might think the last thing you need is to see it in virtual reality. However, this is one of most established forms of medical VR treatment. Phobias are often treated with something called graded-exposure therapy, where patients are slowly introduced to their fear by a therapist. Virtual reality is perfect for this as it can be adjusted precisely for the needs of each patient, and can be done in the doctors office or even at home. This is being used to treat phobias such as fear of heights and fear of spiders, but also to help people recover from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

4. Cognitive rehabilitation

Patients with brain injury from trauma or illness, such as stroke, often struggle with the everyday tasks that we take for granted, such as shopping or making plans for the weekend. Recreating these tasks within virtual environments and allowing patients to practise them at increasing levels of complexity can speed up recovery and help patients regain a higher level of cognitive function.

Doctors can also use these same virtual environments as an assessment tool, observing patients carrying out a variety of real-world complex tasks and identifying areas of memory loss, reduced attention or difficulty with decision-making.

5. Training doctors and nurses

In the future your doctor may prescribe one of these (Shutterstock)

Virtual reality is, of course, not just for patients. It also offers benefits to healthcare professionals. Training doctors and nurses to carry out routine procedures is time-consuming, and training generally needs to be delivered by a busy and expensive professional. But virtual reality is increasingly being used to learn anatomy, practise operations and teach infection control.

Being immersed in a realistic simulation of a procedure and practising the steps and techniques is far better training than watching a video, or even standing in a crowded room watching an expert. With low-cost VR equipment, controllable, repeatable scenarios and instant feedback, we have a powerful new teaching tool that reaches well beyond the classroom.

Wendy Powell is a reader in virtual reality at University of Portsmouth. This article was originally published on The Conversation (www.theconversation.com)

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Five ways virtual reality is improving healthcare - The Independent

A visiter tries a pair of HTC's Vive Virtual Reality (VR) goggles, during the annual Computex computer exhibition in Taipei, Taiwan June 1, 2016. Tyrone Siu Reuters

A new exhibit at the Tate Modern gallery in London is getting some virtual reality love.

HTC, the Taiwanese smartphone manufacturer and maker of the Vive VR headset, said Monday that it has partnered with Tate Modern on an upcoming exhibit featuring the works of painter and sculptor Amedeo Clemente Modigliani that will be accompanied by a new VR project.

The company said the VR exhibit is based on elements of early twentieth century Paris and incorporates archival material and new research to bring [Modigliani's] historical context to life.

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The smartphone company didnt elaborate on the specifics of the new VR exhibit, only to say that museum visitors will be able to see a fresh perspective into Modiglianis life and influences and parts of Paris that inspired the contemporary of Pablo Picasso and Juan Gris.

The BBC reports that the new exhibit will be the first time Tate Modern has used virtual reality technology. A museum curator told the BBC, "By using VR we want to feel closer to Paris as a city, the exhibition is about feeling connected with a particular place."

But several other museums have also looked to VR as a way to lure more visitors and create more compelling exhibits. For example, the National History Museum of Los Angeles County, recently hosted a VR exhibit called theBlu, in which visitors could put on VR headsets to explore the ocean in virtual reality.

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The Detroit Institute of Arts is also experimenting with augmented reality technology and is partnering with Google for an Ancient Egypt exhibit in which visitors can use the museums smartphones to see special digital graphics and information overlaid on certain objects, like a mummys sarcophagus.

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Tate Modern Uses Virtual Reality to Recreate Modigliani's Early 20th Century Paris - Fortune

Fans ofUmphreys McGee andLettuce can now experience content from both bandsin VR environments thanks to social music VR platform Endless Riff.Endless Riff is a virtual reality platform that provides new ways for fans to experience live, recorded, and self-captured music together. A virtual music festival, Endless Riff allows music lovers to consume, communicate, and bond over live performances, archived concerts, and exclusive b-roll content within existing, former, or new virtual venues. Using networked VR tools, the platform offers content across a broad variety of capture technologies including 2D, 3D, and 360-degree video.

After signing in to the Endless Riff platform via an Oculus Rift headset, users will be able to watch an exclusive band-curated Umphreys McGee umVR video playlist and Lettuces funkumentary Let Us Play in immersive, social 3D environments, where they can interact with their friends and fellow fans in real time.

Enjoying music is always more fun with friends, and thats especially true for artists like Umphreys McGee and Lettuce, who have hardcore fan bases traveling all over the world to see them live, said Mark Iannarelli, CEO of Endless Riff, in a press release. With the Endless Riff VR platform, we can offer Lettuce and Umphreys fans a brand new twist on that experience in which friends, family, and other music fans can join together no matter where they are, providing invaluable opportunities to connect and share their love of the music.

The 16-song umVR playlist features versions of Umphreys favorites hand-selected by the band including Puppet String, All In Time, and Booth Love, as well as unique takes on songs from The Beatles and Pink Floyd, and a recap of the bands 2017 Summer Camp event.

Umphreys McGee has always tried to be on the frontline of new technology relating to music, such as the interactive UMBowl and S2 events where fans texted directions to the band mid-performance, Kevin Browning, Manager of Umphreys McGee, said. There are so many new possibilities with VR and music, and given how dedicated and community-driven the Umphreys fanbase is, letting fans experience the bands favorite collection of videos together in a virtual setting was a no-brainer.

Filmed over a 6-month period, Let Us Play documents Lettuces intense touring schedule and the creation of their 2015 album, Crush. Footage from live sets, recording sessions, interviews, and candid scenes from the road are all included in the 45-minute film, providing a well-rounded portrait of the band, their life, and what it takes to write, record, and promote a top-notch funk album.

One of the main lessons I took away from my six months with Lettuce is that this band and their music are really all about community, said Let Us Play director Jay Sansone of Human Being Media. Thats why this film is a perfect fit for Endless Riffs VR platform, which will amplify that feeling with its virtual movie theater. Im excited that fans of my film can now experience it in a new way, and hope it will further enhance their understanding of and appreciation for this band.

Watch the trailer below, and view the whole thing here!

Endless Riff is currently available in open beta in the Oculus Rift store, where users can watch curated playlists with friends (via life-like avatars) within the interactive app. The company plans to offer a variety of branded content experiences along with the virtualization of cherished music venues from across the globe, beginning with New York Citys Rockwood Music Hall this spring.

Endless Riff will be available on additional devices later in 2017. For more information, please visit the website.

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Umphrey's McGee & Lettuce To Be Featured On New Virtual Reality Platform - Live for Live Music

Amanda Kesting, KUSA 5:34 PM. MDT June 26, 2017

LAKEWOOD - The Denver-metro area's first virtual reality arcade is set to open in Lakewood this weekend.

Head Games VR is a place where gamers can try out virtual reality headsets and play the latest VR-compatible games.

It will include three gaming stations with HTC Vive headsets and gaming computers.

According to the arcade's founders the idea is to "introduce people of all ages and backgrounds to the potential of virtual reality entertainment."

The July 1 opening corresponds with the second day of Denver Comic Con, so as part of the grand opening event, Head Games is hosting a Comic Con after-party. They are encouragingthose who want to try out some of the best in VR as well as Denver-based developers to stop by the new arcade and check it out.

Learn more about the grand opening party here:http://bit.ly/2uaY2Ao

The owners of Head Games VR hope to eventually add more gaming stations to the arcade, as well as have an area where participants playing the games are filmed in front of a green screen. That way, they would be able to compose the player into the game world on a screen where friends would be able to watch.

Head Games VR is opening at 9655 W. Colfax Ave in Lakewood on July 1st.

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Virtual Reality arcade coming to Lakewood - 9NEWS.com

Virtual reality takes your eyes and ears into another world. But it isnt quite truly immersive, yet. So,Tegway wants to take you one step closer into the immersion by making you feel new sensations like heat, cold, and pain.

The company demonstrated its ThermoReal technology at the HTC Vive X accelerator event last week in San Francisco. ThermoReal developed a thermoelectric device that can generate heat and cold upon demand and translate that feeling into your hands as you hold touch controls in VR. It is a new kind of human-machine interface.

Tegway created a semiconductor device that heats up on one side when you input electricity into it. The other side becomes cold when you put electricity into it. This kind of technology is already used in wine refrigerators, which generate cold without vibrations because there are no moving parts (thats what you need to preserve the wine better).

The device can become hotter based on the level of the electrical current. I put on a VR headset and held the ThermoReal controller in my hand. As I touched something flaming, I felt actual heat. And when I touched something cold, I felt the coldness for real. And to make me feel pain, the ThermoReal device generated both heat and cold at the same time. It was an electrifying experience.

It may be a while before this can be built into a VR device. But it is an interesting milestone on the road to full immersion. Applications that use the tech could draw you into an experience through more than sound and visuals.

Above: Tegway technology.

Above: Tegway wants to bring new sensations to VR.

Tegway has filed numerous patent applications in the areas of fabricating flexible thermoelectric device technologies, hardware design and applications, and software algorithms for thermal realism.

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ThermoReal lets you feel heat, cold, and pain in virtual reality - VentureBeat

June 25, 2017 Screenshot of a visual rendering model of Notre Dame Cathedral, created based on plans, laser scan data and site visits. Credit: Ghost Orchestra Project/LIMSI

Paris' Cathedral of Notre Dame has a ghost orchestra that is always performing, thanks to a sophisticated, multidisciplinary acoustics research project that will be presented during Acoustics '17 Boston, the third joint meeting of the Acoustical Society of America and the European Acoustics Association being held June 25-29, in Boston, Massachusetts.

In the project, computer models use recordings from a live concert held at the cathedral and detailed room acoustic simulations to produce a novel type of audience experience: a virtual recreation of the live performance using spatial audio and virtual reality.

Researchers reproduced the recordings using computerized acoustical data and enhanced it with computer-generated virtual navigation3-D visualizations made with immersive architectural rendering that float the viewer through the complex acoustics of the acclaimed medieval gothic cathedral.

Combined, the multimodal sound and image footage of the ghost orchestra produce a spectral tour to the sounds of the 19th century opera "La Vierge"The Virginperformed live during the 2012-2013 concert season to celebrate the Cathedral's 850th anniversary.

Multimodal virtual reality integration is central to the project's significance, said Brian F.G. Katz, lead investigator and CNRS Research Director at the Institute Jean Le Rond d'Alembert, Pierre and Marie Curie University, in Paris.

"3D-audio is the hot topic today in virtual reality (VR) that is currently a very active subject in both academic and industrial research," Katz said. "With the commercialization of affordable VR systemsthe cheapest allowing for VR on smartphonesspatial audio is rapidly immerging from the laboratory."

The next stage in spatial audio is personalized audio rendering that involves being able to adjust the rendering to match one's individual head and ear details.

"The importance of multimodal interactions, how visual and auditory cues balance in spatial perception, is key to VR and the sense of immersion, of being 'in' the VR world," Katz explained.

He envisions many applications emerging from the investigation.

"For me, spatial audio is a domain on the boundary of physical acoustics, psycho-acoustics, perception and cognition, and digital signal processing."

His work focuses on using each of the fields to learn more about the othersfrom virtual audio scenes exploring how visually impaired people understand and remember architectural spaces, to improving understanding of spatial audition, to refining virtual reality rendering capabilities.

Created in the context of the French funded research projects FUI-BiLi, (Binaural Listening and ANR-ECHO), the acoustical foundation of the project is a 45 channel close-mic recording of the live concert made by the Conservatoire de Paris combined with a detailed geometrical room acoustics computational model that was created and calibrated based on in situ measurements of reverberation and clarity parameters.

Next, the team will apply the methodology to other complex multimodal environments such as theatre simulations.

"Aside from the acoustics in this project, I think we definitely learned a lot about computer graphics and VR content production, which has opened up a lot more dialogue with those communities that we intend to pursue," Katz said.

Explore further: Concert hall acoustics influence the emotional impact of music

More information: For more information about the project: groupeaa.limsi.fr/projets:ghostorch

Aalto University researchers have found that the emotional impact experienced by music listeners depends on the concert hall's acoustics.

Researchers at Aalto University in Finland have developed a method that allows accurate comparisons of concert hall acoustics. The leader of the research group, Associate professor Tapio Lokki, was presented with an International ...

Researchers at Aalborg University, in conjunction with Bang & Olufsen in Denmark, have developed a sound laboratory that can reproduce the acoustics of any environment from cars to concert halls. One goal is better design ...

From the sweeping sounds of strings to the full and hearty woodwinds, live orchestral performances have a way of enveloping listeners within musical compositions. But not all symphonies are created equalmuch of what determines ...

People who are visually impaired will often use a cane to feel out their surroundings. With training and practice, people can learn to use the pitch, loudness and timbre of echoes from the cane or other sounds to navigate ...

Aalto University researchers have found that music is perceived to have greater dynamic range in rectangular, shoebox shaped concert halls than in other types of halls.

Paris' Cathedral of Notre Dame has a ghost orchestra that is always performing, thanks to a sophisticated, multidisciplinary acoustics research project that will be presented during Acoustics '17 Boston, the third joint meeting ...

Microphones, from those in smartphones to hearing aids, are built specifically to hear the human voicehumans can't hear at levels higher than 20 kHz, and microphones max out at around 24 kHz, meaning that microphones only ...

Google said Friday it would stop scanning the contents of Gmail users' inboxes for ad targeting, moving to end a practice that has fueled privacy concerns since the free email service was launched.

Like driving a car despite a glowing check-engine light, large buildings often chug along without maintenance being performed on the building controls designed to keep them running smoothly.

Researchers at The University of Texas at Dallas are getting more out of the sweat they've put into their work on a wearable diagnostic tool that measures three diabetes-related compounds in microscopic amounts of perspiration.

Researchers at the College of Engineering at Carnegie Mellon University have developed a novel design approach for exoskeletons and prosthetic limbs that incorporates direct feedback from the human body. The findings were ...

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Seeing with your ears: Novel acoustics project aims to improve virtual reality, explore ear shape effects on 3-D sound - Phys.Org

Like many emerging technologies, virtual reality (VR) is a nascent industry, that is long on promise and short on mass-market products. Only a handful of companies currently ship VR products, and many of those products still fall short of their much hyped, game-changing potential.

However, as plenty of past tech trends have demonstrated, investors who are patient enough to allow this trend to develop could ride this wave to ample profits. Keeping that in mind, let's review why shares of Facebook (NASDAQ:FB), Sony (NYSE:SNE), and Advanced Micro Devices (NASDAQ:AMD) each make for interesting potential investments in this still-blossoming tech market.

The world's largest social-media network has moved aggressively to buy up many next-gen communications companies over the past five years. In doing so, it has largely focused on two core areas: mobile messaging platforms and virtual reality.

Facebook shelled out $2 billion in cash and stock to buy VR hardware and software start-up Oculus in March 2014. The much-discussed VR rig then went on sale in the U.S. last year.

Though technologically impressive, the Oculus -- and other virtual reality rigs like it -- have a number of headwinds that many think it will need to overcome before becoming a truly mass-market phenomenon. This chiefly includes its high sticker price of $599 and its reliance on running from PCs with high-end graphics capabilities. If the device can overcome its pricing and compatibility issues, Oculus could take off.

Image Source: Getty Images.

Sony joins Facebook as one of the leading manufacturers of VR headsets with the PlayStation VR, which it launched last October. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Sony has pursued a similar pricing strategy in relation to its VR headset as it has done with its highly popular PlayStation consoles.

Sony chiefly competes with Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) and its Xbox franchise in the console-gaming market. Though they largely vie for the same customers, Microsoft has historically gravitated toward a slightly higher pricing strategy compared to Sony.

As just the latest example, Microsoft recently garnered criticism when it announced it planned to price its forthcoming Xbox One X console at $499, $100 higher than Sony's PlayStation 4 Pro console. Similarly, Sony has chosen to undercut Facebook's price for the Oculus, charging $499 for a bundle that includes the PlayStation VR headset and controllers.

However, like Facebook and Samsung, commercial success has been slow to come by for Sony's PlayStation VR. Recent figures from research firm IDC claimed Sony shipped 429,000 PlayStation VR headsets during the first quarter of the year. This represents nice progress for the Japanese electronics giant, but it also reiterates that VR still has a long way to go before becoming a true mass-market medium.

I wanted to highlight a potential component play as the final piece of this discussion, and though it isn't as clear-cut as the other names on this list, chipmaker AMD certainly is worth considering. The company has two potential points of exposure to this end, so let's quickly examine them both.

The first opportunity for the company lies in VR-enabled PCs. One of the key pain points in VR gaming is its annoyingly high component costs.

As previously mentioned, VR rigs like Facebook's Oculus rely on VR-optimized personal computers to handle the bulk of the image-processing workload. This means consumers must own two fairly expensive pieces of hardware in order to get a truly satisfactory VR experience. To help lighten the cost, AMD's VR-quality Radeon chips start at $199 and have been cited by PC industry publications as an ideal way for enthusiasts to reduce the cost burden relative to more traditional (and expensive) image-processing chips, like those manufactured by NVIDIA.

A second, more long-term potential growth catalyst is that AMD could eventually provide processors for stand-alone VR rigs. AMD's semi-custom chips already power the Xbox One and PlayStation 4, the gaming industry's most important consoles. As such, it certainly seems plausible that AMD would jump at any opportunity to provide the combined CPU and GPU technology for VR headsets should the opportunity arise.

Of course, this involves a little projection on my part, but AMD's experience in VR graphics chips and ongoing supplier relationships with gaming leaders makes this an interesting option for prospective investors to consider.

Teresa Kersten is an employee of LinkedIn and is a member of The Motley Fool's board of directors. LinkedIn is owned by Microsoft. Andrew Tonner has no position in any stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool owns shares of and recommends Facebook and Nvidia. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.

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3 Top Virtual Reality Stocks to Buy Now -- The Motley Fool - Motley Fool