San Francisco-based startup Lifeliqe (pronounced “life like”) debuted and demoed its new virtual reality, educational content experience from the floor of the Augmented World Expo 2016 this week.
According to co-founder and CEO Ondrej Homola, Lifeliqe spent the last three years creating a library of high-quality, interactive VR content. The patience may have paid off, as the results are pretty impressive.
Using HTC’s Vive as the hardware to demo the content, Lifeliqe’s experiences allow students to virtually examine a satellite in space, climb on dinosaurs from the jurassic period or even examine shark anatomies (from the inside out).
This new VR capability will join the company’s existing, eponymous, tablet product that is already in use with over 15,000 schools across the globe (mostly in Europe). The tablet content is also compelling and fun to use (see below) although not as immersive as their VR counterparts. However the combination of content will simply give teachers more options for how to engage their students.
The company’s thesis is that if students can participate in a variety of learning situations that are deeply immersive and interactive, their retention and interest will increase. This makes sense, as I can easily see how these learning scenarios could keep kids’ attention.
Lifeliqe is planning for its VR content to hit the market in the second half of this year and it is still vetting exactly which hardware platform to build for.
