By Balaji Krishnan

Download DabKick VR for free from DabKick.com

I’m thrilled to announce that after many months of hard work and fine tuning, DabKick VR is available to download from our homepage: If you have an HTC-Vive, get the DabKick VR app at DabKick.com here. (It’ll also be available on Steam in the next 2–3 weeks.)

DabKick VR is social VR, but a very different approach to what virtual reality startups have been doing lately. As I explained on Upload VR last week, we think social VR can’t succeed unless the vast majority of non-HMD owners can also participate in the experience. This is why we’ve created an immersive, virtual theater, where Vive users can enjoy both video and images together with DabKick app users connected via their iOS and Android phones — all represented as avatars in the same virtual space, together. For related reasons, we think shared media viewing is the right framework: Rather than putting users into an open chatroom context where they may feel pressured to keep a conversation going, users can also focus on enjoying their favorite videos with each other.

Robert Scoble tries out DabKick VR — read his write-up here

As Robert Scoble put it during his demo earlier this week, “This is the future of theaters.” We hope so too!

More About DabKick VR Features:

Immersive, cross-platform movie theater experience for enjoying media together.

Users represented as avatars sitting in a virtual theater watching videos on their smartphones, if they’re joing from a smartphone. Users watching in VR are represented as avatars wearing headsets.

Post and receive emojis and text chat with the group in the theater. Avatars glow and vibrate when they’re communicating.

VR users also have a speech-to-text feature — press a button to talk, which is then converted to text chat shared with the group.

Users in the same session can watch both videos and photos together at the same time, so they can swap and select photos with each other.

Maximum concurrency per session: Technically up to 100,000, but feasibly, up to 200 avatars in the entire theaters watching together.

We have other other immersive experiences planned for future updates, including a beach viewing party and a sports arenas. Social music listening will be coming soon, so stay tuned for updates.

Please give it a try, and give us your feedback — via e-mail (info at dabkick dot com) or my Twitter account.