Immersive Bavaria - Bavaria supports AR/VR research and companies
To ensure that AR and VR concepts in Bavaria continue to grow in the future, project funding and a new "XR Hub" are going to pool and network activities by media and industrial companies, increase visibility, initiate new developments and strengthen Bavaria on the whole under the umbrella brand "Immersive Bavaria". The Bavarian government is also investing in Bavaria’s digital future with the Bayern Digital I and Bayern Digital II master plans. Funds of EUR 5.5 billion in total are being budgeted for the period from 2015 to 2022 to make Bavaria a leading region in the digital revolution. This naturally also provides promising potential for developing and implementing AR and VR solutions. The FFF Bayern funding partner for the film and games industry has now also created a separate funding program for virtual reality to be able to support innovative ideas for virtual reality formats. Start-ups can find funding opportunities at several technology and start-up centres in Bavaria. Who knows, perhaps the next cross-industry innovation is already in its infancy?
Bavaria benefits from AR and VR innovations in particular with its high density of technology and industrial companies and no longer just in theory: For example, Audi has already launched the first fully functional virtual reality application for customer consultation at dealerships with the “Audi VR experience”. Researchers at Siemens are working on a digital twin for gas turbines that enables engineers to monitor them from a distance and solve maintenance problems early. And Schaeffler is testing the impact virtual and augmented reality has on industrial concepts in virtual training rooms, among other things. The AR & VR ecosystem in Bavaria is building a community of considerable technological creativity and diversity. The success of Bavarian research institutes, the companies based here and of course the start-ups too can be seen, among other things, by the fact that the Augmented World Expo Europe (AWE Europe) came to Munich in 2017 and have opted for the location again in 2018 too.