A good friend of Alan’s, publisher of the online XR news publication, VR Voice, drops by the show for a general chat about the future of the space, including the potential for XR to help train workers in a future where retirement is less common, saving money by designing hospitals in VR before brick meets mortar, the video game crash of 1983, and a little Fruit Ninja.

Alan: Today’s guest is a good friend of mine, Bob Fine. In 2011, Bob launched the only printed magazine covering social media, The Social Media Monthly. In January 2014, he launched his second print titled The Startup Monthly in May 2016, he launched — what I love — VRVoice.co, a content vertical on all things virtual reality. In addition to his publishing endeavors, Bob continues to provide I.T. strategic planning consulting services to both private sector and non-profit communities. Bob has over 10 years of additional work experience as a systems and sales engineer with various companies, including CMGi, Hughes Network, IOWave and Raytheon, as well as two of his own consulting companies, Geoplan and the Cool Blue Company. I want to have a warm welcome; thank you, Bob, for joining us on the show today.

Bob: Alan, thanks very much for having me. I’m honored to be one of your guests.

Alan: It’s my absolute pleasure and honor to have you on the show. I’ve met with you many times. You’ve actually shared some CES stories, and we’ve been in a little glass booth in CES together. That was wonderful. You have your own podcast and news outlet, talking about all things virtual reality, VRVoice. That is been amazing, and you’ve been a great influencer in the space, so thank you.

Bob: Well, I appreciate that.

Alan: So the first question I love to ask everybody is, what is the best VR/AR/XR experiences — or what are some of the best experiences — that you’ve had so far?

Bob: You know, I guess from my perspective; I’m a longtime video gamer. I just went to PAX East on Friday, up in Boston. I was my first PAX event. And if you’re not familiar, that’s the Penny Arcade conference. Huge, huge gaming conference. It makes E3 look minuscule. And I’m old enough where I started with an Atari 2600. One my the reasons I started looking at VR again in 2016 was because of that video gaming interest. When you ask me my best experiences right now, I’m going to kind of… I’m thinking about some of the early games that that I played, that gave me that “woah” moment. As I’m thinking back to it now, this was actually on HTC VIVE — first gen, which was only maybe 3, 4 years ago now — and I was so impressed with the first generation of hardware that I was like, “well, this is ready for prime time.” The prices might still be a little bit high, but the quality of the gaming was there already. Just two off top my head is the VR version of Fruit Ninja, which I’ve personally put about 400-500 people through, because it’s one of the best and fastest experiences I think you can give somebody that’s never tried VR, but you can give to anybody whether they’re five years old or ninety five years old.

Alan: Slicing fruit in VR is magical, and the fact that they have the haptic feedback to the controller is just… [implied Chef Kiss]. You’re right, it is a magical experience.

Bob: The other game that I was really getting addicted to was Space Pirates, which I think is still just a brilliant early video game that demonstrates the quick and easy access to VR. It’s kind of like the space invaders of AR, I think, in terms of what those early games that caught fire and was easy to pick