Most kids who grew up spending too much time at the video

arcade wound up with fewer quarters and a few earfuls from their

parents. That’s not the case for Kevin Williams, who turned his

arcade addiction into a career as an out-of-home entertainment guru.

He drops in to talk about how XR is taking old ideas and breathing

new life into them.

Alan: Hey, you're listening to the XR for Business Podcast with your host, Alan Smithson. In this episode coming up is Kevin Williams. He is the out-of-home location-based entertainment expert, and he's what's coming up next. We're going to talk about Disney vision, the 90s, immersive entertainment, dream craft, driving go-karts in augmented reality, Great Wolf Lodge and magical wands. All that and much more coming up on the XR for Business Podcast. Founder of the DNA conference and publisher of the ever-mindblowing Stinger Report and my guest today, Kevin Williams. Thank you so much for joining me on the show.

Kevin: Thank you, Alan, a real

pleasure to be here. The check's in the post.

Alan: It's my absolute pleasure. You don't know this, but you're one of my very first mentors in this entire industry. You were the first person I reached out to and you were so gracious with helping me understand this world of VR and AR before anybody really caught on to this. That was back in 2014, and I'll never forget it. So thank you for being there for me.

Kevin: Oh, thank you for

remembering. Our industry only grows by the new people that you can

introduce to it.

Alan: And with that, I want to make a challenge to everybody in the industry who owns some sort of VR or AR device -- and I am included in this. It's easy for us to not remember the journey and excitement of our first few times of trying these technologies. I implore everybody and make a challenge to everybody that owns a device -- or many devices, in our case -- in the next seven days, to put it on as many heads as possible; to get those reactions, to re-energize yourself to the fact that wow, this technology is revolutionary, it is mind-blowing. And we have it sitting in our backpacks, sitting on our desks, sitting in our labs. Let's show everybody.

Kevin: Well, that's part of the

reason why I'm so passionate about augmented reality and virtual

reality being used in out-of-home entertainment. We can get a lot

more heads in it, rather than it just sitting on a shelf in the

development studio.

Alan: I couldn't agree more. I

had the opportunity to meet with Dream Craft Attractions on the

weekend, and oh my goodness, they've even solved the problem of

hygiene! How do you put people in those masks without having to

sterilize all of the devices? So they came up with this ingenious

plastic helmet. Like, so smart. And then the VR headsets lower down.

Kevin: It's interesting; you

talk about how long this industry has been going. I was just having a

conversation. You do understand that that two-part liner system is

actually based on the original idea that Walt Disney's Imagineerium

had for their Disney-bution system.

Alan: "Disney-bution

system!"

Kevin: So, Disneyvision was the system that was its Epcot in the 90s. That's where a lot of people first heard about virtual reality in the theme park sector. And because Disney at the time was trying to work out which was the best way to get people into virtual reality -- and this technology is clunky, was using CRTs -- they came up with a two-part system where there was a liner that you put on first, and then the head-mounted display component clipped into that liner when you go to the right, standing in the queue line. As they say, nothing is new; it's just the wrappers that change. Here we are, 2018-2019, and the same pri