Bristol’s burgeoning virtual reality (VR) industry has received a boost with the launch of a new virtual social space – complete with recreations of city icons the Clifton Suspension Bridge and a Harbourside crane.
Opened by Bristol-based virtual reality firm Opposable VR, BVRL 2.0 is a virtual evolution of Bristol’s VR Lab, the Habourside co-working space for companies and individuals working in the fields of virtual, augmented and mixed reality (XR) technology. 
It is run by a team of experts best-placed to offer advice and arrange engaging industry talks and events on a number of subjects related to XR.
BVRL 2.0’s creation was funded by Innovate UK, the government’s innovation agency, while the physical space was created with support of the West of England Combined Authority, UWE Bristol, the University of Bristol, Bath Spa University and Rocketmakers, the Bath-based web design firm.
It will be officially launched at an event next Wednesday, October 7, with a series of talks on virtual and augmented reality from some expert speakers.
The multi-purpose space built for AltspaceVR is intended for professionals, students and teachers to connect, network and communicate, providing a much-needed virtual location for education, teaching sessions, cultural events, and demonstrations of new creative technical content.
BVRL includes a central ‘meeting’ area for socials and a starting point to reach the other areas via BVRL 2.0’s various bridges.
It sits next to a faithful recreation of the Bristol VR Lab, along with a tree house and a selection of nods to Bristol such as the suspension bridge – with some surprises scattered around for visitors to find.
The amphitheatre is a space for people to give and attend talks. It uses AltspaceVR’s Multimedia Console to enable speakers to give presentations complete with videos and slideshows.
The meeting rooms are available for. The four rooms, each designed to be used by two, four, six or eight people, are available for private use while the classroom has been created for teachers, students, lecturers, and anyone wishing to give talks to smaller groups of people than the amphitheatre space is designed for.
AltspaceVR is a Microsoft-owned social platform for virtual events in virtual reality or on a desktop PC. It supports 2D Mode on PC and VR Mode on HTC Vive, Oculus Rift, Rift S, Go, and Quest and Windows Mixed Reality.
