Last summer, to celebrate World Oceans Week, LenovoEDU and The Hydrous Virtual Dive Team brought the ocean to you with Expedition Palau, a synchronized virtual dive. This was a first-of-its-kind shared, synchronized immersive reality experience where viewers around the world dove under the waters of Palau, came face-to-face with incredible marine animals, and shared the wonder of the underwater world in real-time.
That experience was just nominated for a Webby Award for Technical Achievement – Virtual & Remote. Voting is open until Thursday, April 21. Vote now for this incredible experience!
Watch a clip of the dive:
What is a shared, synchronised immersive reality experience?
Imagine you could travel to anywhere in the ocean, with anyone you want, all without leaving the comfort of your home.
The Expedition Palau virtual dive integrated livestreamed video presentation and 360 documentary video through a simple and easy to use application. As long as viewers had an internet connection, they could join fellow virtual divers from all over the world—in real time and explore marine ecosystems below the waves.
The free experience was open to people with or without a VR headset. The 360 documentary video portions of the dive can be experienced on tablets to VR headsets, laptops to phones.
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LenovoEDU was the education sponsor of the event.
The Hydrous is a non-profit organisation on a mission to create open access oceans so that all people may explore, understand, and engage with marine environments, which are severely threatened by climate change and human impacts.
