When people talk about virtual reality, most conversations will eventually touch on this industry in China. Surprisingly, there is less of an interest in VR in China than one might think. That is coming to change in the city of Guiyang, though. Various new buildings are popping up on the outskirts of town. This is all part of China’s first virtual reality theme park. An interesting and daring project, to say the very least.
China has big Plans for Virtual Reality
No one can deny it was a matter of time until we saw the first virtual reality theme parks showed up. In most cases, one would expect such parks to revolve around using an app to walk around in a virtual world. In China, people see things a bit differently, to say the very least. In fact, the construction of a full-fledged virtual reality theme park is taking place in Guiyang. This city is the capital of one of China’s poorest provinces, which makes the choice rather unusual.
According to statisticians, the VR market in China will grow to $8.5bn by 2020. That is quite the spectacular projection. Accommodating this demand will not be easy and requires some major gambles Building a theme park which focuses on VR technology is a major risk, but the rewards may be equally large. Building such a 330-acre park will take a lot of time, though. Moreover, it will feature at last 35 VR attractions, ranging from regular gaming arcades to VR roller coasters and tours around scenic spots in virtual reality.
As most people would expect, this park is not cheap by any means It is part of the $1.5bn Oriental Science Fiction Valley park project. China is looking for new way to attract more tourists and the government feels virtual reality will play a big part in doing so. Gaming has always been very popular in China, thus it makes sense to explore this sector further.
While this is not necessarily the first park of its kind, it is certainly bigger than any other VR attraction in the world. Japan and the US have different VR location-based ventures for consumers to enjoy. Guiyang will be one of the first actual theme parks focusing solely on this technology, though. While not everyone will bungee jump from a Transformer robot, it is still a pretty exciting development. Whether or not it will be a successful venture, remains to be seen.
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