As the clock ticks for a certain winter sport competition to begin in South Korea this week, City Garage is hosting a much smaller, more futuristic version of the Olympics tonight in South Baltimore.
The Port Covington space will play host to the Virtual Reality Olympics, inviting small teams to pick a country–even a made-up one with its own uni’s and fake national anthem, for bonus points–to represent while competing in a handful of virtual- and augmented-reality games. Local VR and AR developer Balti Virtual has helped to organize the competition on its home turf.
Balti Virtual co-founder Will Gee said some of the challenges in tonight’s lineup are Baltimore-area-made, such as a basketball game designed by University of Baltimore graduate Russell Allen, a Skee-Ball game from Columbia’s Mosaic Learning and an AR running game (think “Temple Run”) from Balti Virtual. Each team member will get five minutes to play and record their highest score; the nation with the top score at the end will be declared the winner.
Others at City Garage are pitching in: Gee said the The Foundery, the industrial maker space, contributed medals made with a laser cutter, as well as an LED-lit torch, and longboard maker Bustin’ Boards painted the medals.
Balti Virtual has hosted quarterly meetups for the VR community since November 2015, with a “science fair” format for devs to show off what they’ve made. For the VR Olympics idea, “we just thought it would be fun to mix it up,” Gee said.
Admission free, 6-9 p.m., City Garage, 101 W. Dickman Street. Details.
