John Vechey and Forest Gibson of PlutoVR
John Vechey and Forest Gibson of PlutoVR

This week on the GeekWire radio show we go deep on the topic of virtual reality — hearing why Todd Bishop thinks it’s so cool and how it almost made me throw up on the floor of the Consumer Electronics Show.

The Pluto VR team outside of their Ballard offices
The Pluto VR team outside of their Ballard offices

Our guests in the studio include John Vechey and Forest Gibson, who recently announced their new Seattle-based virtual reality startup PlutoVR.

Vechey, who previously co-founded PopCap Games, which sold to Electronic Arts in 2011 for more than $750 million, thinks virtual reality represents the next big wave in computing.

And while it is now the “wild, wild west” with multiple virtual reality headset makers planning for battle, he thinks big things are going to come from the technology.

“Virtual reality, more and more, is going to be a fundamental shift in how we communicate, how we work together,” said Vechey. “You look around right now, and you think how many people are on their smartphones. Twenty years ago, if you would describe the smartphone and the impact on our society, and companies that exist only because of smartphones, you’d be like that’s crazy. Virtual reality is going to have a much, much bigger effect on society than even smartphones did. It is going to be on the level of just computing in general, with what happened with the personal computer. It is going to be pretty insane over the next 20 years.”

Listen to the full show here:

The weekly news segment starts out with a debate over the Apple Watch — including my personal thoughts on why I think it is going to be a flop. That’s not stopping GeekWire Silicon Valley correspondent Blair Hanley Frank who plans to plunk down $700 for one of the gizmos, offering these five reasons in this column earlier this week.

We also discuss the arrival of CIA-backed Palantir in Seattle, which barred us from attending their opening party this past week. (But that didn’t stop us from getting the scoop on the swanky affair).

Our App of the Week, Pillow, helps you track your sleep patterns. (An interesting proposition given my infrequent night terrors and sleep walking episodes).

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