Today’s guest, location-based VR expert Bob Cooney, has been in the XR space since the early 1990s. He drops by the show to give Alan an update on all the newest tech advances he saw at the International Association of Amusement Parks and Attractions Expo, and explains how today is the most exciting time to be working in this industry. Alan: Welcome to the XR for Business podcast with your host, Alan Smithson. Today’s guest is always on the bleeding edge of technology. He’s able to predict both tech and business trends. Bob Cooney is widely considered one of the world’s foremost experts on location based virtual reality, and the author of the book “Real Money from Virtual Reality.” I’m really super excited to introduce my good friend and colleague, Bob Cooney to the show. Welcome, Bob. Bob: Oh, dude, I’m so happy to be here. Thanks for having me, Alan. Alan: It’s my absolute pleasure. It’s been a long time coming, this interview. But we’re here. We’re excited. And we just are coming off the heels of *the* major North American show, IAAPA — which for those of you listening and you haven’t been there — it’s basically Disney World for VR, AR, and out-of-home experiences. You were there. Let’s talk about what you saw, and what are the trends coming in out-of-home entertainment. Bob: Yeah, it’s an amazing show. I’ve been going this– I think this is my 27th IAAPA or something like that. And my first one was 1991. And over the last four or five years we’ve seen VR every year just grow in not only the number of companies bringing VR/AR solutions into the market — mostly VR at this point — but the quality is every year measurably increasing. And that’s the thing I think that has me so excited is three or four years ago there was just a literally handful of things that you would even remotely consider as an operator. And last year there was confusion now, because there was– you were starting to see a lot of good stuff and this year it was just overwhelming. And so, yeah, we’ve seen real quality come into the market. Alan: You’ve seen pretty much everything there is out there. What’s one thing that blew your mind this year? Bob: Good question. The rise of unattended virtual reality systems. There was a company called LAI Games, which has been around for decades. They’re based out of Asia. They build arcade games. And a couple of years ago, they took a license from Ubisoft: Raving Rabbids, which is a really popular IP. They merged it with a D-Box motion base and they created a VR ride for family entertainment centers, arcades, and theme parks. It’s a two player ride. It was fairly cost effective, but they recommended it be operated without an attendant, and it was the first VR attraction that came out where you didn’t need to staff it. And the profitability of that really made a big difference for operators. And now this year there was another company called VRsenal, that had an arcade game cabinet with– that was a VR based that was unattended, and it was running Beat Saber, which is obviously one of the most popular games out there. And so we’re starting to see companies realize that maybe we don’t need attendants. Maybe people are smarter than we give them credit for. Maybe they can figure out how to put a headset on their face. Maybe they will clean it by themselves if they care about that. And so I talk about a lot about the four-minute mile, once it was broken. People thought was impossible, people thought if you try to run a four-minute mile, you would die. And once it was proven that it could be done, hundreds of people have done it since. And I think this notion of unattended VR is similar to that. And we’re going to start seeing more companies give more credit to consumers, that they’re smarter than we think they are....