VR Comic-con

Frankie never thought it could be possible to be able to attend the San Diego Comic-con before today. Mainly because of the distance, there are not many occasions that their parents would allow a 16-year-old to go down from Oregon to a large convention in California and their parents taking them was definitely out of the question. 

Another reason was them, specifically their disability, having trouble walking and using a wheelchair had been difficult for them for most of their life. Until recently going to a convention for them was next to impossible. The crowds of people, as well as the less than accessible locations conventions, are located made it overall a stressful experience for them. School was already hard, and they had no choice in going to campus almost every day. 

This was only something that Frankie could only dream about, so imagine how they must have felt when they heard about the new experience that the convention was planning to have. The uprise of VR technology had made its way to the convention heads and this year they were adding it to their convention audience. 

To Frankie, and most of the world, VR wasn’t anything new, especially in 2031. They have been to a few VR classes for school whenever they couldn’t make it there in person and VR was a popular form of entertainment for most of their friends. So having one was already pretty common for most households. For Frankie, VR wasn’t something that they fully understood. Luckily, from what they can tell from the convention website, everything seemed to be already figured out and the first VR convention was planning to be a hopeful success. When they found out about it they immediately went to the website to buy a ticket and read what it said. 

The front page had it in bold letters

“Reserve your tickets now for the first-ever VR option here at San Diego comic con 2031!!!

Click here for more details!”

Clicking on the link below, they couldn’t help but imagine what it would be like, getting to see what a convention would look like for them and the inclusivity of it all. From what they understood from hearing about it from friends, it sounded like a VR version during the actual event where they can move around and experience it without actually being there.

Once the link finally loaded and they read through the details, the excitement they had doubled with every paragraph they read.

“Experience our first ever VR comic con, happening at the same time as the in-person convention. 

Using the technology of VR, we have planned for an exciting way of experiencing our convention for the first time around the world. 

List of experiences you don’t want to miss through this VR experience:

Artist alley

Vender hall

Over 100 fan panels and celebrities panels

VR meetups where you can chat with other people using the VR and people attending in-person as well

Set up your own personal avatar or use one of our many sponsored characters and be able to walk around the Virtual convention center as your favorite character.”

What stood out to Frankie the most was the idea of getting to use one of their favorite characters as their avatar while getting a chance to meet other people during the meetup events. After signing up and paying for the weekend pass, they began counting the days until they could finally enjoy even just being able to go to a convention virtually. 

After a few weeks, as the convention grows closer, Frankie's excitement only grows. Getting emails with updates and setup details from the convention made it feel even more real. 

In the emails, there were a few simple things that the convention wanted people to get ready for ahead of time to have a better experience using the VR system they had planned out. The setup was simple; there was a form to fill out about what system Frankie would be using, which made it somewhat easier because they already knew how it worked. Some of the main points of setting up mainly consist of creating an account and picking an avatar to make sure all attendees are ready for the week of the convention. 

As much as Frankie loved the idea of picking a character pre-designed, there were quite a lot of characters that were sponsored that Frankie actually knew. they couldn’t help but want to make themselves into a virtual character, just like the video games they get to play. It was a fun challenge for them to make an identical character to them to actually walk around in. 

After the setup was finished, all there was left was to wait for the week of fun that they were about to have. 

When the first day of the convention finally came around, after waking up Frankie immediately signed in to get their first convention experience truly started. How it worked was slightly different than how it was described in the emails. With the number of people needing to sign in at the same time, the system was running as smoothly as Frankie would have hoped. After waiting around an hour they finally managed to get into the intro section of the convention. 

Putting on their VR headset, which over the years had developed into something less weighted. They weren’t old enough to completely remember what the headsets were at the beginning of the VR technology, however, the photos they had seen of them at school didn’t look ideal for them or anyone. It was much easier to use the VR systems that they had now, it was more like wearing sunglasses rather than having a screen attached to their head. 

On top of the feeling of wearing a headset, the sound quality was severely better. While the headset was more like wearing sunglasses, the speakers for the sound came out around the ends by the ears like wireless earbuds. They knew that the sound made it feel more real,  But Frankie didn’t really understand how it worked. 

After the long wait time, the logo for the convention pops up with a fade to a woman in professional clothes that began to talk. 

“Hello, and welcome to the first-ever SDCC VR experience,” she spoke in a calming, but almost robotic voice. “My name is Sandy and I will guide you through this event. For a better experience, what's your name?”

“F-Frankie, ma’am.” Frankie was surprised. 

“Frankie is what I heard. Is that correct?” 

“Y-yes!”

“Perfect! Let’s get started, Frankie.”  The woman’s voice changed to have more excitement in it, and she claps her hands together, “to begin, I will show you around.” she said as she slid to the left of the screen with a background of a map of the convention center popping up behind her with an arrow pointing at the top of the convention center map. “Using the map by simply using your remote, you can easily get to different parts of the convention center. In the center, we have the artist alley, where you can shop for fan-made creations like posters and books made from your favorite creators, and the vendor's hall, where you can shop to your heart's content from well-known companies that are being sponsored during this year’s show.” the arrow moved to the center of the map to showcase where it is located. “As for the entertainment, we have several designated rooms for fan-run and celebrity/company panels. Hovering over each room can provide you with the schedule of each room for the day. If you wish to plan ahead I will provide a personal schedule that will remind you when the panel is starting. However, due to the limitation of each virtual room only a good number of VR attendees like yourself will be allowed to join, if some choose to leave then you will be able to join the room. Much like how in-person attendees will also have to be aware of this happening.” The arrow once again moved to point out the different locations around the convention center where some of the panels will be located while an example of a schedule for one of the panel rooms. 

Frankie continued to listen along while nodding, even though they were aware that nodding was not needed or registered by the woman. They quickly grabbed the remote that she mentioned before. They always seemed to forget about using it, the remote was smaller than most of their game console remotes were so it made it easier for them to forget about them. You would think with the technology advancing to the point where the VR is simply a pair of sunglasses would make the remote unneeded, but innovators were still trying to figure that out. 

“And a convention wouldn’t be as exciting without community involvement, so we also made some personal VR rooms based on some of the content we have sponsored this year where you can go and meet other people around the world.” The woman on the screen continued, “and with that, I hope you enjoy your time this week experiencing all the fun things we have in store. If you need anything, simply ask for me by name or click on the little icon in the left corner of the screen and I can help with whatever you need to know.” After she was done speaking, the woman walked off the screen on the left as she walked into the little icon that she mentioned before as the lines around the circle are highlighted. 

After a while, it was quiet. Frankie wasn’t entirely clear on where to go or what to do. They had never been to a convention, so they weren’t sure where to go from here. They did remember that they saved a few extra dollars after getting the tickets to hopefully spend, so they figured the vendor/artist alley would be a great place to start. 

Using the remote they click over the vendor hall icon on the map, doing this fades the map away while zooming into the location in which Frankie had clicked. A quick loading screen popped up with a background of the vendor hall. Once it finished loading the screen faded into live footage of the front of the vendor hall and artist alley. 

From what they could tell when entering the area, it seems to be live footage of the actual convention going on. When they began to move slightly, it was a bit of lagging which is alright in Frankie's opinion, the tech wasn’t always perfect even with the years of testing that went into making VR a regular thing for households. 

After the lagging seemed to calm down a bit more, moving around to the different tables around the vendor floor was a lot easier. Using the remote, Frankie could walk to any of the tables to look at the artwork one of the artists featured there was selling and was provided a link to the artist store or to a specific item they’re looking for. Of course, they had to wait sometime for it to ship to them, but to them, it was better than missing out on not getting anything from some of their favorite artists. They even found some new artists that they never heard of before. They couldn’t spend too much on the things at the vendor’s hall, but it was nice to see what they had to offer for fans at the convention. 

What Frankie thought was really cool was that each table whenever they moved closer, it showed a small description of what that artist or company does/sells and the link to where to contact them. They also had some artists that were hooked up with live-streams of drawings that they were currently working on for commissions that artists are receiving during the convention. Frankie always loved to watch people draw and since they managed to request one commission from one of their favorite artists, they actually got to watch it be made for a couple of minutes before moving on. 

Once Frankie finished moving around to the different tables, there were so many exhibits from different companies showing off what they had to show fans this year. For the virtual version instead of some of the vendor’s tables having people talking like in the in-person conventions, they had virtual characters from the company that Frankie could easily interact with if they did end up having questions. 

After some time of looking around at what the virtual convention had to offer in the vendor/artist alley, Frankie thought about what to do next. Shopping was fun, but there’s only so much a 16-year-old can buy with a month of chore money saved up. They remembered that the woman at the beginning said something about going to see some panels that would be going on for the rest of the week. 

“S-sandy?” Frankie spoke up. 

Suddenly the woman from before popped up again, “hello attendee! You called for me, how may I help you?” 

“W-what are some of the panels that I could go to right now?” 

“Oh yea, there are a few going on right now. Some of the bigger panels like the cosplay contest are about to start, however, it seems that one has a waiting list all ready for it. There are some fan panels happening that have enough room for VR attendees. There’s a panel about to start that is “how comic books can shift into VR” if you would like to attend that I can get you started and settled for the panel. There are several other options too if you would like to know about those too.” 

“No, that sounds fun. I would like to go to “How Comic books can shift into VR” please.” 

“Alright, I can send you there now. If you need anything just let me know and I hope you enjoy your time.” The woman faded away again and a quick loading screen of a simple panel room with chairs and a front table in the background.

When the room finally loaded, it showed a group of people in the front near the table where one of them looked to be talking already. Having panels or meeting over a live stream like this wasn’t uncommon either, after 2020 it was almost as common as going to the actual event. It really was just a fancy version of zoom, Frankie’s character looked to be seated in an audience with other VR attendee characters looking around too. 

For Frankie, it was actually kind of nice to see other VR attendees. Up until now, the only interaction they had was with the VR assistance and “shopkeepers”, (the name that Frankie decided to call the AIs running the tables in the artist alley and vendor hall, it made it feel more like a video game.) seeing other people, or rather other VR characters made Frankie feel a little more connected. Like they weren’t actually just sitting in their room with a pair of glasses on, barely moving, and talking to no one. 

While Frankie couldn’t physically talk to the other people, there was a chat option. During the panels that Frankie went to, they didn’t spend much time listening to what the panelists were saying. Getting to talk to other nerds like them made the whole VR experience worth it. They even met a few people who are in the same boat as them. Being disabled has made it hard for a lot of people to be able to attend conventions, so having a chance to do something like this meant as much to those people as it did to Frankie.

As the first day of their first-ever convention was ending soon, Frankie decided to join one of the quick chat rooms that they had made for VR attendees to get to know each other like in most conventions when they have meetups for specific tv shows or movies. They found a chatroom made specifically for kids under 18 and spent a good amount of time speaking with some kids from different parts of the country. Some of them even plan to meet up in this room again to talk tomorrow. 

Before signing off for the day, Frankie quickly made use of the personal schedule provided and made a list of panels to go to for the rest of the week. Thinking of what might come next in the future of VR for events like this one made it so much more exciting for Frankie. Someday they hoped to be able to attend in person but until then having the technology of VR had already made it possible for them to experience so much more than they ever thought was possible.