Virtual reality technology has seen a massive boom since its introduction just a few years ago.

This year marked the second annual Global VR day, which had 50 events worldwide with Lethbridge College being one of the hosts.

Global VR Day is meant to be a series of events to show off the capabilities of the technology and to make it more mainstream.

It’s an event where the public can attend and experience virtual and augmented reality first hand to see where the technology is today and what the future might look like.

The Lethbridge chapter of the event hosted a group of local VR enthusiasts, business owners and developers.

The public was welcomed to try out VR games and see other applications for VR, like interior design, interactive storytelling and training purposes.

A pair of local developers, Allyson Cikor and Jesze Caszas, showed off their ambitious VR game at the event.

The game, titled Etherion, is a tailored to the VR experience and shows off everything that makes VR gaming unique.

Caszas has two degrees from the University of Lethbridge, one in new media and one in computer science.

“When I was in university, we had an intro to game development class, and this was around the time the first Oculus came out,” said Caszas. “We made something based off of the Inception hallway scene and a lot of local people came and saw our project. And that’s when I saw the limitless potential of VR.”

Cikor has been involved in VR development since the early days of the technology.

She is slated to be one of the instructors in the VR certificate program the college is planning to launch next September.

“I’m so happy this is happening in Lethbridge. It’s not just in big hub cities where technology is booming, it’s happening here,” said Cikor. “I will be teaching primarily the 3D modeling element of it. The college is doing a good job bringing in industry experience and that’s what I hope to bring here to help students get into the industry and use these skills right away.”

The planned program will be a one-year certificate for students to learn how to develop content for VR.

Cikor added that VR technology has made huge advances since its introduction and is an incredibly fast-moving field.

The college’s VR day also had practical applications as well, showing off how it can be used for training in high-stress scenarios and to display architectural designs.

Mike McCready, multimedia instructor and organizer of Lethbridge’s chapter of Global VR day, feels the technology is going to become a big part of our lives.

“I think we’re on the cusp, where the need is not super great just yet, but it’s going to explode. It’s going to explode very quickly as more and more areas adopt this technology in their workflow, whether it’s for business, construction or education.”

The event at the college this year was relatively small, but next year, the plan is to expand as the technology becomes more prevalent and widely available.