latest press releases
May 14,2021 : 12 PM EST
ROAM & Army Educational Outreach Program
team up to create Virtual Lab
STEM Lab Will Be First of Its Kind
Washington, D.C. — ROAM is proud to announce a new collaboration with the Army Educational Outreach Program’s (AEOP) eCYBERMISSION research competition to develop a Virtual Reality science and engineering lab for middle school students. The project will bring the latest VR technology from Pico to a new generation of students, fortifying them with rich science and engineering content in an immersive, interactive environment.
“This is all about using next generation VR to get students even more engaged with STEM. What better way than to create a lab where they can experiment and design and build just like an Army engineer?” said ROAM CEO Tom Schmidt.
Working with a group of U.S. Army engineers and eCYBERMISSION educators, ROAM will create a vibrant ‘walk around & build it yourself’ VR environment to engage students in STEM-related skills and techniques. The lab will showcase Virtual Reality’s power to educate.
Winnie Boyle, NSTA Assistant Director of Army Educational Outreach Programs said “For 19 years, AEOP’s eCYBERMISSION has been inviting the nation’s middle schoolers to our annual STEM competition. This new program brings us into a powerful new media platform. We’re excited to see where this will take us.”
The eCYBERMISSION Virtual Lab is expected to launch in Q4 2021.
VR has been shown in recent academic studies to facilitate a higher percentage of content retention in students than more traditional methods. In the next few years, as the overall technology evolves, it will become an indispensable tool in the engagement of students in all communities.
XR technology has arrived - as evidenced by the Army’s $20 billion investment in AR, and hundreds of millions of dollars in investment in VR/AR/MR in other places predicted over the next 2 years.
ROAM was founded in 2019 by Tom Schmidt and Matt Fedorovich as a content company dedicated to using its proprietary platform to create entertaining, educational and visually compelling XR experiences. In 2020, ROAM brought in Dan Beaupré of One Giant Leap, LLC, and former VP of Experiences at National Geographic to develop and oversee its educational content.
For more information, contact Dan Beaupré at (202) 281-8728, or beaupre.dan@gmail.com.
November 18th, 2020 : 12 PM EST
Dan Beaupré
joins ROAM
Former National Geographic VP of Experiences
will develop educational partnerships and content..
ROAM is extremely happy to welcome Dan Beaupré, former Vice President of Experiences at the National Geographic Society. Dan will oversee development of our educational experiences, bringing with him two decades of guiding Nat Geo’s experience-based programs, including the annual two million-student GeoBee, Giant Maps, BioBlitz, JASON Project, and GeoChallenge.
Dan has been at the forefront of creating transformational educational initiatives to engage students and educators for a generation. He brings that breadth and depth to shepherding ROAM's partnerships in the educational XR space.
"The major issues facing our planet call for quantum-leap experiences to inform and inspire young people. I'm excited to help propel ROAM's XR capability to accelerate transformational student learning," says Dan. "This is all about fortifying young people as planetary stewards, savvy consumers, and informed citizens."
Tom Schmidt, ROAM CEO concurs. “As XR continues to grow as a medium and a platform, we’re excited to be working with Dan. We see XR giving educators new and powerful ways to engage students, something Dan has been doing for two decades. We are also going to continue to develop means and methods to reach into underserved communities to bring those students fresh ways to learn using XR as the vehicle.”
ROAM was founded in 2019 by Tom Schmidt and Matt Fedorovich as a content company dedicated to using its proprietary platform to create infotaining and educational XR experiences . . . for everyone else.
September 10th, 2020 : 9:30 AM EST
Grape Journey Opening This Month
A new ROAM Virtual Reality story created for Stoller Family Estate.
ROAM, LLC is proud to announce its new shared Virtual Reality story Grape Journey, opening this month at the Stoller Family Estate.
Covering 100 million years of how Stoller grapes came to be, Grape Journey takes 5 guests thru a shared experience, using only headsets. Guests use their own hands to interact with the scenes in Grape Journey. The VR story moves guests from prehistoric times when the grape-growing ground was formed, to blending their own virtual wine made from the grapes grown in that ground.
It is fully immersive, as guests are free to roam around the story room of Grape Journey; walking up to grape plants as they grow in time-lapse, to reaching up to scratch the dinosaur’s belly.
Yes. We have dinosaurs.
Grape Journey is built on our cutting edge shared XR platform. ROAM is cross platform, allowing any number of participants, using any device, from anywhere. It is built on simplicity for the user, honed from months of testing and decades of production. ROAM throws out all the industry terminology and interactions, in favor of a platform non-VR users understand.
ROAM is for everyone else.
Grape Journey, and all ROAM content, is created and built with ease of use for non-VR users being paramount. Users of ROAM go into any VR story already knowing how to interact, therefore being able to focus on the story being told. No one has to ‘figure out’ how to interact with the story that hampers so many VR experiences. ROAM uses the interaction we all have known since we were kids: using our own hands.
Tom Schmidt and Matt Fedorovich bring their nearly 60 combined years of award-winning cutting edge technology-based storytelling to the immersive stories of ROAM. It is that experience that has developed a truly revolutionary platform built with a deep understanding of what works, simply.
Grape Journey, presented by Stoller Family Estate, now playing at the Stoller Experience Center.
Articles:
Oregon Wine Press : https://www.oregonwinepress.com/virtual-success
September 9th, 2020 : 9:30 AM EST
R.O.A.M. Launch!
A first-of-its-kind startup launches with major brands and experience in tow.
ROAM, LLC is proud to release its cutting edge XR platform R.O.A.M.
ROAM is cross platform, allowing any number of participants, using any device, from anywhere. It is built for simplicity for the user, honed from months of testing and decades of production. ROAM throws out all the industry terminology and interactions, in favor of a platform non-VR users understand.
ROAM will be focused initially on delivering high production quality stories, documentaries and experiences to the latest virtual reality and mixed reality HMDs. Every experience will be built for 6DoF, include hand based interactions and delivered with the Power Of ROAM.
The "Power of ROAM" gives flexibility in the deployment and scalability of the platform. Users can be on location, much like a 'Location-Based Experiences' (LBE), or it can be experienced apart, like a multiplayer game. Build once, deploy everywhere.
Matt Fedorovich, CTO & Co-Founder, explains "Leveraging the latest in cloud tech and our syncing system, we are able to deliver content to a local audience within a physical location, or have users around the world experience the same content in real time. This concept spawned Together Mode and Apart Mode, but everything can be utilized together."
ROAM is for everyone else.
Tom Schmidt, CEO & Co-Founder, explains, "All ROAM content, is created and built with ease of use for non-VR users being paramount. Users of ROAM go into any VR story already knowing how to interact, therefore being able to focus on the story being told. No one has to ‘figure out’ how to interact with the story that hampers so many VR experiences. ROAM uses the interaction we all have known since we were kids: using our own hands."
The ROAM platform was built over the past two years by the companies two co-founders, Matt & Tom and tested with some of the largest brands in education, TV, and entertainment.
Tom Schmidt and Matt Fedorovich bring their nearly 60 combined years of award-winning, cutting edge technology based storytelling to the immersive stories of ROAM. It is that experience that has developed a truly revolutionary platform built with a deep understanding of what works, simply.