Germany: 5th AUREA Ceremony Held at Europa-Park

This year, for the first time, the “AUREA Awards“ were presented in form of a cooperation between MACK NeXT and the Bundesverband Digitale Wirtschaft (BVDW). As part of the industry conference NTR - The Metaverse Summit, the prizes were awarded yesterday in five categories for the best developements in immersive VR, AR, XR and MR. Michael Mack, managing partner of Europa-Park and founder of MACK NeXT, welcomed more than 300 participants to the event at Europa-Park Rust.

The ten award finalists presented their projects to the international jury of experts in Rust on December 1st. The five-member panel consisted of tech expert Kathleen Cohen (The Collaboratorium), Prof. Thomas Wagner (co-founder and CEO VR Coaster) and Frank Govaere (Animation Director, Producer & VFX Supervisor, UFA), who were also part of the jury in previous years. This year, Dirk Freytag (President BVDW) and AUREA award winner Laura Bücheler (CIO Feelbelt) participated for the first time.

The jury awarded five prizes in the categories of Innovation, Experience, Impact, Immersion and Creative. Not only the category of Innovation, but also of Creative was won by the Canadian developer team Re:Naissance with an experience that combines virtual reality and classical opera. The AUREA Award Experience was shared by two winners this time: the Italian start-up WEART and the company OWO from Spain. Both companies presented the jury with garments designed to make VR gaming an even more immersive experience. In this context, the Italian company presented a glove that is supposed to make the virtual world even more tangible through temperature differences or different textures, among other things. OWO impressed with a gaming shirt that is supposed to provide up to 30 different haptic triggers. The AUREA Award in the Impact category went to Germany this year, to Brighter AI, a company whose technology specializes in anonymizing people in photo or video images, helping to protect privacy rights, especially in public spaces. The last prize on the list, Immersion, was awarded to Colnaghi in collaboration with Endava for their “Virtual Art Gallery“.

Congratulations to all winners! (eap)