Eirmersive's latest Case Study Corner episode features Gary Pearson, Founder of Fourth Reality, discussing the development of the Immersive Chem Lab project created in partnership with Dublin City University (DCU). The conversation explored how virtual reality can transform education and training by providing learners with safe, accessible, and engaging hands-on experiences before entering real-world laboratory environments.

The project centred on a virtual replica of DCU's Atomic Absorption Spectrometer (AAS) laboratory, allowing students to familiarise themselves with equipment, procedures, and analysis techniques through a series of guided VR modules. The solution was designed to address challenges around limited access to specialist equipment and to increase student confidence before practical lab sessions.

During the discussion, Gary shared how…

Beyond Realities, Eirmersive's free virtual production training programme, ran from 10 - 19 June at The Immersive Studio, IADT Dún Laoghaire. Delivered in partnership with Orijinn, IADT and the TU RISE Elevate Programme, the eight-day intensive brought together creative and technical practitioners for a hands-on introduction to one of the most exciting formats in screen production today.

The programme aimed to take participants through an arc of understanding, building, operating, solving problems, and delivering. And that’s exactly what happened!

Day one opened with the basics: what virtual production actually is, where it sits across film, broadcast and unscripted formats and the roles that make a VP set function. From there, participants moved into Unreal Engine and Virtual Art Department thinking, learning to source assets, manage scale and build lighting into a digital environment.

Eirmersive is proud to support the Immersive Strand at this year's Galway Film Fleadh 🎬

Running from the 9th - 11th of July in Galway city, the strand brings eight world-class VR experiences together in one programme! 🥳

Featuring Ito Meikyū and The Baby Factory is Closed alongside six other works, the programme spans themes of dementia, literature, climate collapse, mental health, flood survival, menopause and contemporary dance, a true myriad of themes that show exactly what VR storytelling can do.

This strand has grown significantly since it began, and what is on offer in Galway this July reflects just how far immersive storytelling has come. Congrats to the Centre for Creative Technologies @ University of Galway for curating such a great programme.

If you are in Galway, do not miss it! You won't get to see work like it anywhere else in Ireland this year.

By Camille Donegan, CEO at Eirmersive

At Immersive Tech Week in Rotterdam I had the pleasure of moderating two conversations that really captured where our industry is heading.

🎤 Location-Based XR: Where Culture Meets Entertainment with Brent Bushnell (DreamPark Immersive, Inc.) and Nienke Huitenga Broeren (Director of Amsterdam 1652, currently showing at Entr VR Museum), exploring how immersive experiences can be culturally meaningful while building sustainable commercial models.

🎤 Designing for Impact: What Makes Immersive Experiences Work with Charlotte Mikkelborg (Picture This Productions), Alina Goldwoman, PhD (Odyssey Studio) and Richard Broaddridge (4DViews), discussing the research, design principles and creative practice behind experiences that genuinely engage audiences.

Eirmersive member company Imvizar has announced a major new initiative designed to support creators entering the world of immersive content, with the launch of the $100,000 Lureo Creator Fund. The fund will reward creators who build and publish experiences on Lureo, Imvizar’s no-code immersive storytelling platform, and marks another significant step in the company’s mission to make spatial storytelling accessible to everyone.

The newly announced Creator Fund will provide direct financial rewards to creators who publish content on the platform. According to Imvizar, participants will be able to earn payouts for published templates, receive ongoing royalties when other creators use their scenes, and unlock additional bonus rewards throughout the year.

VR Women was part of the official programme this year at Doxumentale in Berlin, nominated for best Podcast.

All nominees had a live podcast in front of an audience.

“VR Women joined with medianet Berlin Brandenburg and had a wonderful event among fellow women on the 28th of May at Potsdamer Platz. Our guest was Ioulia Isserlis, cofounder of Another World VR and creator who enjoys the genre of horror in all its aspects”, said Julia Bruton, who launched the VR Women initiative in 2021.

“VR Women offers a unique look at virtual reality through women’s eyes, created by women, for women. What happens when VR is explored beyond its technical aspects, examined from multiple angles and experienced hands-on. In each episode, Julia Bruton chats with a guest, highlighting the many ways…

Eirmersive member Glasseye recently returned from a successful week at the Marché du Film – Festival de Cannes Immersive Market, where CEO Janet Black and Creative Director Agustín Vidal Saavedra represented the company as part of the prestigious Curators Network.

The programme brought together curators, venue operators and cultural programmers from around the world, providing Glasseye with an opportunity to present its immersive projects and explore new international partnerships. The event created a valuable platform for conversations around the future of immersive experiences and highlighted growing global interest in XR and spatial storytelling.

A key theme emerging from the week was the increasing recognition of immersive media within the wider cultural and entertainment sectors.

Eirmersive member Yvonne Sarsfield, UDL Specialist and Instructional Designer at Atlantic Technological University (ATU), recently facilitated an engaging workshop at the ATU Universal Design for Learning (UDL) Conference, highlighting the potential of immersive technologies to create more inclusive and accessible learning experiences.

Drawing on her expertise in UDL, her involvement in immersive technology projects, and research undertaken as part of her MA in UDL, Yvonne’s workshop explored how virtual reality (VR) can be used to support students who experience anxiety around public speaking. The session provided participants with practical insights into how immersive tools can help learners build confidence in a safe and supportive environment.

A key theme of the workshop was…

JunieXR is a recipient of the Innovation in Storytelling Development Fund, from Fís Éireann/Screen Ireland in association with Animation Ireland.

The project AccessStream will develop enhanced accessibility features for video-on-demand and streaming platforms, in particular sign language provision for children’s content. Piloting with TG4, and co-designed with deaf and hard of hearing participants in collaboration with the European Union of the Deaf and ROC Interpreting.

Over the past month JunieXR received valuable feedback on their prototype from attendees at EDGE26 and ACM IMX 2026, where CEO Grace Dinan also participated in an industry panel alongside fellow Eirmersive members Glasseye, Animotive and Fourth Reality, moderated by our CEO Camille Donegan.

Eirmersive member South East Technological University (SETU) is seeking commercial partners to help bring an innovative Extended Reality (XR) solution for autistic children from research into the marketplace. The opportunity centres on the Activity Intelligence Platform (AIP), an XR-based exercise tool developed to make physical activity more engaging, accessible and personalised for children with autism.

Developed by PhD researcher Mark Power at the Walton Institute, AIP combines interactive activities, motion tracking and intelligent feedback to create tailored exercise experiences. Early trials involving autistic children aged 4–13 found that participants were able to use the platform quickly, considered the activities appropriately challenging, and reported that the experience was enjoyable and engaging.

Eirmersive were delighted to moderate the Industry Panel at ACM International Conference on Interactive Media Experiences (IMX) in Athlone along with members:

🔹 Gary Pearson of Fourth Reality
🔹 Grace Dinan of JunieXR
🔹 Janet Beck of Glasseye
🔹 David Cosgrove of Animotive

The companies also held demonstrations of their work to the research community in the room.

Our discussion focused on a challenge central to the immersive sector: how we bridge the gap between research, innovation and real-world adoption. The conversation highlighted the importance of stronger collaboration between industry and academia to create experiences that are impactful, scalable and sustainable.

The future of immersive technology will be…

Foróige GoVirtual is part of Foróige’s digital youth work and focuses on engaging young people in immersive online spaces through virtual reality. It was reviewed by Dr. Eemer Eivers as part of the Rethink Ireland Scaling Education Award (2023 - 2025). The report titled 'Evaluation of Foróige GoVirtual' is available on Foróige's website.

Some of the key findings included:

• Clear evidence that the GoVirtual team had successfully developed a basic understanding of the appropriate use of VR in a sizeable proportion of Foróige staff.

• GoVirtual has greatly increased the number of Foróige staff capable of using VR as a youth work tool, the number of staff using it as part of their youth work toolkit has increased, and the number of young people engaging with Foróige in a VR environment has…

At Eirmersive, we’re continually inspired by the leadership our members show in advancing immersive learning. Atlantic Technological University (ATU) has done just that with a recent Immersive Learning XR Roadshow, led by John Hough, Educational Technology Specialist in Immersive Learning.

Travelling across campuses in Galway, Sligo and Letterkenny, the roadshow introduced lecturers to the practical potential of extended reality (XR), creating hands-on opportunities to explore how these technologies can enhance teaching and address real classroom challenges.

Turning Curiosity into Application

The sessions immersed participants in a spectrum of technologies, from Augmented Reality (AR) and Mixed Reality (MR) to fully immersive Virtual Reality (VR). Educators engaged with platforms such as VirtualSpeech, Bodyswaps, ENGAGE and Thinglink, alongside immersive and volumetric video demonstrations.

Two of the most valuable conversations I had at SXSW London happened on consecutive days, and together they painted an interesting picture of where the immersive sector is heading.

I was delighted to join a panel moderated by Mathieu Demaré alongside Michael Barngrover (XR4Europe), Heleen Rouw (CIIIC) and Nigel McAlpine (Digital Catapult) exploring a challenge many of us are wrestling with across Europe: how do we bridge the gap between immersive innovation and real-world adoption?

The conversation focused on the "missing middle" between research, prototypes and scalable deployment. We discussed digital sovereignty, cross-border collaboration, ecosystem development and the role immersive technologies can play across sectors from culture and education to manufacturing, health and digital twins. As Eirmersive deepen our engagement with manufacturing SMEs on the PRISM programme, it was great to share some early findings to support the conversation…

Congratulations to Animotive which has been named one of the UK’s 10 most innovative media tech companies in BusinessCloud ’s MediaTech 50 for 2026.

Commenting on the ranking, Philip Morrow, Executive Chair and Co-Founder at Animotive said, “Making the top 10, judged by an expert panel and a public vote, means a lot. We’re bringing real-time performance and AI-assisted workflows to animation, education and virtual production, and we’re just getting started.”

In other Animotive news, the team travelled to Munich for a Virtual Production workshop, hosted with XR HUB Bavaria, in cooperation with Hochschule für Fernsehen und Film München (HFF München). The session, "Bringing Virtual Production into the Classroom," was built for lecturers, academics and students exploring how to introduce VP into their teaching.

Eirmersive is delighted to announce Beyond Realities, our FREE 8 day virtual production training programme at IADT, Dún Laoghaire this June! 🎬

A hands-on virtual production training programme for creative and technical companies who want to get to grips with one of the most exciting formats in screen production today.

Over 8 days you will work as part of a team to take an unscripted television format from concept to camera, rotating through real VP roles and finishing with a full showcase shoot.

The course aims to help participants:

Understand → Build → Operate → Solve Problems → Deliver.

Dr Jeremiah Ambrose, Head of Department for Film and Media at Dún Laoghaire Institute of Art, Design and Technology said,..

A new open-access study led by Dr. Aoife Morrin, Associate Professor in Analytical Chemistry at Dublin City University (DCU), is adding to the growing body of evidence showing how immersive technologies can transform STEM education, with direct input from Eirmersive member Fourth Reality.

Published in the Journal of Science Education and Technology, the research explores the impact of ImmersiveChemLab, a virtual reality (VR) “digital twin” of an Atomic Absorption Spectrometer, used as a pre-laboratory training tool for third-year analytical chemistry students at DCU.

ImmersiveChemLab was developed as part of the broader Virtual Labs HCI P3 Initiative, a national collaboration spanning multiple Irish higher education institutions. The platform recreates a realistic analytical chemistry environment in VR, enabling students to interact with complex laboratory instrumentation in a safe, accessible setting.

EDGE26 demonstrated exactly why the creative industries need spaces where technology, storytelling, design and enterprise collide. Huge credit to Niamh Costello and the team at CREW for creating a platform that felt genuinely ambitious, commercially focused and deeply connected to the future of Ireland’s creative economy.

Our CEO Camille Donegan said, "For Eirmersive, it was incredibly valuable to see our members* exhibiting alongside leaders from across film, games, immersive technology and digital innovation. Events like EDGE don’t just showcase talent, they create real opportunities for collaboration, visibility, investment conversations and new market connections. The energy in Galway showed that Ireland’s creative technology ecosystem is maturing fast, and immersive technology is now a core part of that conversation."

On 21 May 2026, Ireland’s creative and technology communities will come together in Galway for EDGE26 – Ireland’s Creative Economy Summit. Hosted at the Dexcom Stadium, the event brings founders, studios, investors, policymakers, and researchers into one space to explore how creativity, technology, and enterprise are converging to shape the future economy.

For Eirmersive, EDGE26 represents more than just a date in the calendar — it’s a moment to highlight the strength, diversity, and ambition of Ireland’s immersive technology community.

We’re proud to see Eirmersive CEO Camille Donegan included among the EDGE26 speaker line-up, alongside leading voices from across the creative and technology sectors.

Camille will contribute to the “Sectoral Spotlights” session, where insights from across the digital creative industries, including immersive technology, will be shared.

On Friday 8th May at Digital Catapult Digital Twin Centre in Belfast, we were delighted to bring the PRISM Showcase Event to life, marking a key milestone in supporting Manufacturing SMEs to explore and adopt immersive, digital twin and AI technologies.

Led by Eirmersive, PRISM is about more than innovation, it’s about practical application, collaboration, and real-world impact. The showcase highlighted how XR, digital twins, and AI-driven tools are already beginning to transform workflows, products, and experiences across the island.

A huge thank you to our programme partners for their expertise, collaboration, and ongoing commitment: Digital Catapult, Queen's University Belfast, Dundalk Institute of Technology (DkIT) and to our funders for making this initiative possible: InterTradeIreland.