I spoke with Venice Immersive curators Liz Rosenthal & Michel Reilhac about sneak peak of their 2025 selection, which is their largest selection yet. See more context in the rough transcript below.
Here's an Venice Immersive Program Cheat Sheet by Voices of VR podcast (PDF), which has an overview of the four categories of immersive experiences ordered by longest booking times to shortest (amount of time required for scheduling purposes) as well as the actual runtime, the number of people who can see it per slot, and then the number of people who can see it per day. This should hopefully help for your scheduling process.
I typically book experiences to roughly corresponding to hours. The Biennale scheduling website will open up on Thursday, August 21st, and it will not let you double book yourself. So I personally find it easier to book the longer experiences first, and then fill out my schedule with shorter experiences, and then experiences that generally have higher capacity. Note that Ancestors (capacity of 48 people), and L'Ombre (capacity of 50 people), and each of the VRChat sessions only have one booking time per day, and so these are also worth prioritizing if you want to see them and they should have lots of capacity throughout the week. The One the Other Earth may be one of the more logistically difficult experiences to see as you'll need to make a trek up to the main Venice island. I'd recommend trying to keep your schedule clear for at least an hour before and afterwards.
Here's a placeholder for the schedule helper that I'll hopefully release soon.
Here's a placeholder for my other coverage of Venice Immersive 2025 to be updated after the festival.
Venice Airport to Lido Island
The best way to get to Lido from the Venice airport is either via the Red or Blue Line of the Alilaguna Public Transport water taxi, which you can get tickets either after you come out of customs or you can go to the water taxi dock at the Venice airport, and there's a booth there.
Picking up badge at Palazzo del Casinò
I usually pick up my badge at the bottom of the Palazzo del Casinò, which is at Lungomare Guglielmo Marconi, 1861, 30126 Lido VE, Italy
Venezia 2000 to the VR Island (Lazzaretto Vecchio)
The best way to get to the VR Island of Lazzaretto Vecchio from the docks is the bus. The buses leave every 15-20 minutes, and it's a 3 minute ride, and another 5 minute walk to the island. Here is a link to the bus route and the addresses. I believe it is either the A, N, or C or CE routes. I believe the bus stop names are S.Maria Elisabetta and then I get off at the Gallo Sant'Antonio stop.
The address of the VR island is Isola del Lazzaretto Vecchio, Lazzaretto Vecchio, 30100 Venezia VE, Italy
There is a water taxi that you can find the pick-up spot by looking at the google map and get directions there. It takes 1 minute of a ride, but there is only one taxi that can be a 10-15 minute wait depending on how busy it is.
Also be sure to check out XR Must's interview with Liz and Michel, which I found a lot of helpful info in.
Some of the artist statement videos are starting to get posted onto the BiennaleChannel YouTube page.
Here's a list Best of Experiences and Best of Worlds from VRChat that are already available if you'd like to get a head start on this year's program.
Already Released - BEST OF EXPERIENCES
The Midnight Walk
Ghost Town
One True Path, Part 1
Wall Town Wonders
D-Day: The Camera Soldier - Apple Vision Pro
Submerged - Apple Vision Pro
Adventure: Ice Dive - Apple Vision Pro
Already Released - BEST OF WORLDS - VRChat links included
vent. by Premium²
What is Virtual Art – Volume 1 by Jessien
FLASHING WARNING by xlxxl
Flat Earth by Niko Lang
Neuron by Juice…
Powdergame by Pema Malling
[NOT REPLAYABLE YET] FZMZ Pointzero by ReeeznD [VR_SMEJ]
よるとうげ -Yorutouge- by mikkabouzu / Kikuo [VR_SMEJ]