Startups show off new gadgets at TechCrunch Disrupt

SAN FRANCISCO (KGO) -- If you're thinking of starting a tech company, San Francisco's Pier 70 is the place to be this week. At the TechCrunch Disrupt conference virtual reality has leveled up, with startups trying to change virtually everything.

"People come here to do deals, to kick the tires on new technology companies," said TechCrunch Editor At Large Mike Butcher.

And those companies bring their A-game.

"It's the world's first holographic PC," said Voxon Chief Technical Officer Gavin Smith. "It was inspired by sci-fi. We saw this technology in films. And we wanted it so badly we decided to make it ourselves."

From virtual objects to a virtual world you walk around in. Maybe with a real human tour guide.

Perhaps the most important thing for virtual reality to really take off is having something interesting to watch. That's why a whole slew of startups have products aimed at the TV and movie industries, hoping to put you in the next generation of blockbusters.

"If you've operated a green screen in the past, just put up our cameras and our software and now the person is live in 3-D," said Organic Motion CEO Andrew Tschesnok.

Letting viewers roam around inside a scene full of famous actors. Or, on stage at a concert.

"VR is actually a place," said Deepstream VR CEO Howard Rose. "We experience it as a place we go to rather than something we see."

So much that one company's building worlds they say can help patients recover from surgery.

"Helping people to handle pain without the need for drugs," Rose said.

A virtual world of ideas. And virtually no telling which will succeed.

"Many of these companies won't going to be around next year, that's just the way the cookie crumbles," said one attendee.