Some people aren’t yet convinced that virtual reality is the next big thing. Others say it’s going to be a revolution.

Three Oregon-based entrepreneurs speaking on Thursday certainly fall into the latter camp.

GeekWire reporter Jacob Demmitt tries out the HTC Vive in Seattle.

360 Labs co-founder Thomas Hayden, ZeroTransformfounder Justin Moravetz, andWILD founder Gabe Paez spoke on a virtual reality panel at TechFestNW in Portland and each expressed optimism for the virtual reality industry.

“People are ready for a new revolution in technology, ” said Paez, whose company is building multi-sensory games and experiences leveraging virtual reality. “Taking the Internet, moving to mobile, and now with virtual reality — it presents an entirely different way of interfacing with technology where it’s truly centered around us and our natural human perception of the world, which is first person.”

The concept of virtual reality is not exactly new, but over the past few years advances in technology have enabled developers and engineers to come up with impressive hardware devices for everyday consumers like the Oculus Rift andHTC Vive that run equally-innovative software.

GeekWire’s John Cook tries out an Oculus Rift virtual reality headset at CES 2015.