Starting in 2016, the Venice International Film Festival was one of the first film festivals in the world to demonstrate interest in Virtual Reality.
For the 2020 edition, Venice VR, the official Virtual Reality competition section of the Venice International Film Festival, was not shown physically in Venice Lido on the island of Lazzaretto Vecchio (VR Island), but it was available to enjoy entirely online, rebranded as Venice VR Expanded to reflect the shift to a 100% virtual exhibition.
A social VR game for Venice VR Expanded 2020 (Venice Film Festival XR Section) was inspired with (487) Venetia, an existing rare-type stony asteroid from the middle regions of the asteroid belt. It was discovered on 9 July 1902, by Italian astronomer Luigi Carnera at Heidelberg Observatory in southwest Germany. The idea of the artwork is to imagine what if the Venetia asteroid is coming to the Earth.