By their own admission it has been a particularly busy year for UK virtual reality (VR) studio Make Real. The Brighton team have been zipping all over the UK throughout the year, involved with a multitude of events across the country and further afield in the likes of Luxembourg, Hungary and the USA. From VRFocus‘ side the most ongoing developments have revolved around their videogame title Loco Dojo, the frenetic collection of mini games full of British humour for Oculus Rift and HTC Vive. And brought to life by the unmistakable voice of actor Brian Blessed.Now the team move on to their next project however, and they today announced a partnership with the hardware company Roto VR, who are bringing the world’s first 360° interactive VR chair to market, alongside the Roto Arcade Portal which will offer a range of native VR applications and experiences designed specifically for use with the chair. The aim of the partnership is to allow Roto VR to focus on the final stages of manufacturing of the chair, first announced in 2015, with Make Real putting it’s simulation and physical hardware experience, combined with software platform development knowledge, to create the backend systems for soon-to-be-owners, VR Arcade operators and VR developers alike. With an easy-to-use system to build up and maintain their library of supported VR experiences.
Roto VR supports all VR experiences by default with full head-tracking and a special ‘Cockpit Mode’ of operation but Make Real will be packaging up the Roto VR chair APIs into free SDK assets to allow developers to integrate native support and control over the chair motion directly into their VR applications. Not only that, but a Samsung GearVR-based Roto VR 360° movie player will be released alongside the chair, bringing a timeline rotation tool to allow content creators to match movement to film action. VR Arcade operators will be able to track usage and charge per session, allowing Roto VR to invoice and pay developers accordingly.
“We are very excited to be partnering with Make Real, one the most prestigious content developers in the VR space.” Said Elliott Myers, CEO and Founder of Roto VR said of the partnership: “Their software development expertise allows us confidence in being able to deliver a solid launch platform for owners, operators and developers of the Roto VR chair hardware.”