Finalists Announced For Innov8: V-Commerce Competition

You may recall a story we covered on VRFocus back in July, where Store No.8 and Thrive Global came together to launch a new competition which focused on virtual reality (VR), not for games, but as a tool to aid commercial endeavours. The contest was called the Innov8: V-Commerce Competition and it had some potentially invaluable rewards, on a business level, should you have been chosen as a winner. Not just development capital in oprder to facilitate the development of your idea, but mentorship and the chance to work with big names in the retail sector who could potentially be your busiess partners.

Submissions ended at the beginning of the month and earlier this week the ‘Innov8tors’ selected were announced. There are five finalists in total, all of whom five finalists that will present their ideas
at Innov8’s exhibition on October 18th 2017.

You can find a little bit more about all five below:

Fyusion

Based in San Francisco, Fyusion is “on a mission to fundamentally change the definition of photography” as they explain on their website.

“The company’s breakthrough technology generates deeply immersive “surround view” images that fuse the capabilities of a traditional photo, a panorama, motion capture and 3D to create a more complete, captivating photography experience.”

8i

Based both in Culver City, California and Wellington, New Zealand, 8i‘s technology is implimented to transpose recordings of humans into immersive reality spaces.

“8i provides the easiest way to create, mix and experience human holograms that look real and feel as if they were in the same room. Our proprietary technology transforms video from an array of cameras into a photo-realistic 3D hologram of a human that can be viewed from any angle, on any device for virtual, augmented or mixed reality.”

Nurulize

A VR software developer from Los Angeles who already this year took GTC’s Grand Prize at VR Content Showcase, Nurulize work on Atom View which they describe as “a cutting edge tool for raw volumetric data processing, color management, and delivery. Built from the ground up for VR, Atom View helps you integrate the highest quality volumetric data on the planet with traditional workflows for game or film.”

Specular Theory

Based in Venice Beach, California Specular Theory create VR films and have had selections at both Sundance and Tribeca since their foundation. The company “creates and distributes cutting-edge, premium, and authentic experiences for virtual reality, augmented reality, mixed-reality and location-based entertainment (LBVRE).”

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Obsess

New York based Obsess provide three types of 360 degree experiences giving different levels of immersion and retail options. You can find an example of one of their campaigns here: https://360experience.verabradley.com/

VRFocus will bring you news on the event in October and any updates in the meantime as we get them.

Nurulize Unveils VR Content Creation Tools Atom View and Nu Design

Virtual reality (VR) software specialist Nurulize has announced two new tools for helping create immersive content, Atom View and Nu Design with the aim of enabling super-fast cinematic quality display and collaborative environment editing within virtual environments.

Atom View is the core tool for filmmakers, 3D artists and photographers as an agnostic standalone application able to accept captured data from leading volumetric cameras, offline graphics renderers, 360 lidar and more. The software converts data into real-time VR content that users can edit, colour, import, and prepare data for export.

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The tool has already been utilized on several VR projects, including an upcoming Ridley Scott-produced Alien project directed by David Karlak, as well as Tribeca Storyscapes’ award-winning Marshmallow Laser Feast artist collective.

Scott Metzger, Chief Technology Officer; Co-founder at Nurulize, said in a statement: “When it comes to replicating reality in VR, and creating something that’s filled with detail, Atom View is the answer. It takes things above and beyond what VR content creators are currently limited to in terms of polycount and frame rate, in a fraction of the time. It’s the first step for a Photoshop or Final Cut Pro for virtual reality.”

While Nu Design is a customisable, freeform space, in which multiple users can collaboratively, assess, and mark up 3D environments powered by Atom View. It’ll allow directors, production heads, and producers to rapidly iterate and sketch out
shots for pre-production and pre-visualization.

Currently Atom View and Nu Design are both in closed beta with a commercial released expected later this year. Nurulize has also said it’s working on an augmented reality (AR) compatible versions.

Back in 2015 Nurulize secured $2 million USD to help fund its software development, then in May this year the company won Nvidia’s VR Content Showcase competition, taking home the grand prize of $15,000 in cash plus three NVIDIA Quadro P6000 GPUs.

VRFocus will continue its coverage of Nurulize, reporting back with any further developments.

Nurulize Win GTC’s VR Content Showcase

Earlier this week NVIDIA held its annual GPU Technology Conference (GTC) 2017 with CEO Jen-Hsun Huang giving a keynote address on the third and final day. As part of the event the company held the second VR Content Showcase competition, the winner of which has just been announced as Los Angeles-based software developer Nurulize.

The showcase featured 120 entrants with pitches by 10 finalists. To actually participate, contestants needed to have raised no more than $5 million USD in funding and come from industries other than videogames. Nurulize took home the grand prize of $15,000 in cash plus three NVIDIA Quadro P6000 GPUs. Phillip Lunn, CEO and co-founder at Nurulize and Scott Metzger, Nurulize co-founder and chief creative officer both said they plan to distribute the cash to employees.

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Each company had to impress a panel of judges in just five minutes, then they were grilled by Jeff Herbst, vice president of business development at NVIDIA, and Mark Rein, Epic Games’ vice president and co-founder.

Nurulize won with its GPU-accelerated Atom Wise software, aimed at simplifying and speeding the creation of virtual reality (VR) experiences. “It’s great to be selected and recognized for the work we’ve been doing,” said Phillip Lunn, CEO and co-founder at Nurulize on the Nvidia blog. “It’s a significant validation of the path we’re on and the technology we’re developing.”

The company’s competitorsincluded Cavrnus Inc., Doghead Simulations, FundamentalVR, Funique VR, Kalloc Studios, Opaque Media Group / Opaque Space, Sheencity, Theia Interactive and von waldkirch.

During GTC 2017 Nvidia made several VR related announcements, such as the launch of its VRWorks Audio software development kit (SDK) and VRWorks 360 Video SDK. While during Huang’s keynote address he revealed Project Holodeck, demonstrated alongside Swedish supercar manufacturer Koenigsegg.

VRFocus will continue its coverage of Nvidia, reporting back with all of its latest VR related news and updates.