VR ice hockey training company Sense Arena announced that it’s closed a $3 million investment round, something the startup says will be used to support continued development on its ice hockey training platform as well as expand to new sports.
The funding round was led by J&T Ventures, and includes previous backers Miton and SYNER. According to Crunchbase, this brings the company’s overall outside investment to just over $5 million.
Founded in 2017, the Prague-based company has already become the official VR training provider for a number of NHL teams, including the Arizona Coyotes, Las Vegas Golden Knights, Los Angeles Kings, and New Jersey Devils. Sense Arena counts 30 professional hockey teams, and nine NCAA programs (including Harvard, Northeastern, and Quinnipiac) and 40 individual NHL players and youth hockey organizations from around the world.
The company says its platform, which launched in 2018, is engineered to “enhance read-and-react skills and cognitive performance for both skaters and goalies” in combination with Meta Quest and standard hockey equipment. Sense Arena says it provides performance feedback and recommendations, allowing athletes to make adjustments and advancements in real time.
Check out a short explanation of what a coaching session looks like with some in-app footage, presented by Brian Daccord, Sense Arena’s Director of Goaltending Development and former NHL goaltending coach and scout.
“Some of the top hockey players currently training with Sense Arena include Philipp Grubauer of the Seattle Kraken, Dawson Mercer of the New Jersey Devils, and Northeastern University’s Devon Levi, who earned the 2022 Mike Richter Award given to the top goaltender in NCAA Division I men’s ice hockey,” the company says in a press statement.
“Sense Arena has developed cutting-edge virtual reality training to help athletes maximize their potential and we feel supremely confident in Bob’s vision for the future of sports training,” said Martin Kešner, co-founder of J&T Ventures. “We believe that Sense Arena has only scratched the surface of its potential. We are excited to help them elevate their technology and increase its application around the sports world.”
To date, the company has shipped over 2,500 installations of Sense Arena across 40 countries. You can check out the range of gear and requirements over at the Sense Arena Store for more.
Flying, driving—even fencing & crane operation—and now hockey. VR continues to prove out training as a core use-case for the technology. Sense Arena is a VR hockey training platform in use by NHL teams and now expanding beyond goalie training to players all across the rink.
Sense Arena is a VR hockey training platform aimed at professional & amateur teams alike. What started as a system designed primarily for goalie training is evolving to include training exercises for players of all positions. Last month the company began taking pre-orders for the Sense Arena for Players version which is expected to begin shipping in the second half of this month.
Both the Goalie and Player versions of the system are sold as a complete package including an Oculus Quest 2, controller mounts for goalie gloves and hockey sticks, the Sense Arena software, and a case to store everything. The complete package for the goalie kit is $700, plus $99 monthly (or $89 per month annually). Lesser versions not including the extra equipment are available for less, and are geared toward players running basic exercises at home rather than on the ice.
Image courtesy Sense Arena
According to NHL.com the system has been used by at least 10 NHL goalies including Philipp Grubauer of the Colorado Avalanche, Elvis Merzlikins of the Columbus Blue Jackets, and Antoine Bibeau of the Carolina Hurricanes.
Image courtesy Sense Arena
Since the system only tracks the player’s head and hands there’s a lot of the player’s body and motions that can’t be accounted for, meaning it is far from a perfect physical simulation. However, Sense Arena pitches itself as being a cognitive training tool as much as being about working on technique. For the goalie version, the company touts the following benefits:
Reading the Release
Improve your ability to read the release by watching interactive videos of players hooting at you. Make the saves, track the player, track the puck.
Screens
The probability of making a save increases dramatically when you can see the puck. Practice your ability to face screens in difference game situations.
Box Control
No other tool gives you an indication of the right box control on the fly. You will learn how to fill the majority of the new when facing shots.
Shot Replay
3D replay of all shots from the perspective of the shooter or the goalie. Walk around yourself and study how you made or didn’t make your saves.
Training Plans
Professional NHL goalie coaches, Pro goalies, and well recognized goaltending specialists created a number of eight days training plans for goalies at all ages.
Understanding how to best read shots on goal would surely be difficult with anything less than motion data from real players. Sense Arena came up with an interesting solution to this problem by superimposing footage of real players shooting on the goal and then transitioning the puck from the filmed version to an interactive version just before it reaches the goal.
Other exercises use simple dummy player props for more dynamic exercises, like watching for screened shots.
Sense Arena also claims to measure player performance by tracking exercise data over time to give players and coaches a way to monitor their training progress through a cloud-based platform.
As far as efficacy is concerned, Sense Arena seems to have earned the respect of some pro teams so far. In April the Arizona Coyotes, an NHL team based in Phoenix, AZ, announced it had signed a multi-year partnership to use Sense Arena in its training program.
“When I first experienced Sense Arena I knew immediately that it is a game changer,” said Brian Daccord, Assistant GM of the Arizona Coyotes. “Ice time and goalie coaches are limited but Sense Arena gives motivated goalies the opportunity to improve without the physical wear and tear associated with on-ice training.”
Every weekendVRFocusbrings you a number of sports and eSports related virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) stories as part of This Week In VR Sport. This week, Sense Arena is hoping to improve ice hockey training with a new VR solution, Sansar and Fnatic partner to bring eSports fans a VR hangout space, and extreme sports title Rush VR is making it’s way to PlayStation VR.
Image courtesy of Sense Arena
Sense Arena Brings VR To Ice Hockey Training
A new VR technology that aims to revolutionize ice hockey training has launched following a test earlier this year with the Boston Bruins and is being boosted by a minor investment from Burins’ right winger David Pastrňák.
As reported by sporttechie, The Czech Republic-based company, called Sense Arena, launched the earlier this week and has official partnerships with a number of organizations in its home country, including the Czech Ice Hockey Association, the Faculty of Physical Education and Sport of Charles University in Prague, and the professional hockey club White Tigers Liberec.
The platform provides users with access to more than 70 training drills which are all designed to help players improve their hockey skills, reaction times, cognitive ability, and many more by allowing them to quickly complete and redo the training thousands of times even when off the ice. The solution is using a HTC Vive headset along with specially-engineered hockey sticks with small sensors on them, a mobile computer kiosk, and four other sensors that are placed in the corners of a room to help the platform track all the action.
Sense Arena is hoping to not only provide current players and teams with a new training solution but also provide new players with an engaging way to speed up their learning. Thanks to the analytics and review side of things, it makes it easier for players to see what they are doing wrong and improve on those mistakes in no time. The end goal is to have the technology involved in some of the biggest hockey markets in the world, including the NHL.
As the technology continues to roll out and get adopted by more teams, VRFocus will be sure to bring you all the latest.
Sansar And Fnatic Partner To Provide eSports Fans A Way To Meet Cyberathletes In VR
Esports organization Fnatic have announced that they will be collaborating with social VR firm Linden Lab’s Sansar so that fans can meet Fnatic eSport athletes in VR.
As reported by venturebeat earlier this week, Sansar is creating the social VR site Fnatic Meta Bunkr which will be a virtual fan hangout designed to enable deeper community engagement. The platform is free-to-access on both PC and VR and the space will provide Fnatic fans with a place to gather together and connect, host events and meetups, meet popular players and personalities, and earn rewards and prizes. Since founding in 2004, the eSports company has won thousands of tournaments across 20-plus games, the most of any organization, and its fan base numbers are in the tends of millions, according to the company, which need a place to connect.
“As a professional esports organisation, Fnatic continues to break the mould from a playing and fan perspective,” said Benoit Pagotto, marketing director at Fnatic: “Just last weekend we claimed our seventh European League Championship Series title in League of Legends, whilst this collaboration with Sansar is a sign of how we’re always looking to enhance the viewing experience we deliver to our growing community of fans worldwide. There’s no doubt that virtual reality within the world of esports is the future of the sport, so we’re incredibly excited to deliver an enhanced more engaging experience to our fans.”
This is not the first partnership that Sansar have set up for their social VR platform as in the past they have introduced it to the Overwatch eSports scene and Greenwall VR.
Experience The Ultimate Thrill As Rush VR Comes To PlayStation VR
Originally released onto the Oculus Rift earlier this year the team at The Binary Mill have revealed that their extreme sports title Rush VR is coming to PlayStation VR later this year. The title sees players put on a wing suit and take flight across snowy terrain in high speed races that see them descending down mountains avoiding cliff faces and trees while hitting the checkpoints.
It isn’t just snow that players will be flying pass as they will be traveling the world and experiencing the thrill of base jumping in rocky canyons, green forest and many more locations complete with a dynamic weather system and day/night cycles. With 90 tracks to master and a number of different game modes including Time Attack and Score Challenge players will need to get use to flying fast if they want to earn the biggest score and take home first place. If that wasn’t enough there are also online leaderboards that mean you can compete with your friends or go head-to-head in 12 player multiplayer matches.
There is no release date just yet for the PlayStation VR release of Rush VR but it is planned to be before the year is out. You can see the announcement trailer below and VRFocus will be sure to bring you all the latest on the release in he future.
That is all for This Week In VR Sport. For more on immersive sport news keep reading VRFocus and remember to check back next week for another This Week In VR Sport.
