Category: VR Industry

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Volkswagen Group to Train 10,000 Employees in VR This Year

Volkswagen Group and VR studio Innoactive revealed the global, multi-brand automotive company is planning to train 10,000 employees this year alone using virtual reality.

Volkswagen Group first deployed its Volkswagen Digital Reality Hub Group last year, a VR platform designed to help the company’s employees collaborate across the Audi, SEAT, ŠKODA and Volkswagen brands. Now, the company says they’re going a little deeper down the virtual rabbit hole in its new initiative to train 10,000 employees in production and logistics using more than 30 VR training simulations created in partnership with Innoactive.

The company showed off one such example of a VR training simulation at MWC 2018 which places the user in an industrial workspace using an HTC  Vive Pro. The simulation was built using the Innoactive Hub SDK and optimized for Vive Pro.

Volkswagen Group says it’s “empower[ing] employees to use VR to transfer knowledge and improve workflows by making VR headsets available for order throughout the Group.”

In addition, Innoactive announced a new VR/AR enterprise software called Innoactive Workspaces at MWC 2018, a VR solution allowing users to plan, simulate and train in industrial workspaces. Innoactive Workspaces is slated to release later this year.

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Gree VR Capital Completes First $18M VR/AR Fund, Changes Name to GFR Fund

GREE VR Capital, the investment firm backing startups such as VRChat, TheWaveVR, and Littlstar, today announced the completion of its first immersive media fund, totaling $18.3 million in allocated funds. Previously called GVR Fund, the company is now changing its name to GFR Fund as it prepares for a second fund later this year.

The fund has invested in 17 early stage companies over the course of its two-year existence, primarily in the North American VR/AR/MR market. According to a press release provided to Road to VR, the fund will be “actively seeking AR and MR startup companies for investment with a particular focus on mobile AR platforms, AR Cloud, consumer AR applications, and enterprise AR, including AR glasses.”

GREE VR says the team is continuing with its focus on helping U.S. startup companies looking to reach out to Japanese investors and market leaders. The name change, the company says, broadens the fund’s scope to more than just VR, putting more emphasis on ‘frontier technology’, a term intended to encompass VR/AR/MR.

“GFR invested in our Series A round and has been instrumental in helping our company grow both in the U.S. and Asia,” said Tony Mugavero, co-founder and CEO of VR video streaming platform Littlstar. “They brought us to Japan in 2016 and introduced us to nearly a dozen accredited investors, helped us secure Sony and others as new investors, and lined up a speaking engagement for us at the Japan VR Summit. The connections and visibility that GFR was able to bring to us has been critical in making Littlstar the success that it is and has afforded us the opportunity to expand into new markets.”

To date, the GFR Fund has invested in 17 companies, including VRChat, SPACES, Sliver.tv, Littlstar, Insidemaps, YBVR, Immersv, Experiment 7, TheWaveVR, Sturfee, InsiteVR, Streem, DottyAR, Upload and Torch3D. In addition to GREE, Colopl VR Fund, mixi, Inc., Maruhan, Yahoo Japan and Akatsuki are among Limited Partners (LPs) of the fund.

The post Gree VR Capital Completes First $18M VR/AR Fund, Changes Name to GFR Fund appeared first on Road to VR.

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Oculus Hiring Spree Suggests Facebook is Accelerating VR/AR Plans

Starting toward the end of 2017, the number of listed job openings at Oculus has nearly tripled, with the current number of openings floating around an all time high.

Across Oculus’ 15 locations, the company is currently listing 443 available openings, spanning 20 categories from Research to Software Engineering to Computer Vision, and more. The number of openings has spiked significantly since November, data collected from the last 20 months by Road to VR shows.

Data collected by Road to VR

The spike comes at the end of 2017 and into the New Year. While that might coincide with annual budget planning, job openings at the company during the 2016 to 2017 transition didn’t show anything comparable to what’s been seen from Oculus’ hiring since November 2017.

A spokesperson for Oculus tells Road to VR, “Overall, the growing number of job openings across AR and VR are an indication of the level of commitment that Facebook/Oculus is making in the VR space.”

Corresponding with the company’s hiring spree, a promotional recruiting video was released last week extolling the benefits of working in the Oculus Research department, which currently has a record high 80 job openings:

Back in 2014, shortly after Facebook’s acquisition of Oculus and the formation of Oculus Research, the company’s chief scientist, Michael Abrash, called it the “first complete, well funded VR research team in close to 20 years.” In early 2017, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg publicly toured the Oculus Research facility and shared an inside look.

Oculus’ clear room for nanofabrication | Image courtesy Oculus

Earlier this month Facebook announced that it was a founding partner of the University of Washington’s Reality Lab. Based in Seattle, home of Oculus Research, the $6 million venture “creates one of the world’s first academic centers dedicated to virtual and augmented reality,” Facebook says.

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Oculus Research Reveals New Multi-focal Display Tech

With some 60 internship, co-op, and PHD student openings, it’s clear that Oculus hopes to take advantage of the Reality Lab as an incubator for future AR/VR research talent.

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GDC 2018 Survey: 33% of Game Devs Are More Interested in VR Than Any Other Platform

Ahead of the 2018 Game Developers Conference in March, the organizer, UBM, has released their sixth annual State of the Game Industry survey, offering insight into the thoughts of some 4,000 game developers. While many developers may not be ready to bet on VR as a foundation for their game dev business, 33% of developers are ‘most interested’ in VR headsets over all other platforms, beating out interest in mobile and even the Xbox One (and One X).

According to those surveyed in the 2018 State of the Game Industry Report (which you can view in full by filling out this form), it would appear that the business reality of the VR market—which has yet to reach a critical mass of users capable of organically supporting medium or larger developers—is plain to see, with a smaller number of developers planning to build for VR on their next project (15%) compared to their current project (19%).

Data courtesy UBM

But when it comes to which platforms developers are ‘most interested’ in (which we take to mean from a creative and design standpoint, market suitability notwithstanding), a large share of developers picked VR as their top choice, beating out mobile platforms (smartphones and tablets), the Xbox One (and One X), and others. The only platforms with a greater share of ‘most interested developers’ are the Nintendo Switch (36%), PlayStation 4 (and PS4 Pro) (39%), and PC (59%).

It’s great to have developers interested in developing for VR, but game development is a business as much as it is an art, and business can’t be run on passion alone; until the economics make sense, it’ll be hard for those game developers who are interested in VR to make the leap and bet their next project on VR. And while the vast majority of developers believe that VR/AR will achieve long term sustainability, some have lost hope, according to the survey:

For the past two years, the split  [in the belief that VR/AR will achieve long-term sustainability] has been roughly 75 percent “Yes” to 25 percent “No”. However, this year just 71 percent of respondents said “Yes” and 29 percent said “No”, they don’t see VR/AR as a sustainable business.

Most developers surveyed also have a realistic view of how long it might take for VR/AR headsets to achieve widespread adoption:

When we asked our survey respondents when they thought VR/AR headsets would exceed a 10 percent household install base rate in the United States, the most popular answer (31 percent of respondents) was 2021-2022. Next was 2019-2020 with 17 percent of the vote, followed by 2023-2034 with 15 percent.

The 2018 State of the Game Industry survey has further insights into game developers’ opinions on VR/AR, and broader game industry trends; you can access the full report here.

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Investors Poured a Record $2 Billion into VR/AR in 2017, But Early Stage Funding Slowed

In 2017, venture funding of VR/AR companies reached at least $1.9B, ending slightly above 2016. The total number of companies raising venture capital during 2017 outpaced 2016, but the average deal size declined sharply by 35%, according to Greenlight Insights’ annual year-end analysis of individual venture capital deals dating back to 2011.

Each year, Greenlight Insights compiles and qualifies data from private and public sources across North America, Europe, and Asia in order to assess the global venture funding landscape surrounding the VR/AR industry. In 2017, Greenlight Insights analyzed more than 300 individual deals, excluding outlier financings, such as StarVR ($5M in Q4), Unity ($400M in Q2), and Improbable ($502M in Q2).

“The aggregate increase in VR/AR venture deal activity is encouraging, but the reality is that 2017 was tough for most startups in the space,” said Clifton Dawson, CEO at VR/AR market research firm Greenlight Insights.

Similar to past years, the majority of deals in 2017 were early stage (Seed and Series A). The number of early stage deals in 2017 was up 27% YoY and 105 companies raised $2M or more from VCs. However, the average Seed and Series A deal size declined 9% and 17%, respectively.

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State of VR with the Venture Reality Fund & Why They're Continuing to Invest

It may look like virtual and augmented reality’s growth spurt is abating, but it’s important to remember that companies still raised triple the amount of dollars compared to just three years ago.

“A moderating deal size of early stage companies should be viewed as a positive indicator of a healthy funding environment and partly tracks with the larger venture investment picture of 2017,” said Natalie Yue, a Data Analyst with Greenlight Insights that worked on the analysis.

The complete year-end analysis is available as a supplement to the 2017 Virtual Reality Industry Report, which was co-published with Road to VR.

The post Investors Poured a Record $2 Billion into VR/AR in 2017, But Early Stage Funding Slowed appeared first on Road to VR.

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Williams-Sonoma Acquires Outward for $112 Million to Expand 3D, AR, and VR Retail Visualization

Williams-Sonoma Inc has announced that an agreement has been reached to acquire Outward Inc for an all cash consideration of $112 million. Williams-Sonoma Inc is a US-based high-end retailer of home furnishings and kitchenware, associated with stores such as Williams Sonoma, Pottery Barn, PBteen, West Elm, Rejuvenation, and Mark and Graham. Outward, founded in 2012, is a 3D imaging and augmented reality technology company focused on applying this technology to the home furnishings and decor industry. Outward provides visual merchandising to make shopping experiences more interactive and engaging.

Following the completion of the acquisition and melding of the two companies, expected prior to year’s end, Outward will operate as a wholly-owned subsidiary of Williams-Sonoma. The headquarters will remain in San Jose, CA (Williams-Sonoma is headquartered in San Francisco, CA), and will be managed by Outward’s current leadership team.

Both companies expressed positive enthusiasm with regards to the acquisition. Williams-Sonoma stated that it is looking to implement and further develop Outward’s technology to create applications for product visualization, digital room design, and use of augmented and virtual reality for retail. Outward commented that due to the various channels available to Williams-Sonoma it will allow for many opportunities in creation of their design experiences and they will be able to apply those to their existing customer base.

Statements from the companies suggest that Williams-Sonoma is looking to add experiences similar to those being developed by IKEA, Target, Wayfair, and Amazon to their apps through their different brands. These apps use AR technology to allow users to place virtual representations of items in their homes to see if they match the decor or fit in a specific location thus, expediting the time between consideration and purchase (no need to visit a store for confirmation). Walmart also has shown interest in how AR and VR might improve shopping experiences, though they have not rolled out such a feature to their applications just yet.

SEE ALSO
Walmart Focuses On Future of VR/AR at New Silicon Valley Tech Incubator

Though AR apps similar to the ones described above are currently only available on iOS devices these sorts of AR apps are expected to expand to Android devices as Google’s ARCore tech matures and rolls out to the public. Further down the road it’s expected that the apps will find their way to consumer AR headsets.

As AR headsets improve one would expect retailers to present their entire furniture catalogue online and allow users the ultimate shopping and design experience using AR to directly in the home. An appealing prospect to be sure: instead of hiring a home designer you become your own home designer and can arrange a room exactly how you would like and preview it. It’s foreseeable that such experience could extend beyond goods like furniture and kitchenware and even into clothing, electronics, and more.

The post Williams-Sonoma Acquires Outward for $112 Million to Expand 3D, AR, and VR Retail Visualization appeared first on Road to VR.

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Williams-Sonoma Acquires Outward for $112 Million to Expand 3D, AR, and VR Retail Visualization

Williams-Sonoma Inc has announced that an agreement has been reached to acquire Outward Inc for an all cash consideration of $112 million. Williams-Sonoma Inc is a US-based high-end retailer of home furnishings and kitchenware, associated with stores such as Williams Sonoma, Pottery Barn, PBteen, West Elm, Rejuvenation, and Mark and Graham. Outward, founded in 2012, is a 3D imaging and augmented reality technology company focused on applying this technology to the home furnishings and decor industry. Outward provides visual merchandising to make shopping experiences more interactive and engaging.

Following the completion of the acquisition and melding of the two companies, expected prior to year’s end, Outward will operate as a wholly-owned subsidiary of Williams-Sonoma. The headquarters will remain in San Jose, CA (Williams-Sonoma is headquartered in San Francisco, CA), and will be managed by Outward’s current leadership team.

Both companies expressed positive enthusiasm with regards to the acquisition. Williams-Sonoma stated that it is looking to implement and further develop Outward’s technology to create applications for product visualization, digital room design, and use of augmented and virtual reality for retail. Outward commented that due to the various channels available to Williams-Sonoma it will allow for many opportunities in creation of their design experiences and they will be able to apply those to their existing customer base.

Statements from the companies suggest that Williams-Sonoma is looking to add experiences similar to those being developed by IKEA, Target, Wayfair, and Amazon to their apps through their different brands. These apps use AR technology to allow users to place virtual representations of items in their homes to see if they match the decor or fit in a specific location thus, expediting the time between consideration and purchase (no need to visit a store for confirmation). Walmart also has shown interest in how AR and VR might improve shopping experiences, though they have not rolled out such a feature to their applications just yet.

SEE ALSO
Walmart Focuses On Future of VR/AR at New Silicon Valley Tech Incubator

Though AR apps similar to the ones described above are currently only available on iOS devices these sorts of AR apps are expected to expand to Android devices as Google’s ARCore tech matures and rolls out to the public. Further down the road it’s expected that the apps will find their way to consumer AR headsets.

As AR headsets improve one would expect retailers to present their entire furniture catalogue online and allow users the ultimate shopping and design experience using AR to directly in the home. An appealing prospect to be sure: instead of hiring a home designer you become your own home designer and can arrange a room exactly how you would like and preview it. It’s foreseeable that such experience could extend beyond goods like furniture and kitchenware and even into clothing, electronics, and more.

The post Williams-Sonoma Acquires Outward for $112 Million to Expand 3D, AR, and VR Retail Visualization appeared first on Road to VR.

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PSVR Black Friday Sales Metrics Reportedly Top Prior 18 Weeks Combined in UK, “On Par” With Launch

Following the Black Friday shopping period, analysts report strong sales for the PlayStation VR headset in the UK, possibly furthering Sony’s install base lead among tethered VR headsets.

In a summary of Black Friday videogame and hardware sales analyses, UK-based CfK Chart-Track, citing “retail/web sales where the data is captured electronically each day via EPoS systems,” says that PlayStation VR had a “huge” week in the UK. According to the summary, PSVR unit sales during Black Friday week were “on par” with the headset’s launch week back in 2016. Furthermore, the firm says that the sell-through rate—the percent of units shipped to retailers that were then sold to customers—is “equivalent [to] the past 18 weeks [combined].”

The firm notes that the action was largely driven by a range of newly available PSVR bundles which included various configurations of the headset and its peripherals, along with popular games. VRFocus noted earlier this week that the headset for a time found itself in the #1 position on the site-wide Amazon.co.uk Top Sellers list.

Sony’s success in moving PlayStation VR headsets—with an estimated 1.5 million unit install base as of October 2017, according to analytics firm Greenlight Insights—has certainly been made possible thanks to the well-liked PlayStation brand name, a huge pre-existing base of PS4 consoles capable of running the headset, and a well designed product. But the sales traction this week appears primarily driven by cost and bundled games.

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Pressure Mounts for Xbox's Missing VR Strategy as PSVR Rakes in Half a Billion in Hardware Alone

Leading up to Black Friday week, Sony announced several new bundles—most shipping with a refreshed version of the PSVR headset which offers small but welcomed tweaks—each containing a VR game from well-recognized gaming franchises (Skyrim VR, Gran Turismo Sport, Doom VFR) and seemingly targeted across a broad range of gamers. On sale between $300 and $350 (depending upon the bundle) the Black Friday period was the cheapest the headset has ever been.

Though PlayStation remains the cost-leader when it comes to ‘all in’ price (the headset & controllers and the system to run it), looking at just the headsets & controllers themselves, both the Oculus Rift and the cheapest Windows VR headsets have largely achieved price parity with PSVR at $400. VR still needs to be cheaper for mass adoption, but that seems to be happening rapidly. The ~$400 non-sale price of these headsets hopefully represents the new norm for high-end VR.

The post PSVR Black Friday Sales Metrics Reportedly Top Prior 18 Weeks Combined in UK, “On Par” With Launch appeared first on Road to VR.

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Report: Apple Acquired VR Headset Startup Vrvana for $30 Million

Citing sources close to the deal, TechCrunch reports that VR headset maker Vrvana has been acquired by Apple for $30 million.

Vrvana is a little known VR headset maker that’s been on the scene since 2014. The company was building the ‘Totem’ headset, which had gone to Kickstarter that year but came up short of its goal despite a positive start. At the time the company then opened pre-orders for the device, though it isn’t clear if those pre-ordered units ever shipped; the headset continued to evolve drastically in the years following, including an expanded emphasis on pass-through video and hand-tracking for AR experiences. The company was also said to be working on inside-out tracking technology but we never had the chance to see it demonstrated.

Now TechCrunch, citing sources close to the deal, reports that Apple has acquired the company for “around $30 million.” Apple declined to comment on the story while Vrvana didn’t reply to a request for comment. The publication reports that a number of Vrvana’s employees have joined Apple. The timing of the deal is not clear but TechCrunch notes that Vrvana’s social media accounts went silent back in August.

Apple, which has been rumored for years to be doing deep R&D into AR and VR tech (and has made numerous acquisitions and hires in support of those rumors), only just this year finally embraced VR with a number of announcements regarding support for the technology in the Apple ecosystem, but no hint of first-party products in the works.

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Apple Embraces VR: Every Virtual Reality Announcement From the WWDC 2017 Keynote

Apple also recently launched ARCore, their AR tracking tech for iOS devices, enabling a first wave of phone-based AR apps. The expectation is that such these experiences will one day be delivered through immersive AR headsets.

Vrvana CEO Bertrand Nepveu looks through an early Totem prototype | Photo by Road to VR

The purported acquisition of Vrvana could be related to the company’s focus on combining VR and AR in one headset. Earlier this year, Vrvana CEO Bertrand Nepveu took to the stage at AWE to talk about blending the two technologies, including a technique that offers a seamless transition between a fully virtual scene and an AR scene (via passthrough cameras), on which the company claims to have filed patents, as well as object occlusion.

Earlier this month it was reported that Apple could be prepping their first immersive AR device for a 2020 launch. Speaking with The Independent, Apple CEO Tim Cook gave a fresh take on the company’s attitude toward AR today::

The display technology required, as well as putting enough stuff around your face—there’s huge challenges with that. The field of view, the quality of the display itself, it’s not there yet. We don’t give a rat’s about being first, we want to be the best, and give people a great experience. But now anything you would see on the market any time soon would not be something any of us would be satisfied with. Nor do I think the vast majority of people would be satisfied.

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HTC Scraps Plans to Bring Daydream-based Vive Focus to Western Markets

HTC revealed their new standalone Vive Focus headset today, poised to launch into the Asian market. Earlier this year the device was teased to be heading to Western markets as part of Google’s Daydream platform in 2017, but now HTC confirms they’ve canceled those plans.

The Vive Focus headset was actually first announced for the Western market back at Google I/O 2017 in Q2. Though it was unnamed at the time, it was said that the headset would make its debut as part of Google’s Daydream platform. Later in 2017, HTC announced that the same standalone headset would also launch in Asian markets except it would draw content from the company’s own Viveport platform.

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HTC Announces 'Vive Focus' Standalone VR Headset

Today, following the announcement of the Vive Focus for Asian markets, HTC has confirmed to Road to VR that it has canceled plans to bring the Daydream version of the headset to the US and other Western markets.

“We still have a great relationship with Google, but will not be bringing a standalone device to Western markets on Daydream,” a spokesperson for the company tells us. “We’re looking closely at our hardware roadmap, and will share when there is more to come for Western users next year.”

Google’s VP of VR and AR, Clay Bavor, mirrored the message on Twitter. However, Bavor confirmed that the Lenovo Daydream headset, which was announced earlier this year alongside the Daydream version of the Vive Focus headset, is still in the works and seemingly on track for a launch in 2017.

The cancellation of the Western variant of the Vive Focus comes off as a rather sudden reversal, and seemingly strange timing as the headset was due to launch in the next few weeks. HTC has offered little detail on what prompted the change in strategy, but it seems that competition from its closest rival, Oculus, may be part of the equation.

In October Oculus announced a low cost standalone headset, the Oculus Go, priced at $200 and due to launch early next year. The company also demonstrated a more advanced standalone headset, the Oculus Santa Cruz Prototype II which features inside-out positional tracking and motion controllers.

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With Facebook's 💰, Oculus Is Fending off Old Enemies, Former Friends, and New Foes

Meanwhile, HTC is still battling financial difficulties spanning the last several years. Though their Vive division appears to be a bright spot in an otherwise cash-strapped company, the VR market is still small compared to the their overall business. The troubles prompted HTC to sell off some talent and IP to Google for $1.1 billion earlier this year.

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