XR platform

ARuVR Releases No-Code Content Creation Platform for XR Headsets

content creation, Education & Training, extended reality, featured, training, XR platform / Ryan Harris / May 9, 2023

UK-based ARuVR (formerly VRtuoso) enterprise XR training platform has recently announced that it supports no-code content creation, distribution, and management for XR headsets. Thus, companies can now create extended reality training programs for VIVE XR Elite, Meta Quest Pro, and Pico 4 Enterprise without writing a single line of code.

Accessibility of AR/VR Creation Is the Latest Industry Trend

For some time now, creating AR/VR content is no longer conditioned by having coding skills. While developers are still very much in demand for high-end games and applications, there is a movement towards making the creation process accessible for all.

ARuVR puts another important building block to the foundation of this process with its no-code XR platform. Users can rely on the simple drag-and-drop process to create immersive training for employees, which can now also be experienced on extended reality headsets.

Immersive Training Is the New Norm

So far, ARuVR has attracted a roster of top clients, such as PwC, Coca-Cola, BT, and BAE Systems. These companies, and many others, rely on ARuVR’s training platform to create onboarding presentations for employees and ongoing training for staff.

The nature of AR/VR training makes it possible for international companies to create and deploy the same training for teams in various places around the globe. This ensures consistent compliance with the latest policies and best practices. Any other training method is subject to errors, human or otherwise.

With the no-code XR platform, any professional in charge of employee training can create interactive programs, test them and deploy them without a developer’s assistance.

The No-Code XR Platform Is Optimized for Enterprise Headsets

ARuVR is working together with headset producers who supply companies with enterprise-grade devices. Thus, the no-code XR platform is fully compatible with the most popular devices for corporate training, namely: HTC VIVE XR Elite, Meta Quest Pro, and Pico 4 Enterprise.

Speaking about the importance of the new training platform, Nathan Gaydhani, the Enterprise Product Owner EMEA at HTC VIVE said in a press release shared with ARPost:

“XR has the power to change how a business operates, creating and delivering highly realistic experiences to recruit, engage, upskill, or retain its workforce. Combining the great hardware of VIVE XR Elite, and powerful software like ARuVR’s platform means that advanced transformative technology is accessible to any organization.”

The Ultimate Goal: Facilitating Learning

For ARuVR, their new product is one step forward towards the goal of making training and transfer of knowledge faster and more accurate. This will ensure the success of companies, through more consistent training of their employees.

“As the first training platform to add no-code capability to our patented platform for the world’s leading XR headsets, we are ensuring that technical expertise is not a limiting factor to the roll-out of XR training programs,” said the founder and CEO of ARuVR, Frank Furnari. “Now anyone within an organization can easily become a creator of powerful and immersive training and deploy to anyone, anywhere throughout the enterprise.”

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Psychic VR Lab’s Metaverse Platform STYLY Aims to Transform Urban Entertainment With XR Experiences

extended reality, featured, location-based AR, metaverse, XR experience, XR platform / Mike M. / April 13, 2023

Imagine strolling through the bustling streets of New York City or the vibrant alleys of Tokyo—while also immersed in breathtaking XR experiences seamlessly integrated with your surroundings.

Psychic VR Lab’s STYLY platform is revolutionizing urban entertainment, blending physical and digital worlds to create unforgettable, interactive experiences. The company believes that “in the post-Covid era, it is important not to ‘replace’ real space, but to open the metaverse to cities and create a new hybrid lifestyle that can increase the experience value of the city itself by ‘fusing’ the real and the virtual.”

With a recent funding boost, Psychic VR Lab, a Tokyo-based company behind the XR metaverse platform STYLY, is set to take its innovative vision to new heights and redefine what it means to explore cities.

Psychic VR Lab - STYLY - urban XR entertainment

The company has recently successfully raised an additional $3.7 million in funding, bringing the total funding amount to $19.7 million. This funding round featured the participation of J. CVC fund (GP) invested by Front Retailing Co., Ltd., Nippon Steel Kowa Real Estate Co., Ltd., TV Asahi Holdings Co., Ltd., JR West Japan Innovations Co., Ltd., Tokyu Fudosan Holdings Co., Ltd., and SBI Investment Co., Ltd.

With this financial support, Psychic VR Lab aims to enhance urban entertainment experiences worldwide by fusing art, music, video, and commercial facilities through its “real metaverse platform” STYLY.

“The successful conclusion of this recent funding round highlights the drive to expand XR into every facet of life, making our cities smarter and more adaptable using immersive technology,” said Ryohei Watanabe, CMO of Psychic VR Lab, in a press release shared with ARPost.

What Is Urban XR Entertainment?

Urban XR entertainment utilizes XR technology to transform an urban environment into an immersive and interactive medium of entertainment. The use of XR technology in urban environments can offer users a diverse range of immersive experiences similar to switching TV channels. By overlaying XR content onto the real world, a highly engaging experience can be created and potentially increase foot traffic in the city.

Through its platform STYLY, Psychic VR Lab aims to promote urban XR entertainment that improves the attractiveness of locations and revitalizes tourism. The idea behind the platform is to create and distribute XR content linked to cities worldwide, such as Tokyo, Kumamoto, Niigata, New York, and Barcelona.

Urban XR entertainment - Psychic VR Lab - metaverse platform STYLY

“Together with Psychic VR Lab, which strongly aspires to the XR entertainment business based on ‘real’, we will create countless XR services linked to all experiences such as entertainment, art, travel, tourism, and business in the real world, including the West Japan area, so that people can connect,” said Makoto Okuno, President of JR West Innovations Co., Ltd., one of the investors.

STYLY Platform: AR and MR Meet Urban Exploration

With the ability to import 3D geomap data of cities into STYLY, Psychic VR Lab aims to revolutionize the way we experience urban spaces.

“Through this investment and business alliance, we hope to create a space full of art and entertainment that provides unprecedented experiences through synergies with the company and its stakeholders and contribute to improving the attractiveness of the city,” said Managing Executive Officer at J. Front Retailing Co., Ltd., Naotaka Hayashi.

Future Impact of Urban XR Entertainment on Industries and Society

Urban XR entertainment has the potential to profoundly impact various industries, including tourism, retail, and real estate.

“Nippon Steel Kowa Real Estate will create new value in real estate together with Psychic for a future in which new lifestyles and work styles that fuse the real and virtual will become commonplace,” said Yasuhiko Imaizumi, President and CEO of Nippon Steel Kowa Real Estate Co., Ltd., one of the investors in the latest funding round.

Overall, investors see the potential in STYLY and Psychic VR Lab’s vision of creating a real metaverse platform. They aim to create new value by combining their expertise and resources with Psychic VR Lab’s technology and driving force, contributing to the growth of the company and the advancement of the industry.

As Psychic VR Lab continues to expand its urban XR entertainment initiatives, we can expect to see more cities embracing this technology and its benefits. Psychic VR Lab is opening the door to a new era of urban experiences, transforming the way we interact with and enjoy our surroundings. With their recent funding and ongoing projects, the future of urban entertainment is all the more promising and exciting.

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Spatial Releases Toolkit for “Gaming and Interactivity”

content creation, featured, gaming, Immersive Technology, News, virtual reality, XR platform / Ryan Harris / March 28, 2023

Spatial started out as an enterprise remote collaboration solution. Then, it changed lanes to offer virtual worlds for consumer social uses. Now, it could become an immersive gaming platform. At least, in part.

A Look at the Toolkit

The new “Spatial Creator Toolkit” is a Unity-powered interface that allows users to create custom avatars, items, and “quests.” The quests can be “games and immersive stories” as well as “interactive exhibitions” according to a release shared with ARPost.

Spatial Creator Toolkit

“This evolution to gamified and interactive co-experiences is a natural expansion for the platform and the internet,” said Jinha Lee, CPO and co-founder. “With more than 1 million registered creators on the platform today, and almost 2 million worlds, we are committed to empowering all creators.”

The toolkit also features advanced tools for linking virtual worlds together. All of it is powered by visual scripting as opposed to conventional coding. The company said that this allows “zero learning curve and instant scalability.” During a closed alpha phase that began in December, companies with advanced access including Vogue and McDonald’s broke in the toolkit.

Spatial’s Room to Grow

According to the release, the company hopes to become the YouTube of 3D games. “As Adobe is for 2D video, Unity is the software unlocking 3D games and the new medium of the internet. Spatial is like the YouTube for these games, enabling instant publishing to the mass market,” said CEO and co-founder of Spatial, Anand Agarawala. “Anyone can build, the key is unlocking the capabilities to allow the magic to happen.”

Considering plans for a creator marketplace by the end of the year, the new business model is also similar to platforms like Roblox. That platform is a flagship of the gaming creator economy but has so far stayed away from NFTs.

Having fully embraced NFTs, along with other Web3 building blocks like cross-platform avatar compatibility through Ready Player Me, Spatial has a lot of opportunities and tools at its disposal that platforms like Roblox don’t. These include partnerships in the larger Web3 community, and at least some level of interoperability with other immersive platforms.

In short, we still have to see where this direction takes the company. But, it looks like calling the platform a “YouTube” or a “Roblox” might be selling it short. Both of those are massive creator-driven online marketplaces and communities, but both of them are limited by their own walls and that might not be true of this new side of Spatial.

Let’s See How Far it Goes

Skepticism about what may seem like another blockchain game drive is understandable. However, blockchain games that have let users down in the past were largely trying to shill their own products with questionable infrastructure. Spatial is a proven company with an open ecosystem that has nothing to gain by anyone losing. This should be fun.

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A Tour of the Mytaverse Enterprise Immersive World

Enterprise, enterprise XR, featured, metaverse, XR platform / Ryan Harris / December 17, 2022

There are a number of great virtual world platforms out there – and a smaller number of those are dedicated to enterprise use. And, an even smaller number of those offer the immense graphic fidelity required for some applications. Mytaverse is an enterprise-only platform with special tools for digital twins and virtual assets, and I got the world tour.

What Is Mytaverse?

Mytaverse was founded during the COVID-19 pandemic and has seen its fair share of remote events and virtual work solutions since then. About this time last year, the company hosted a Pepsi-led event focused on innovation that brought over 300 representatives from Google, Adobe, IBM, Salesforce, Amazon, and others into the platform for the first time.

mytaverse map

“Our company is growing rapidly and we’re getting a lot of traction,” Inside Sales Manager, Robert Mc Illece, told me during an in-world interview and platform tour.

The platform isn’t just about remote presence. They acknowledge that the metaverse will never replace in-person. More importantly from the business angle, the metaverse has to replace in-person a lot less frequently now than two years ago. Fortunately, the platform has a way with virtual models – which might have more lasting and varied staying power than virtual people.

The platform has special tools for displaying and viewing virtual models. These can be digital collectibles or digital twins. Companies can bring their own models, or work with the Mytaverse team to build models for use in their applications.

mytaverse toolbox

The digital twins aren’t just viewable, they can also be made to be configurable in real time. Over the course of the interview, I change the exterior colors of model cars – and the interior colors of a model jet while standing inside it.

All of this is made even more impressive by the first major update to the Mytaverse platform, partially funded by a recent $7.6M seed round. The update brought Unreal Engine 5 to the platform (Did we mention that Unreal is a tech partner?), along with a tidy integration with the cross-platform avatar engine Ready Player Me.

Navigating Within the Platform

“We’ve been asked for a long time to incorporate human avatars. We used robot avatars for a long time,” said Mc Illece. “We were going to use Metahuman, but it’s too heavy.”

Those robot avatars are still available for users who don’t already have Ready Player Me, or who don’t want to take the time to make one on the spot. There is a wide selection of body types, and all have a screen-shaped head that can broadcast the webcam of the user – sort of like the robots from the Saga comic series.

Mytaverse avatars

It’s natural for Mytaverse team members to have a soft spot for the robot avatars, and it’s natural for them to want to team up with their partners at Unreal. However, there’s a sense that Ready Player Me lends a sense of identity because of how universal the avatars are becoming. For example, I used the same avatar in this interview as I used in a recent tour of Spatial.

No matter which avatar system you use, emotes are provided ranging from the practical, like waving a hand, to a softkey for dancing a jig. The avatar is controlled by standard WASD controls on a computer or by touch on a mobile device. Need to get somewhere fast? Hop on a hoverboard, teleport short distances, or pull up to “beam” in between locations on campus.

mytaverse emojis

The entire experience is browser-based and hardware-agnostic made possible by cloud computing (AWS is also a partner). So far, “hardware-agnostic” doesn’t include headset support – though that’s on the schedule for the second half of next year. What’s the holdup? A lot of headsets don’t yet have the display quality to keep up with Mytaverse graphics.

“We don’t want to dumb down our graphics for a headset,” said Mc Illece.

Enterprise-Only

Writing reviews of platforms like Mytaverse is almost a little sad. I was really impressed by my tour of the platform. And, I hope to be invited back for some remote event or another. However, this is an enterprise platform so a lot of readers might never get a look. But, that’s fair, as the platform brings a slew of top-shelf tools that enterprise users need more than casual users.

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