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Welcome back to Spatial Beats. This week, we look at new AR and VR funding rounds, Magic Leap 2, and the latest in virtual collaboration. Let’s dive in…
Munich-based Holoride closed a €10 million (approximately $12 million) Series A round. The company enables a VR headset to sync up with a vehicle wirelessly to deliver a moving and unqiue kind of VR experience.
Leo AR, which allows users to import 3D objects into their videos, announced the close of a $3 million seed round led by Great Oaks Ventures, with participation from Dennis Phelps of IVP, Betaworks, Deutsch Telekom, Quake Capital and other angel investors.
Frame is a new, free webXR collaboration platform from one of the giants in the space, Virbela (NASDQ: EXPI). Because it’s WebXR, Frame allows dozens of users (anyone with a browser) to gather in a spatial room with one click. The cloud solution can host up to seventy-five simultaneous unique users who can use whiteboards, share documents, import 3D objects, or even upload their own environments.
Magic Leap CEO Peggy Johnson says their new AR headset will arrive Q4, 2021. The lighter, slight less bulky Magic Leap 2 will double the size of its field of view.
Star Wars Galaxy’s Edge 2, coming to Oculus Quest later this year. ILMXLAB
Oculus shows off 12 VR games at its gaming showcase. These include a big pack o’ sequels, Galaxy’s Edge 2, Resident Evil 4, I Expect You To Die 2, Lone Echo 2, The Climb 2, and another Walking Dead title. And keep your eye on Star Wars Pinball.
Make a new friend in Cheerio, now in the Quest App Lab, which allows users to find new friends and enjoy VR experiences with them. The company raised seed capital from Anorak Ventures and Boost VC.
Japanese studio Psychic VR Lab has announced a NEWVIEW school in London, based on its successful Tokyo program, which trains artists to create content with their STYLY web platform. The London program, which costs £450, starts June 19th, and is entirely remote.
The ‘metaverse’ bet: crypto-rich investors snap up virtual real estate. With parcels of digital land on Somnimum Space and Decentraland fetching hundreds of thousands of dollars (where else you going to put that Beeple?) people frequently ask if we understand what is going on. Our hypothesis is that crypto billionaires live in another reality. Will it be the reality we will all want to share? If it is, the bit boys will win again. But the chances of that are… about the same as a $50 bitcoin in 2011 becoming a $50,000 bitcoin today.
Futurist James Bellini says holograms are the future of communication. We think he’s right.
Google may be killing Poly, but it’s still full of silly AR tricks!
This Week in XR is now a podcast hosted by Paramount’s Futurist Ted Schilowitz and Charlie Fink, the author of this weekly column. You can find it on podcasting platforms Spotify, iTunes, and YouTube. Watch the latest episode below.
Charlie Fink is an author and futurist focused on spatial computing. See his books here. Spatial Beats contains insights and inputs from Fink’s collaborators including Paramount Pictures futurist Ted Shilowitz.
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