Motion measurement firm Vicon has launched Origin, a new location-based Virtual Reality (LBVR) solution.
LBVR is an emerging form of entertainment where participants share collective VR experiences in a specific location, such as a shopping mall, cinema, theme-park or museum.
Users are free to walk within a virtual world and interact with each other, whether that be enacting a scene from a movie franchise, wandering the surface of Mars or playing a video game with friends.
“Location-based Virtual Reality supercharges the standard VR experience, physically transporting users into imaginative worlds,” said Nick Bolton, CEO of Oxford Metrics, which trades through Vicon.
“With the launch of Origin, we can now achieve a true suspension of disbelief. We have spent three years developing a solution which delivers a flawless experience for participants and makes the virtual ever more real.”
The Origin solution consists of a new suite of products built to serve current and future demands of the LBVR market, including an all-new compact, lightweight tracking camera designed to work with active marker technology.
Vicon’s solution overcomes a number of the top challenges facing the LBVR market which include making a small-scale, complicated experience big enough and believable enough for large groups of people.
Origin tracks the movement of users with greater accuracy, fidelity and volume than ever before. Despite this, there is no limit to the scale of the virtual world which can be created and multiple users can simultaneously appear as characters in the LBVR environment.
Participants in the virtual world appear as a fully animated avatar, can see and interact with their fellow users and use tools or props, creating a fully immersive experience.
“Our strategy for Vicon is to make targeted investments to maintain our market-leading position and extend our capability into new markets,” said Bolton.
“The release of Origin does exactly that – new LBVR experiences are launching all over the world and with this introduction we have an exciting opportunity to capture revenue in a new, fast-growing market.”