What They Say
We listened in to a webinar by Varjo last week and the company announced that it has acquired a BIM software company, Dimension10 and wants to use technology from the firm to develop a collaboration environment that it is calling Reality X Cloud. Initially it will be supported only on Varjo devices but the intention is to roll it out to other devices including headsets but extending to other devices.
The platform will be cloud-based to provide ‘unlimited’ processing power. It will allow capture of environments using the Varjo headset Lidar which can capture environments up to 5m from the viewer’s position (and can allow movement to capture bigger areas). These environments can then be managed and shared using VR.
Varjo also announced that it has added Lincoln Wallen, previously at Electron Arts and CTO at Dreamworks, to its board.
What We Think
A dig around the Dimension10 site shows a desktop mode for its software.
The Varjo briefing seemed pretty strong on hype but short on compelling reasons why Varjo is going to be able to build a platform that can compete with the tech giants that are also trying to build ‘metaverses’ (well, outside of AEC & BIM). Perhaps, the firm’s impressive ability to integrate virtual and real worlds might be the big thing it has, but I haven’t dug around that area, so would hesitate to compare it.
Still, if the firm has something good, I’m sure that its investors would be happy for it to be gobbled up by someone that had less clue about what they were doing. (BR)
