While the future of VR is undoubtedly wide open at the moment, the majority of contenders clearly see the battle playing out on gaming computers and home consoles. Starbreeze, for its part, is making its play on a high-end headset, destined for amusement parks and IMAX theaters.
While it feels like a bit of a step back (or at the very least retro) after a few decades dominated by home gameplay, the company’s certainly been putting in the time and money with its StarVR headset, partnering with hardware companies like Acer and acquiring some of its own. This past week, it picked up Belgium visual effects house and VR content creator Nozon for around $7.75 million.
Key to the acquisition is PresenZ, a parallax tool designed by Nozon to offer a better, pre-rendered animated experience to headset-wearers, offering a more immersive experience as they look around in a computer generated VR world. According to the companies, the technology offers movie-level definition at room scale.
Here’s Starbreeze CEO Bo Andersson Klint being excited about the acquisition,
The future of VR is undefined but it is easy to imagine with this technology, where a space can be scanned and rendered in high quality CGI, the applications where you could render a space like the Louvre in Paris or Saint Mark’s Basilica in Venice, and provide interactive guided tours.
Via Venture Beat