Virtual reality The Finnish company developed VR glasses, which should finally realize the idea of ​​metaverse: “This is a sci-fi dream come true”

Finn virtual glass developer Varjo released a new, cheaper and lighter version of its glasses, Varjo Aero. At the same time, its potential customer base expanded from corporate customers, such as the automotive industry and industrial designers, to consumer users – or at least demanding simulator enthusiasts.

According to the company, the new glasses, along with its Reality Cloud platform released in the summer, mark “a step towards enabling a real-life metaverse for everyone”.

The Finnish growth company therefore wants to be strongly involved in the fashion phenomenon in the technology sector, the metaverse. What was wrong with the term in virtual reality, and what does Shadow’s version of the metaverse mean?

Shadow Aero The optics of the glasses have been simplified, which made the device lighter and cheaper than before. Still, the company says the glasses have the highest resolution in the consumer market for VR glasses, or the sharpest image. The glasses have 35 pixels per degree, 2,880 x 2,720 pixels per eye.

In virtual reality, image sharpness is a crucial issue. The sharp image allows you to see details such as the buttons and texts on the control panel of the aircraft simulator. When the eyes do not have to strain due to an inaccurate image, the time spent in the virtual world is less prone to nausea. The brightness comes from the mini LED display on the glasses.

Over the years, Varjo has printed the price of his glasses down. The first glasses had been developed for industrial partner customers. Their price was almost 6,000 euros, on top of which was an annual fee of one thousand euros for a software license.

The price of the latest version is 1,990 euros at no extra charge. The new glasses also require less computing power from the computer connected to it, which expands the possibilities of using the glasses.

“This is our first scaling product for wider professional use, but it opens up opportunities for avid enthusiasts such as flight and rally simulator users and those who make YouTube videos. From there, wishes came to us from the direction, and enthusiasts were involved in developing the product, ”Varjo’s founder and technology director Urho Konttori says.

In the future, the service will have the ability to play videos. For example, it is possible to display an image from inside an aircraft simulator.

According to Konttor, the closest of the competitors to Varjo’s product are the Valve Index device or HTC’s Vive pro 2 glasses.

Shadow the view of the metaverse is based on scanning and digitizing the real world – a bit like teleporting yourself to a realistic virtual world. The purpose of this is especially cooperation and problem solving.

Shadow XR3 glasses are thus able to scan their user’s environment into a 3D model and turn it into virtual reality. Another user of Shadow Glasses can join the same space from the other side of the world.

When Varjo first talked about his technology during Midsummer, for example, technology media VentureBeat wrote about it quite enthusiastically using phrases like “this is not a joke,” and “you read correctly.” The technology allows you to share the same environment in real time by playing 3D video with almost no delay.

“This has become a sci-fi dream come true, but this metaverse is based entirely on reality,” Varjo’s CEO Timo Toikkanen said at the time.

Development means that in the future, Shadow will not only be a device developer, but will offer its own virtual reality – or metaverse – related services and software as a cloud service. It is planned to bring more different services under the Shadow Reality Cloud platform in the future.

To this end, Varjo has acquired the Norwegian software company Dimension10, which had developed a virtual meeting tool for handling 3D models of industrial design. Its platform enables architects, engineers or designers to collaborate within the virtual world. For example, a building designed in this way can be viewed by moving within the modeling. The Norwegian company’s software formed the basis for the Teleport VR service now published by Varjo.

Because of this use, the new Aero glasses also come with sounds, i.e. a microphone and headphones, as the glasses on the head need to be able to talk.

The system can also be connected to design software so that when a problem is detected while working in virtual mode, it can be detected aloud, and voice recognition records it. You can also take a picture of the problematic area and attach it to the project data. Teleport VR can also be used with VR glasses from other manufacturers.

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“This is a sci-fi dream come true, but this metaverse is based entirely on reality.”

The closest benchmark for Varjo’s vision is a technology company known for graphics cards Nvidia Omniverse. It is a virtual space for collaboration for engineers, where, for example, a digital model of an entire factory can be viewed. Nvidia is a giant, it says it has spent years and hundreds of millions of dollars on the project, and it has big and well-known customers. It is a tough competitor to Shadow.

Shadow’s turnover in 2020 was EUR 7.1 million, compared to EUR 2.4 million a year earlier. Over the years, the company has raised a total of EUR 87 million in financing.

What For example, Shadow thinks of Facebook’s spectacular openings for the metaverse?

“Our vision is based on problem solving, not just communication. We don’t think chatting in virtual space as game-like avatars would be better than chatting in a video call. It’s probably nice to virtually throw a basketball, but we don’t want to bring in features just to have a nice try. Technology must give concrete value, ”says Konttori.

“In many ways, the metaverse is the hype of the moment. It is a new umbrella concept that bakes a lot of current technological developments that were previously referred to as virtual reality, ”Varjo’s Brand Director Jussi Mäkinen grant.

In any case, the noise generated around the metaverse is likely to be good for the demand for Varjo’s equipment and services. The shadow approach seems to make more sense than the average buzz around the metaverse.

Admittedly, instead of a metaverse, one could still just as well talk about virtual reality.