UPDATED 08:00 EDT / JANUARY 19 2022

EMERGING TECH

Varjo brings high-fidelity cloud-based streaming to its VR platform

Professional-grade virtual reality hardware and software provider Varjo Technologies Oy today announced the addition of cloud streaming to its Reality Cloud platform, which will bring real-life collaboration capability to its high-fidelity headsets.

The new service allows users to experience virtual and mixed reality applications entirely from the cloud and stream human-eye resolution VR/XR content directly to Varjo headsets with minimal latency. The objective is to provide easy collaboration for a large number of use cases and permit remote teams to collaborate with ease using virtual objects and applications.

“We can do compute in the cloud at human-eye resolution indistinguishable from compute done in the same room with you in a way that you don’t perceive latency at all with some very clever technology,” Urho Konttori, founder and chief technology officer of Varjo, told SiliconANGLE in an interview.

He said that’s preferable for many teams because it removes the hardware requirements for VR/XR in many cases, especially the pain point of scalability. If a team needs to add more members rapidly and the members have the headsets to do it but not the machines that can handle it, they could be out of luck. However, the cloud can scale up quickly to manage the additional load and it’s as easy as donning the headset and joining the rest of the team.

To make this happen, Varjo Reality Cloud’s new streaming service is powered by Amazon Web Services and cloud-based Nvidia Corp. graphics processing units. This allows local computing requirements to be greatly reduced.

“Being able to achieve the same quality experience through Varjo Reality Cloud with less powerful local PCs is a game-changer for companies looking to scale their use of virtual and mixed reality,” Konttori said.

The Varjo headsets use powerful compression and a technology called foveated transport to stream the XR/VR content at the lowest bandwidth necessary to still provide the highest fidelity possible. Foveated rendering works by tracking where the viewers are looking and provides the highest resolution only to a very tiny area within the center of their gaze where human vision is the clearest and reduces it outside that area.

The cloud-streaming service is currently available in preview to a select number of early access users whom Varjo is using to streamline the service for their VR use cases. To begin, Varjo has begun working with roughly five companies, among them electric car company Rivian, which has been using the service for remote automotive design and review workflows.

Konttori said Varjo went to these companies and asked them what kind of pain points they had working with immersive technologies when they use them for design reviews, automotive configurators or design reviews with colleagues or management.

Using the Reality Cloud platform, teams at Rivian can conduct collaborative AutoDesk VRED reviews using cloud-based streaming. Ordinarily, this software is costly and hardware-intensive to install across numerous computers for multiple people to view at once.

“For example, today’s state of the Rivian car, say you want to get your peers’ updates and comments on a model,” Konttori said. “All you need to do is send a link to these guys, like ‘Come join me at 4 p.m. and let’s talk about the model.’ When they click it, everything is pre-set for them. They don’t need to start a software application, update models, or anything, everything is ready in the cloud.”

The result is that everyone joining with a headset will experience the same high-quality session as everyone else. Only the host of the session need set everything up, put together the model, prepare the presentation and do all of the work. It also means that nobody joining needs to worry about needing the editing software either – especially if it’s just a review session.

Another important element of the new Reality Cloud platform’s streaming capability Konttori emphasized is that everything is encrypted and nothing goes through Varjo’s servers. The company has been working on making certain that even if the company’s servers were compromised, it would be impossible to break into client information being streamed over the platform.

Konttori revealed that Varjo has been developing for the defense sector as well, although the company does not speak publicly about the use cases or agencies it works with. He also added that oftentimes he’s discovered that many automotive companies are even more paranoid than the government when it comes to their proprietary information because of the massive financial damage that could happen if designs were leaked.

“If the car companies can trust us with their data and government organizations can trust us with their secrets, then maybe smaller-architecture agencies and others can do the same thing,” Konttori said.

Photo: Varjo

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