Which are the most innovative companies in the world in the AR / VR technologies sector? Here’s a top ten list of companies that showcased the best software, hardware, and content for extending the metaverse experience. For the past couple of years, there has been more and more talk of the metaverse.
Since Mark Zuckerberg launched the Meta brand (which today includes Facebook, Instagram, and Whatsapp), the concept of a new digital and network experience has gradually taken hold, creating a market and encouraging investments in advanced hardware and software, including augmented and virtual reality. Curiosity and interest around the metaverse paradigm today no longer reach the levels of 2022.
Still, large companies continue to work in this sector and its software technologies, in particular augmented reality ( AR ), virtual reality ( VR ), and mixed reality or mixed reality ( XR ). Fast Company has brought together the ten most innovative VR / AR solutions companies.
Unity
It is the first on the list for its ability to integrate data with digital twins ( digital twins). It is well known precisely for the high quality and effectiveness of its DT models, such as the one developed with the Vancouver Airport Authority for the airport of the same name. Thanks to this 3D virtual model of the airport structure, employees can view the functioning of the entire airport in real-time, thus planning training courses on essential topics, project tests, and new interventions, simulations, and exercises of various kinds.
For example, thanks to the digital twin, it is possible to study the effects on the structure of the increase in the traffic of private cars, perhaps primarily electric, and how this can give rise to new needs, new demand for services, and recharging infrastructures, and where to locate them and how much energy consumption could be achieved.
Cokes
It seems strange to find such a multinational in this world ranking, but the famous Coca-Cola has also entered the metaverse or plays with it. In 2022 he launched Coca-Cola Creations to foster new social relationships around the brand and advertise new launches and ‘new flavors,’ such as Starlight soda, “flavored with a space taste.” Scanning the QR code on the can, one entered a spatial virtual stage where the singer Ava Max performed.
Then came Sugar Byte, a pixel-flavored drink. The product was launched on the popular game Fortnite and then on Twitch, with a virtual life by DJ Marshmello. Through the QR code of this product, it was possible to enter a super colorful morphing video of the performance. Then last summer, the new Dreamworld flavor also arrived,
Goals
As anticipated, it is to its CEO Zuckerberg that we owe the explosion of the metaverse concept. Even this alone explains the positioning at the top. In particular, the magazine appreciates the development of the new mixed reality technology that is particularly “real.”
The new Meta Quest Pro hardware, equipped with a viewer, controller, headset, and other accessories for a newly conceived VR experience that will improve human, work, and social relationships in a mixed reality environment, which will be more defined, with attention to detail, colors, in the possible functions. It is one of the most advanced standalone VR devices in the world right now.
The search engine has conquered a prominent place in this list thanks to one project in particular, Starline, which offered professionals, closed at home during the Covid-19 pandemic the possibility of exploiting virtual video conferencing environments in 3D. Google has imagined a mixed reality without headphones to immerse yourself in having a more accurate, direct, and sensory sensation.
Some large partner companies, such as WeWork and Salesforce until last year, offered their users the opportunity to test this new technology with unique stands and dedicated AR/VR technologies for remote 3D conferences.
Innersloth
One of the best-known gaming companies in 2022 brought its most popular game, Among US, to a VR dimension, with players interacting with other users and scenography with a first-person view. Audio and video are of the highest quality, with ‘realistic’ effects superior to similar products for a very advanced gaming experience.
Niantic
In May 2022, Niantic launched its “Lightship Virtual Positioning System,” a virtual world map allowing AR developers to anchor 3D graphics to physical locations. If we imagine a virtual treasure hunt, the organizers can, in this way, hide essential information for the players near a statue or other historical monument, not invented but present in the cities we live in, offering an overlapping of experiences that the user.
A map that continues to grow today has 140,000 public places covered and “activated in 3D” by LVPS in 125 different cities worldwide.
Renderings
Not only software and hardware but also VR content. The company based in Sommerville, Massachusetts, has developed unique virtual reality content to help, stimulate and involve the elderly in nursing and rest homes. Thanks to the usual VR viewers, one can ‘enter’ old photos of happy moments, reliving the emotions differently. Or, it’s an opportunity to take virtual trips to exotic destinations or distant and never-visited cities of art, exploring their treasures and beauties.
In addition to the sensory and cognitive stimulation, there is also the physical one, with RendeverFit, which provides VR exercises for the well-being of the body and the mind in three modalities: cycle, paddle, and paint.
Archer’s Mark
Also, in this case, we are dealing with VR content, mainly historical. Through the title “On the Morning You Wake (to the End of the World): Take Cover,” presented in the New Frontiers program of the Sundance Film Festival in January of last year, users can relive the horrors of history, but by experiencing in virtual and in first person 3D. As in the case of the nuclear attack on the Hawaiian Islands on January 13, 2018, which fortunately never happened, but for half an hour, the inhabitants expected it after having received by mistake warnings of an imminent bomb on the islands and running to shelters.
Varjo
This enterprise’s object is producing high-end mixed reality equipment intended for companies, for professional use in short. The aim is to involve the world of professionals in a corporate metaverse made up of encounters, meetings, collaborations, and collaborative work, all in XR mode.
To create this sophisticated suite, the Finnish developers have developed the “Varjo Reality Cloud” to offer high-quality streaming, XR content, and high-definition technologies, exploiting the advantages of the cloud, given the enormous volume of data to manage. The technology appeals to auto companies such as Kia, Rivian, and Volvo.
PatchXR
The VR experience offered here is primarily aimed at musicians. It is a 3D environment in which one is surrounded by virtual musical instruments to be played and used at an amateur and a professional level.
You can make live sets and work with multiple users. Everything can be recorded, effects can be added, and if desired, there is also post-production work. For those interested, a test can be done with ” Patchworld ” of Meta Quest 2, a real virtualized music production studio.
ALSO READ: Avatar Designer: How A Metaverse Professional Works
