This VR startup can turn your sofa into a Lamborghini

It sort of tricks your mind into thinking that your virtual environment, reports Tech In Asia

I’m on a whirlwind tour of different realities: a sunlit living room, prehistoric Earth, a tomb filled with Terracotta Warriors. I’m not fooled by my surroundings – I know I’m in a studio – but when I stand up to get out of an Aston Martin, I instinctively crouch down to avoid hitting my head on the door.

“[Chinese companies] are good at making the interactive part […] but no incredible storytelling experience that makes you come back,” says Carlo Maria Rossi, chief creative officer at UltronVR. “This is the basic gap that we have.”

Though China boasted a US$300 million virtual reality market in 2016, a whopping 78 percent of investments went to hardware companies, according to market research firm Niko Partners. And thanks to the launch of Oculus Rift’s headset, many Chinese hardware startups, such as Baofeng Mojing, rushed to produce their own cheaper versions. Compelling VR content, on the other hand, is still few and far between.

UltronVR wants to fill that gap by incorporating optical tracking technology into its VR content. Optical tracking is a type of motion capture that uses cameras and markers to determine the position and orientation of an object. That means that by sticking small, spherical markers onto physical objects, UltronVR can map them into virtual reality.

It sort of tricks your mind into thinking that your virtual environment – or at least parts of it – is real. The chair I sat on became the front seat of a car, and when I leaned over and picked up a basketball in VR, I could feel it. This is an excerpt of the article published on Tech In Asia. You can read the full article here.