Category Archives: Virtual Reality

SME developer Kingswood Homes is revolutionising the way people buy new homes by enabling viewers to create their own internal floorplans using virtual reality technology whilst standing in their potential new property.

Buyers at Kingswood Homes developments in Lancashire and Devon can don a VR headset and see walls shift and rooms appear and disappear as they walk through the completed shell of a property, as part of the companys ground-breaking Shape Your Home concept.

It allows buyers to customise the interior layout of a property to match their own lifestyle and see in real time how the home would look with various floorplan configurations.

Kingswood Homes managing director Paul Jones, said: We launched Shape Your Home during lockdown, recognising that not everyone wants the same interior layout. The layout of a home is hugely personal yet is currently determined largely for the convenience of the developer not the customer.

We have reversed that and the VR technology allows customers to walk through an actual property and see how the different layout options would suit them. Rather than trying to make an existing floorplan meet their needs, our customers can now specify a design they have experienced which perfectly suits them from day one.

For example, one option is to turn a four-bedroom property into one with three en-suite bedrooms. Another would be to open up the ground floor to create vast open-plan living space. Its hard to visualise from a floor plan, but we can now let customers stand in the shell of a house and see it transform in front of their eyes.

It is remarkable technology but the point of it all is to give customers the best possible experience and help them create the home of their dreams.

Kingswood linked with established digital technology and VR specialists Animmersion UK to create the bespoke real time viewing technology.

Utilising gaming engine technology most commonly found powering the latest PC and console games, Animmersion UKs solution delivers experiences across multiple digital channels including VR, interactive touchscreens and online virtual tours.

The VR option links to an external tablet device to enable agents to support customer wearing the headset, guiding them and sharing the experience from outside the virtual environment.

It also aligns the VR space with the real world allowing the user to walk around the physical space safely, overseen by the agent, while experiencing the enhanced virtual presentation of their potential new home.

Samuel Harrison, Managing Director of Teesside-based Animmersion UK, said: Virtual Reality and VR headsets are becoming increasingly popular for leisure and business purposes and the technology is evolving at a rapid rate. This is enabling us to develop specialist immersive content for new applications like this project for Kingswood Homes that give users a very unique experience adapted to their specific use case.

Working closely with Kingswood Homes we have been able to push the boundaries to build a solution that combines technologies with a simple, easy to use and engaging experience for their customers. It also enables their agents to manage the experience with their customers from outside the VR to make it both an immersive and collaborative approach for choosing a bespoke new home.

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Innovative housebuilder takes virtual reality to the next level - Business Up North

The Immerse customer base focuses on enterprise training, including industries with urgent response times, from pharma and life sciences to fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG), energy, and more, all who must reskill and upskill for peak performance, especially to meet the more than 1 billion jobs that could be transformed by technology(source, OECD).

The company's growth trajectory is further buoyed by the pandemic, given that teaching can be done remotely, en masse, is visually stimulating and precise, a mere fraction of the cost, and results in 75% higher knowledge retention*. Those being taught in VR also demonstrated 340% more confidence to employ what they learned versus traditional e-learning methods at 10% (source PwC, 2020).

Joining the global team in the U.S. office to focus on expanding its operations include XR tech futurist, Cathy Hackl, as global strategic advisor, and Johnathan Sutherlin, an XR/VR/AR business expert as a business development manager. They will join Bill Finegan, North America executive vice president to accelerate the growth of their global strategic relationships and through its Immerse Platform, empower organizations to revolutionize their employee experiences with boosted engagement, an upskilled workforce, and increased performance and retention.

"I'm delighted to welcome Cathy and Johnathan and see our U.S. team expand to meet rapidly increasing needs, says Tom Symonds, Immerse CEO. "Research reveals that only 14% of major companies are not engaged in the utilisation of VR/AR at some level. These skills will help us meet the need of solutions rising up the priority list for global companies. We look forward to even greater growth in 2021."

Hackl brings a wealth of expertise as a globally recognized tech futurist and business leader in AR, VR and spatial computing. She's worked with some of the biggest names in technology including Amazon Web Services (AWS), Magic Leap and HTC VIVE. She also is one of 2020's 10 most influential women in tech by BigThink, and on LinkedIn's prestigious Thinkers50 Radar list, a management thinker's global ranking. Her passions lie in the importance of reskilling and upskilling, diversity and inclusion.

"I am really excited to join at such a pivotal time for enterprise VR. Major companies and reports show evidence that effective training is key to supercharging workforces and future-proofing businesses," notes Hackl.

Sutherlin is a well-respected industry thought leader with extensive knowledge of VR technology and with over a decade of leadership strategy and operational achievements, he understands what drives customer engagement. In his previous role with HTC Vive, he helped introduce immersive technologies to organizations across a range of industries, including architecture, engineering, construction, education, training/simulation, entertainment and healthcare.

About ImmerseImmerse is a virtual reality technology company headquartered in London that has developed the Immerse Platform. Built for enterprise from the ground up, the Immerse Platform enables companies to create, scale and measure virtual reality training.

With clients in a wide range of industries such as FMCG, oil and gas, pharma and life science and power and utilities, using the Immerse Platform enables companies to train and assess their employees in radically new ways maximizing human performance and the employee experience.

* Source: The Effectiveness of Virtual Reality Soft Skills Training on the Enterprise PWC, June 2020

SOURCE Immerse

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With a Massive Spike in Virtual Reality Training, Immerse Expands US Operations - PRNewswire

Dublin, Feb. 04, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The "Global Amusement and Theme Park Market: Size & Forecasts with Impact Analysis of COVID-19 (2021-2025 Edition)" report has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering.

The global theme park market has showcased high growth during the previous years and projections are made that the market will rise progressively in the forecasted years i.e., 2021-2025.

The theme park market is expected to increase due to growth in urban population, increase in GDP per-capita, rise in middle class population, increase in international tourism expenditure, etc. The market faces some challenges such as, foreign exchange rate fluctuation, regulatory changes, threat of terror attacks, seasonal nature of industry, etc.

Moreover, some of the latest trends in the market are: surge in adoption of Internet of Things (IoT), rising prominence of Virtual Reality (VR) technology, budding Augmented Reality (AR) technology and innovations.

This report provides an in-depth analysis of the global amusement park market by value, by segment and by region. The report provides an analysis of amusement park market of the following regions: America, Asia-Pacific, Europe and Middle East and Africa.

Growth of the overall global theme park market has also been forecasted for the period 2021-2025, taking into consideration the previous growth patterns, the growth drivers and the current and future trends.

The competition in global theme park market is fragmented with several small players invading the market. However, the key players of the theme park market are Walt Disney Company, Merlin Entertainment PLC and Six Flags Entertainment Corporation. These key players are also profiled with their financial information and respective business strategies.

Regional Coverage

Theme parks can be segregated on the basis of category into international destination theme parks and regional destination theme parks. The theme parks can also be segregated on the basis of types into family theme parks, regional theme parks, property theme parks, educational theme parks, etc.

Theme parks have different admission policies that includes, pay-as-you-go and pay-one-price.

Key Topics Covered:

1. Executive Summary

2. Introduction2.1 Amusement Parks: An Overview2.1.1 Classification of Amusement Parks2.2 Theme Parks: An Overview2.2.1 History of Theme Parks2.2.2 Theme Parks by Category2.2.3 Types of Theme Parks2.2.4 Admission Policies of Theme Parks2.2.5 Admission Policies of Theme Parks: Advantages & Disadvantages2.2.6 Theme Park Lifecycle

3. Global Market Analysis3.1 Global Amusement Park Market: An Analysis3.1.1 Global Amusement Park Market by Value3.2 Global Amusement Park Market: Segment Analysis3.2.1 Global Amusement Park Market by Segment (Theme Park, Water Park, Arcades and Parlors)3.2.2 Global Theme Park Market by Value3.2.3 Global Water Park Market by Value3.2.4 Global Arcades and Parlors Market by Value3.3 Global Amusement Park Market: Regional Analysis3.3.1 Global Amusement Park Market by Region (America, Asia-Pacific, Europe and Middle East and Africa)

4. Regional Market Analysis4.1 America Amusement Park Market: An Analysis4.1.1 America Amusement Parks Market by Value4.1.2 North America Theme Parks Market by Attendance (Top 10)4.2 Asia-Pacific Amusement Park Market: An Analysis4.2.1 Asia-Pacific Amusement Park Market by Value4.2.2 Asia-Pacific Theme Parks Market by Attendance (Top 10)4.3 Europe Amusement Park Market: An Analysis4.3.1 Europe Amusement Park Market by Value4.3.2 Europe Theme Park Market by Attendance (Top 10)4.4 Middle East and Africa Amusement Park Market: An Analysis4.4.1 Middle East and Africa Amusement Park Market by Value

5. Impact of COVID-195. 1 Impact on Global Amusement Park Market5.1.1 Impact on Global Theme Park Market

6. Market Dynamics6.1 Market Trends6.1.1 Surge in Adoption of Internet of Things (IoT)6.1.2 Rising Prominence of Virtual Reality (VR) Technology6.1.3 Budding Augmented Reality (AR) Technology6.1.4 Innovation

7. Competitive Landscape7.1 Global Amusement Park Market Players: A Financial Comparison7.2 Global Top 10 Theme Park Groups by Attendance; 20207.3 Global Theme Park Operators by Theme Park Opportunities Identified in North America, 2017-2022

8. Company Profiles8.1 Walt Disney Company8.1.1 Business Overview8.1.2 Financial Overview8.1.3 Business Strategy8.2 Merlin Entertainment PLC8.2.1 Business Overview8.2.2 Financial Overview8.2.3 Business Strategy8.3 Six Flags Entertainment Corporation8.3.1 Business Overview8.3.2 Financial Overview8.3.3 Business Strategy

For more information about this report visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/r/cx44bs

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Outlook on the Amusement and Theme Park Global Market to 2025 - Rising Prominence of Virtual Reality Technology - GlobeNewswire

AURORA, Colo. Aurora Public Schools is using a unique virtual reality program to help teachers engage with students.

The district is the first in Colorado to partner with Mursion, a virtual reality simulation for teacher development. The program allows teachers to interact with a group of digital students, controlled by a human simulation support person.

Students constantly need to be engaged and you need to be asking them the right questions and giving them the right answers to keep interest levels up, said Andrew Salzillo, a science teacher at Mrachek Middle School.

In a demonstration of the software, it was clear the realistic responses from the digital students helped Salzillo shift gears when students became distracted.

APS Director of Professional Learning Jennifer Sheldon said the district plans to use the Mursion simulation primarily for newer teachers in their first five years. The district also plans to create different scenarios to practice serious discussions about educational equity, social justice and restorative justice.

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Aurora Public Schools partners with new program to bring virtual reality to teacher development - The Denver Channel

Like most business tools, professional development has seen a massive shift to the online world in the past year. People are working from home on a global scale like nothing weve ever seen before, and large in-person meetings are a distant memory.

Of course, eLearning isnt new. Weve been using digital tools to effectively train workforces for more than 20 years. Most corporations now recognize that a blended approach of online, instructor-led, pre-recorded, interactive and micro courses are the best way to teach skills and concepts to an increasingly mobile workforce.

As eLearning moves towards ubiquity, savvy CEOs and HR managers are on the lookout for better ways to integrate technology into their corporate learning model. Enter virtual reality.

People learn better by doing. Virtual reality helps to achieve the feeling of real-life experiences in situations where those experiences arent easy to replicate.

It also increases retention in learners. In 2016, a study of students in Beijing showed a VR-enhanced curriculum increased student test scores by as much as 20%. In the right circumstances, VR training can really fine-tune a business corporate learning program.

See Also: Study: Virtual Reality More Engaging for Students Than Traditional Educational Materials

Despite all of the benefits of VR training, many businesses arent sure how to get started. Virtual reality feels complicated, expensive and out-of-reach.

In reality, integrating a VR element in corporate training strategies isnt that different from any other style of learning. Contrary to perception, expensive headsets and other equipment is not needed. VR courses are compatible with everyday devices workers already have, such as smartphones, tablets, laptops or desktop computers.

That just leaves finding appropriate VR content. With modern tools, content creation for virtual reality isnt as daunting as it seems.

There are three ways to go about itoutsource the creation, build it in-house, or curate great content from what is already available. Any one of these choices, or a combination of all three, is a fast-track to joining the world of VR training.

The easiest way to get started with VR training is to hire an experienced course designer. Depending on the bandwidth of the organization, taking time out to create an entire course from scratch VR or otherwise may not be possible.

An instructional designer comes with the expertise and skills to put together a custom course with all of the right materials and elements to be effective. They can take something mundane, like compliance training, and turn it into a presentation, story or game that engages learners and helps them remember the material.

Letting professionals take the lead usually produces content that is useful, professional and done on time. If the budget allows, outsourcing the creation of a VR course is a great way to get started with practical VR training.

For some smaller businesses, or for training managers who are very interested in the process, creating content from scratch makes the most sense. Its a common misconception that virtual reality content is expensive or that it requires specialized equipment. This is simply not true.

Building a VR course only requires the right application and a smartphone. To be successful, VR content needs a 360-degree digital environment, interactive elements and assessment tools.

Almost any cell phone has the capability to create a 360 photo. If the option isnt embedded in the camera function, multiple free or low-cost third party apps like Google Street View, Panorama 360, or Cycloramic will get the job done. Using a tripod produces the best results.

Once the 3D environment is uploaded, integrating interactive elements is as easy as dragging and dropping. It may take some time to arrange everything in a logical, workable manner, but with the right tools, its a very simple process.

In the process of building, results should not be an afterthought. How will the learners progress be measured? Quizzes, follow up courses and leaderboards are all popular options.

For routine corporate training like workplace safety, harassment prevention or sales, a variety of VR content already exists. If a custom solution isnt required, one of these off-the-shelf courses is a great way to test out the concept of VR training. The results will show whether or not investing further is worth it.

Buying a pre-built course doesnt mean surrendering the organizations goals and identity. Many off-the-shelf courses feature content libraries that allow for deep customization, so that individual courses can be edited to reflect the training programs specific needs. Branding can also be incorporated into most off-the-shelf VR courses.

Many course libraries offer a free trial period, making it possible to test drive VR content before rolling out a virtual reality module to all employees.

Curating training modules from existing VR content is one of the fastest, most cost-effective solutions available.

See Also: Leading Through Uncertainty VR Training Modules for Leaders Facing Crisis Situations

No matter which option fits into the budget and timeline, what is clear is that leaving VR training out of the rotation is a bad decision. More than one third of large companies are already using VR in training programs, including some of the largest Fortune 500 brands.

Virtual reality is cost-effective, low-risk, and a great teaching tool. Beyond that, with all of these simple options, getting started with VR is not as difficult as it sounds.

Virtual reality is here, not something that has to wait five or ten years to benefit every kind of business. Savvy training managers will recognize that now is the perfect time to invest in the future of their workforce.

About the Guest Author(s)

Andrew Townsend

Andrew Townsend is a leader, storyteller, photographer, marketer, indie film director, author, and father. His areas of expertise include digital media, marketing, and VR integration. He leads the eLearning Brothers Rockstars community, produces webinars, and shares tips on creating immersive video experiences. Andrew has over 20 years of leadership experience in both the workforce and his community. He can often be found hiking with his two sons and wonderful wife while taking pictures of the beautiful Wasatch mountains.

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Getting Started With VR Training Is Easier Than You Think | ARPost - ARPost

Experts are just beginning to understand how mindfulness can improve the lives of people living with chronic disease, including inflammatory bowel disease (IBD). Promising new research shows that virtual reality (VR) can be an extremely useful tool for helping kids and young adults practice mindfulness. The technology is becoming more available in childrens hospitals, and at-home headsets will expand access even more.

Researchers from Stanford University in California set out to determine how VR technology could be used to help children and young adults manage symptoms associated with IBD. They focused on short sessions centered on mindfulness and asked participants to rate their pain and anxiety before and after the session. They presented their findings at the 2020 Crohns and Colitis Congress.

RELATED: Mindfulness Meditation Reduces IBS Symptoms and Anxiety, Study Finds

The small study included 52 IBD patients ages 10 to 25 years old, all of whom were being treated for IBD at an outpatient clinic. They were asked to record their pre-session levels of pain and anxiety, and then strap on a VR headset. The session lasted just six minutes. First, users were immersed in a scene that helped them focus on their breathing. Their awareness was then shifted to a meadow with a waterfall. With some guidance, they used their senses to focus on different parts of the scene. At one point, a butterfly landed on a flower, then lifted itself back in the air and repeated the movement, bringing the persons attention around the scene and reminding them of the pace of their breathing. For the final part of the experience, the scene shifted to dusk, and the aurora borealis moved in the night sky. Participants could see their breath in front of them, both giving the illusion that the temperature had dropped and reminding them once again to focus on their breathing.

On average, participants reported feeling half as anxious following the experience. Pain, which was present in some but not all participants before the treatment, was reduced by an average of two-thirds.

According to Ana Wren, PhD, a clinical psychologist at Stanford Childrens IBD Center, who led the study, the team was glad to see that VR-based mindfulness appeared to be effective in reducing pain and anxiety in young IBD patients, but that wasnt the only information they found helpful.

What we were most excited about was the deep interest the participants expressed. They were so eager for this to be more accessible to them outside the clinic and they had a lot of useful feedback regarding how they would like to use VR-based mindfulness as part of their IBD treatment, says Dr. Wren.

Participants thought the intervention would be helpful in de-stressing and curbing anxiety before colonoscopies, having labs done, or during infusions. They really wanted it during or before any kind of pokes, and that was most interesting to us, says Wren.

According to Stephen Lupe, PsyD, a clinical health psychologist at Cleveland Clinics digestive disease and surgery institute, VR likely has a place throughout patient care. We can incorporate biofeedback, for example. People can practice lowering their heart rate and then see that reflected in the VR imagery, such as slowing down a waterfall, says Dr. Lupe.

In addition to improving a persons outlook on living with chronic disease, mindfulness has been shown to be an effective way to reduce stress, which is strongly tied to ulcerative colitis (UC) and Crohns disease flares, though stress does not cause either disease, according to the Crohns and Colitis Foundation. Our brain and our gut are very connected, and when you have more inflammation in your body that can lead to more stress, it goes both ways, says Wren.

According to Lupe, managing all triggers is key. Its like a mixing board connected to a speaker. Stress is one dial, and if enough dials get turned up stress, environmental conditions, natural hormone cycles in the body, diet its like the speaker blows, or the person goes into a flare. By managing the overall volume of all those dials, we can manage flares, he says.

According to Wren, while VR-based mindfulness can benefit people of all ages, she and her team wanted to focus on how it can be used in a pediatric IBD center, since the technology is already widely available in that setting, and children are typically very open to using technology in new ways, having been born into the digital age. The intervention can also be given without a trained therapist present, further improving accessibility. And it holds their attention, says Wren, a key factor in practicing effective mindfulness.

Lupe notes that the way patients are treated is changing across the board, including in IBD.

We are understanding there is no such thing as just physical and just psychological. We are whole beings, and interdisciplinary care, working with a team of specialists from psychologists to nutritionists, is how we are going to do things moving forward, he says.

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Can Virtual Reality Help Reduce Abdominal Pain in IBD Patients? - Everyday Health

PlayStation announces a new exclusive PlayStation VR game, Winds and Leaves, a contemplative simulator developed by Trebuchet Studio.

PlayStation has announced a brand new PS VR game headed exclusively to the device in the near future. Winds & Leavesis currentlybeing developed by Trebuchet Studio, the team behind the Steam and PS VR game Prison Boss VR.

In both a YouTube announcement trailer and a blog post, PlayStation today announced Winds & Leaves,a PS VR exclusive. In the game, players are stranded in a barren landscape, but through exploration and experimentation, the world can be built up by planting vegetation; therefore bringing life.

RELATED: VR Game Ryte: The Eye of Atlantis Gets Launch Trailer

While some PS VR games provide parkour funand or fast-paced action, Wind & Leaves--which is set to be released in Spring of 2021--looks tobe very much laid back. The game is described as beingcontemplative and as a simulation in its design. Players will grab tools, pick up fruit, dig holes in the ground, plant seeds, and watch plants and trees grow to maturity. The barren wasteland soon becomes a deep forest. It is all also designed to feel like second nature with the PS VR and the controls of the PS Move.

Trebuchet Studio also got creative with movement in the game, as players use wooden stilts to get from point A to point B. According to the developer, the mood of the game is influenced by an animated short film named "The Man Who Planted Trees," which is an old French-Canadian piece about an old man who spends his whole life growing a forest; planting one tree at a time. 2020 was a strong year for VR video games, but 2021 is shaping up to be a nice year as well. Winds & Leaves has an opportunity to supplant itself as a contender among the top VR titles.

Winds & Leaves is headed to PS VR in spring of 2021.

MORE:It's Time for PlayStation VR 2

Resident Evil is Releasing Hints About Village on Twitter

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New Virtual Reality Game Winds and Leaves Coming to PlayStation VR - GameRant

Families with teens looking for something exciting to do will want to check out Zero Latency, the new VR arcade, located in Wagner Mall, where Nature's used to be. Although opening of the free-roam virtual reality game has been delayed due to COVID, pre-bookings are underway. I recently had the pleasure of testing out the VR arcade and the experience was incredible!

After a brief introduction where they tell you the do's and don'ts, they strap on a sort of computer backpack and give you headphones and a VR headset. Then you step into an empty, well-lit room where they calibrate your headset. Once you put the headset over your eyes, you are in! It was like stepping into another worldlike what you imagine the future will look like. You're in a sort of waiting lobby where particle effects are swirling around you.

I expected to feel disoriented or dizzy, but throughout the whole experience, I found myself experiencing none of that. After everyone was calibrated, they started the first game. This was a sort of head-to-head battle where you try to rack up points by killing the most zombies. You get three weapons: a long-range crossbow, a medium range assault rifle and a short-range shotgun. Man, was this one fun!

The map was vibrant and colorful, while still having a dystopian feel. It was definitely visually realistic, but what I didn't expect was the real fear I felt as the zombies closed in. Turning around in VR and having a zombie horde attacking you from behind actually produced a very real fear response.

Once that segment was over, they loaded up a different, but similar, zombie game, where instead of trying to get the high score, you had to work together to survive the zombie waves, kind of like the video games, Left 4 Dead or Call of Duty Zombies. I felt the art style wasn't as polished as the first one, but it was fun, nonetheless.

After we finished, we exited the play area and all I could think was, I have to come back! There is wonder and amazement from the moment you first load upeven just the lobby is incredible.

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Free-Roam VR Unleashed - The Source Weekly

But more than just offering virtual shorthands of physical realities, the Reference Festival also transformed IRL programming into a singular digital experience. Within the virtual room was a stage live-streaming performances by Anne Imhof, Eliza Douglas, and MJ Harper, styled by Stefano Pilati and Random Identities. In person, Imhof, Douglas, Harper and other performers were in the Zeiss Major Planetarium, a resounding structure, but online they were intimately accessible across a screen within a screen: The Reference Realities site offered a side stage to access their live performances. The festival also included talks with Hans Ulrich Obrist and Honey Dijon; HF Talk founder Iolo Lewis Edwards; and Tiffany Godoy.

Chapel Petrassi x Mowalola's installation at the Reference Studios space

All together, the festival was a testament to the ways creativity thrives even in the worst of timesand not just creativity, but ingenuity. Set against the mundane, repetitive nature of digital fashion weeks, Reference Festival felt the closest to the real thing, the way it was in the Before, where you could breeze through a gallery show before checking out a runway and having dinner with artists and friends on the periphery of the fashion bubble. No other virtual platform has figured out exactly how to capture that sense of communion and togetherness as well as the ways that fashion exists within a spectrum of art, music, and live performance.

A performance by MJ Harper and David Jainz with styling by Stefano Pilati's Random Identities

GmbH's fall 2021 collection

Reference Studios is also launching the Reference Prize, setting up a new generation of talent with backing from the Berlin agency and Slam Jam, the Milanese purveyor of streetwear. Applications are open to any type of creative, no degree needed, with the goal of spurring more inter-disciplinary conversation. Over email before the festival, Reference Studios founder Mumi Haiati said, With the festival we made a statement for innovation in our times, and expressed that creativity cannot be limited to a singular form. As the industry gears up for the womens fall 2021 fashion season, its a message more creatives should heed.

Michel Gaubert, Soo Joo Park, Kenneth Ize, and Tiffany Godoy on a panel conversation hosted by Reference Studios

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In Berlin, the Reference Festival Brings Fashion, Art, and Culture Together in Virtual Reality - Vogue.com

Events when they havent been cancelled altogether in the last 12 months due to the global health pandemic have gone virtual and online, and a wave of startups that are helping people create and participate in those experiences are seeing a surge of attention and funding.

In the latest development, New York video startup TouchCast which has developed a platform aimed at companies to produce lifelike, virtual conferences and other events without much technical heavy-lifting has picked up funding of $55 million, money that co-founder and CEO Edo Segal said the startup will use to build out its services and teams after being overrun by demand in the wake of COVID-19.

The funding is being led by a strategic investor, Accenture Ventures the investment arm of the systems integrator and consultancy behemoth with Alexander Capital Ventures, Saatchi Invest, Ronald Lauder and other unnamed investors also participating. The startup up to now has been largely self-funded, and while Segal isnt disclosing the valuation, he said it was definitely in the nine-figures (that is, somewhere in the large region of hundreds of millions of dollars).

Accenture has been using TouchCasts technology for its own events, but that is likely just one part of its interest: Accenture also has a lot of corporate customers that tap it to build and implement interactive services, so potentially this could lead to more customers in TouchCasts pipeline.

(Case in point: My interview with Segal, over Zoom, found me speaking to him in the middle of a vast aircraft hangar, with a 747 from one of the big airlines of the world I wont say which parked behind him. He said hed just come from a business pitch with the airline in question.)

A lot of what we have seen in virtual events, and in particular conferences, has to date been, effectively, a managed version of a group call on one of the established videoconferencing platforms like Zoom, Googles Hangout, Microsofts Teams, Webex and so on.

You get a screen with participants individual video streams presented to you in a grid more reminiscent of the opening credits of the Brady Bunch or Hollywood Squares than an actual stage or venue.

There are some, of course, that are taking a much different route. Witness Apples online events in the last year, productions that have elevated what a virtual event can mean, with more detail and information, and less awkwardness, than an actual live event.

The problem is that not every company is Apple, unable to afford much less execute Hollywood-level presentations.

The essence of what TouchCast has built, as Segal describes it, is a platform that combines computer vision, video streaming technology and natural language processing to let other organizations create experiences that are closer to that of the iPhone giants than they are to a game show.

We have created a platform so that all companies can create events like Apples, Segal said. Were taking them on a journey beyond people sitting in their home offices.

Yet home office remains the operative phrase. With TouchCast, people (the organizers and the onstage participants) still use basic videoconferencing solutions like Zoom and Teams in their homes, even to produce the action. But behind the scenes, TouchCast is taking those videos, using computer vision to trim out the people and place them into virtual venues so that they appear as if they are on stage in an actual conference.

These venues come from a selection of templates, or the organiser can arrange for a specific venue to be shot and used. And in addition to the actual event, TouchCast then also provides tools for audience members to participate with questions and to chat to each other. As the event is progressing, TouchCast also produces transcriptions and summaries of the key points for those who want them.

Segal said that TouchCast is not planning to make this a consumer-focused product, not even on the B2B2C side, but its preparing a feature so that when business conference organisers do want to hold a music segment with a special guest, those can be incorporated, too. (In all honesty, it seems like a small leap to use this for more consumer-focused events, too.)

TouchCasts growth into a startup serving an audience of hungry and anxious event planners has been an interesting pivot that is a reminder to founders (and investors) that the right opportunities might not be the ones you think they are.

You might recall that the company first came out of stealth back in 2013, with former TechCrunch editor Erick Schonfeld one of the co-founders.

Back then, the companys concept was to supercharge online video, by making it easier for creators to bring in interactive elements and media widgets into their work, to essentially make videos closer to the kind of interactivity and busy media mix that we find on web pages themselves.

All that might have been too clever by half. Or, it was simply not the right time for that technology. The service never made many waves, and one of my colleagues even assumed it had deadpooled at some point.

Not at all, it turns out. Segal (a serial entrepreneur who also used to work at AOL as VP of emerging platforms AOL being the company that acquired TechCrunch and eventually became a part of Verizon) notes that the technology that TouchCast is using for its conferencing solution is essentially the same as what it built for its original video product.

After launching an earlier, less feature-rich version of what it has on the market today, it took the company about six months to retool it, adding in more mixed reality customization via the use of Unreal Engine, to make it what it is now, and to meet the demand it started to see from customers, who approached the startup for their own events after attending conferences held by others using TouchCast.

It took us eight years to get to our overnight success story, Segal joked.

Figures from Grand View Research cited by TouchCast estimate that virtual events will be a $400 billion business by 2027, and that has made for a pretty large array of companies building out experiences that will make those events worth attending, and putting on.

They include the likes of Hopin and Bizzabo both of which have recently also raised big rounds but also more enhanced services from the big, established players in videoconferencing like Zoom, Google, Microsoft, Cisco and more.

Its no surprise to see Accenture throwing its hat into that ring as a backer of what it has decided is one of the more interesting technology players in that mix.

The reason is because many understand and now accept that similar to working life in general its very likely that even when we do return to live events, the virtual component, and the expectation that it will work well and be compelling enough to watch, is here to stay.

Digital disruption, distributed workforces, and customer experience are the driving forces behind the need for companies to transform how they do business and move toward the future of work, said Tom Lounibos, managing director, Accenture Ventures, in a statement. For organizations to harness the power of virtual experiences to deliver business impact, the pandemic has shown that quality interactions and insights are needed. Our investment in Touchcast demonstrates our commitment to identifying the latest technologies that help address our clients critical business needs.

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TouchCast raises $55M to grow its mixed reality-based virtual event platform - TechCrunch