In a blog post entitled This One Goes To Eleven, High Fidelity reveal that they have raised a further $11m in funding from Paul Allen’s Vulcan Capital :
We are happy to announce today that we have raised an additional $11M in funding, in a new round led by Vulcan Capital and with participation from other new and existing investors. This is certainly great news for us, but also great news for the overall VR ecosystem as we continue to see more and more validation from the investing community that VR presents enormous opportunities.
The point about validation is very important. At the moment I see a lot of hype and technologies emerging with regards to virtual reality but the proof of the pudding really lies in investment. Whilst investment is still rolling in, it suggests that many people really do believe that something concrete will emerge.
High Fidelity itself is still progressing at a nice pace. I’ve been impressed by the fact that they haven’t tried to rush into producing a product that isn’t ready for prime time. An article over at TechCrunch regarding the new funding exemplifies the point about High Fidelity’s progress :
The main idea driving High Fidelity forward is the ability to quickly generate a virtual space to meet in and interact with. While the interface is far from final, it’s already at the point where you can pick a template, choose a name, and instantly have a space accessible by others. Each space is essentially a small video game world, filled in with the same 3D models you’d build for a game built with Unity.
Creating your own world in High Fidelity is a lot easier than it once was, you can be up and running fairly quickly these days with some starter content already included. However High Fidelity is still very much Alpha and that should be taken into account if you see or visit a High Fidelity world. The TechCrunch article is well worth a read if you’re interested in High Fidelity. However back to the High Fidelity blog post :
Our next big milestone will be an open alpha version of our system which will allow everyone to start deploying interconnected shared VR spaces.
Although the blog post doesn’t inform us just how far away open Alpha is, it is encouraging to see the High Fidelity team mention this.
Further evidence of High Fidelity’s progress also comes in the shape and form of the news that they are hiring :
We are hiring right now for many open positions in engineering, design, and content development – so if you’ve considered diving into VR or wondered whether now it the right time – it is! Our work is fascinating and challenging, with a wide range of components from physics to network streaming to character animation, graphics, lighting, and distributed computing.
The High Fidelity blog post also has an accompanying video and this is interesting because it shows High Fidelity in action as well as informing the viewer whom to send their Curriculum Vitae to. The disappointing part of the video is that we don’t get to hear Emily sing!
Those who have seen High Fidelity videos before should notice that this video features improved avatars and good examples of animation and communication, or as the blog post states :
As you can see from the video, you can build beautiful 3D environments with complex interactive content and then communicate and interact naturally inside them, optionally using HMD’s, hand controllers, depth cameras, and other emerging hardware interface devices.
Whereas some people still won’t be impressed with what they see it should be pointed out that High Fidelity will be an Open Source project and that people will be able to create their own avatars, but hopefully even those who frown at High Fidelity can see that progress is being made.
These remain exciting times for virtual reality, will hope overcome hype this time? Only time will tell but the future does indeed look bright.