Recently, Finnish VR headset manufacturer Varjo announced the official launch of Varjo Reality Cloud, a meta-universe streaming media cloud platform, which aims to make XR more scalable in enterprise environments by performing heavy rendering in the cloud. The service supports Autodesk VRED, an industry-standard application for automotive design and visualization.
Varjo is known for its high-definition visuals of professional-grade high-end VR and MR headsets. Last June, Varjo first announced the Reality Cloud platform, which is powered by AWS and NVIDIA GPUs. Initially, the company targeted the automotive industry, but plans to provide broader support to businesses through support for Unity and Unreal Engine.
Varjo says with Varjo Reality Cloud, automakers will be able to launch a VRED session in the cloud and then send a simple link to a colleague who can join the session with a single click. With the Varjo headset, users will be able to understand the design of the vehicle in an immersive, collaborative way.
There are many existing cross-platform AR/VR remote collaboration platforms, such as Microsoft Mesh, NVIDIA Omniverse and so on. In contrast, Varjo Reality Cloud said that it is characterized by an AR/VR headset based on "human eye resolution", supports ultra-high-definition VR display and AR perspective effects, and uses a low-bitrate video streaming algorithm, real-time rendered 3D scenes are faster and more natural than pre-rendered metaverse, and directly use the XR-3 headset to scan while sharing 3D scenes.
Varjo says it can run graphics-intensive VR/MR applications on any device. This is thanks to Varjo's proprietary foveated transport algorithm, which will allow users to stream immersive content from Varjo Reality Cloud to highly secure enterprise-grade data encryption at 1000:1 compression ratios and 35 megabits per second bandwidth to devices with lossless visual fidelity.
Varjo began offering out-of-the-box support for Autodesk VRED as the company said it had identified the clear needs of users in the automotive industry who used its headsets. But Varjo also plans to add support for Unreal Engine and Unity so that any XR project can be delivered from its cloud platform, and the company showcased an Epic MetaHuman demo streamed from the cloud.
Building an XR cloud streaming service is a daunting task to improve the scalability of headsets in enterprise environments, but the company seems determined to address ease of use to achieve this goal. To that end, while Varjo Reality Cloud currently only supports Varjo's own headsets, Varjo plans to open up the platform to other XR headsets as well as non-XR devices such as PCs and smartphones in the future.
While it's good to reduce hardware requirements from a powerful desktop to a slim laptop, the truth is that Varjo's headset requires a base station to track, which is still a pretty high hurdle. As for the company's more ambitious Varjo Reality Cloud plan, it seems far away.