August 12th, 2023

Welcome to this weeks’ edition of The Future of VR newsletter. Thanks for subscribing to our list - we’re grateful to have you here. Let’s dive in to some of the biggest updates we’re seeing in the world of Virtual Reality this week:

Shapes XR Raises $8.6M

ShapesXR is a spatial design app that makes it easy to mock up designs inside of VR. They just raised $8.6M from Supernode Global (and a few others). They plan to use it to expand to more headsets.

Currently they are limited to Quest headsets, but they plan to expand into Apple’s Vision Pro, Pico, and Magic leap headsets.

ShapesXR is a collaborative platform (similar to Google Docs/Google Sheets) where users can work together simultaneously on the same projects.

Why is this important? ShapesXR is becoming the go-to company for UI/UX design in VR. For the marketers on this list, this basically what Figma did several years ago for mobile computing.

One of the main goals of Inga Petryaevskaya, the CEO of ShapesXR, is to make their platform incredibly easy to use and learn (similar to Powerpoint). The level of technical skill required to succeed in VR has historically been very high and they aim to combat this (enabling it to have more widespread use).

NHL Gets its Own VR Platform

Sense Arena just partnered with the NHL to create NHL Sense Area, the first NHL VR platform.

The platform puts you through drills and virtual challenges. It’s already been employed by the LA Kings and the New Jersey Devils.

Scheduled to launch this fall on Meta Quest and Quest Pro headsets, it will be here before we know it.

Walkabout Mini Golf Creates a Putter

Continuing on the theme of sports, Walkabout Mini Golf has partnered with Hello Real to create an official putter for its VR golf game (available for pre-order now for just $58.99).

The Grip-to-Putter enhances the feel of your VR experience and helps to simulate a more life-like mini-golf experience.

This will be available shortly on Rift S, Quest 1, Quest 2, and Quest Pro.

Want to Play with a VR Pet?

Windup Minds just released a $1.6M seed round focused around VR pets and creating virtual companions.

Co-Founder Bernard Yee wants to simulate the same emotional connection that pet owners have for their real pets (except through a VR headset).

In a recent interview, he discussed his past experiences creating a virtual T-rex inside the Rift headset. Many users actually felt the need to remove their headsets as they saw the T-Rex coming their way.

If Windup Minds is capable of creating these emotional connections with T-Rex’s and pets, it will be interesting to see where this heads. Could they simulate this same type of connection for humans?

This would have tons of different potential use-cases. Chatbots, salespeople, customers service reps, any type of customer-facing type role could be used for this.

That’s a wrap for this week. Watch out for our next newsletter coming next Sunday!