How to Scale Complex VR Experiences
Words of wisdom with Alejandro Dinsmore — builder of scalable VR experiences
While studying neuroscience at Vassar College, Alejandro Dinsmore began working on a project where he cataloged past VR research from the past 20 years.
Alejandro got excited about VR and decided to get involved from his dorm room. And that’s how EEVO was born. EEVO is actually one of only a few New York based VR Startups.
Alejandro has a very unique perspective on VR. We discuss his experiences with VCs, where he reaps creativity from, and how to build cost effective experiences using 360 video.
Can you sum up EEVO in your own words?
AD: How do we take these massively complex experiences that are often large amounts of data? How do you actually make those distributable in a scalable way?
“How do we take these massively complex experiences that are often large amounts of data? How do you actually make those distributable in a scalable way”?
So that has led us to developing EEVO, which in the simplest terms, is an end to end solution for the management and distribution of VR content. So basically, people can use our platform to manage their VR content as well as launch their own VR applications without actually having to develop or touch any code themselves.
EEVO is more of a back end?
AD: Yeah, so we’re a platform and shifting long term toward cloud services. Really just developer tools to make it easy to launch VR apps as well as manage content and process apps. So in terms of the full, current product, people can upload their content to a web-based content management system. From the content management system, they can share content internally, they can access a set of tools we’ve built into the platform such as our drag-and-drop editor for adding hotspots to content as well as our spatial audio tools, and then they can also publish that content to EEVO powered white label applications. Once content is published users can also access valuable analytics like heat-maps.
So if CNN was using our platform, they would upload their VR piece they’ve just created. Then they could publish that to the CNN VR app and all of that, end to end, would be powered by our technology. And once they publish content, they can view analytics, they can serve ads to the content they’ve published, and they can sell that content through in-app monetization. In addition, all of our apps are also natively built as opposed to using something like Unity, so you get a lot of performance and optimization gains that you wouldn’t get if you were using a tool like Unity. But we make it more accessible because we’re not an agency. We’re not building one-off applications for people. It’s an entire platform, so people are really just paying for the licensing to be able to use the platform and then launch their own apps through it.
Do you have a large customer base? What are your more successful companies or apps that you’ve published?
AD: We just finished the first version of a product toward the end of July, and our first project was with Stan Lee. Stan Lee released some VR content associated with the new show he’s working on with the Hollywood reporter, and so he launched VR content on an app called Hindsight to promote the new show, Hindsight is powered by EEVO. Some exciting projects that we’re working on right now include the Deepak Chopra VR experience with Wevr.
With Wevr, we’re actually powering the iOS and Android apps for the Deepak Chopra app. In addition, we’re working with a lot of the top VR companies out there, including Here Be Dragons, an emmy-nominated production studio behind a lot of the New York Times content, and Felix and Paul. Given our unique attention to detail in how we’re approaching technology development we’ve been able to build a lot of interesting partnerships.
I can imagine it’s a lot more complicated.
AD: In terms of the way we see the landscape playing out, it’s really about the first wave adoption that is happening on mobile, which is being primarily dominated by narrative VR video content.
“VR scene that trigger other VR video or audio elements, so you can start building multi path or conditional narratives that are interactive, but they’re still video based”
As for the gaming niches, a lot of gamers will adopt some of those headsets but we just believe the numbers on that will be pretty low just because of the price point, but of course, that will change over time. The other thing that we do support — and we have built one of the tools into the content management system, is a composer which allows people to add in elements of interactivity to their VR video content. So they can place hot spots within a VR scene that trigger other VR video or audio elements, so you can start building multi path or conditional narratives that are interactive, but they’re still video based.
I’ve never heard that before but that is awesome, because right now obviously due to budget constraints etc, people can’t really create interactive stuff. Not that many people, so you’re tying those two together, with just a gaze. Another 360 medium. That’s awesome.
AD: Yeah. definitely. And there’s been some really compelling examples of that which have been built in a more custom way. There is the Gone experience that was done with Skybound, Wevr and Samsung. The show not only gives viewers the option to look around and explore all 360 degrees of every scene, but also to zoom in on hotspots to unlock story details as the action unfolds. So that was a custom app they built for it. Instead, we have a system where anyone can build out their interactive experiences just like that and then add in their interactive elements, and build whatever sort of multi path narratives they have in mind.
What’s it like being a startup in the VR space. Where do you look for guidance? Who do you learn from? Do you have advisers? What does this look like for you guys?
AD: That’s a great question. VR is a very unique space. It attracts a lot of really interesting people, specifically a very multidisciplinary group of people.
So I think one of the things that makes it exciting is the amount of unknowns that it has with it. That’s the thing, no one really has the answer as to what VR is going to look like a year from now, three years from now, ten years from now.
A lot of it is just developing your own ideas around it and making bets that go along with it. There’s definitely a lot of looking at previous industries, sort of seeing how things have evolved over time for digital video, or even looking at the early days of the internet and things like that, but what we have found is that most of the guidance just comes through an exchange of information.
It’s rare that we find one person who knows exactly what’s going to happen. It’s more like you have these conversations with people who have different perspectives and backgrounds, and then you find through that dialogue, you both actually take something away from it, and then you have a new realization about some potential developments for VR. I think that’s what is exciting. The stage of discovery and learning and exploration where you just have to kind of go out there and see what you went up against, and then share that with other people, and then see what kinds of things you can learn from that.
What has been your experience with VCs in regards to being a VR company?
AD: Some investors teach you material that you didn’t know and some investors have no idea and aren’t interested at all. It really varies a lot and I found more recently, definitely, that the majority of investors tend to have started research at least, or are thinking about VR or poking around in VR. However, everyone has a very different thesis on what they think the use cases for VR are going to be, areas they’re interested in investing with VR.
“Some investors teach you material that you didn’t know and some investors have no idea and aren’t interested at all.”
When it comes to investments, it’s really just finding someone whose vision aligns with your own. There is just such a big variation. I haven’t met more than a few people who have the same kind of belief as to what’s going to happen with VR, whether it’s timing of the market, how long it’s going to take for adoption to happen or what use cases are going to drive the most adoption.
One thing that I think is missing right now is content. In order to draw any real adoption, we’re going to have to see a lot of development of content and bringing in IP and also developing content that actually makes people want to put on the headset, because that’s one of the current challenges. I mean, one of the questions I like asking people who work in VR spaces is “How much time per week do you spend watching VR content that’s not directly related to what you’re working on?” You’ll find that most people will say half an hour, maybe an hour, and those are for people who have dedicated their lives to VR. So, there’s this big issue that more content needs to be out there.
“How much time per week do you spend watching VR content that’s not directly related to what you’re working on”?
What are some lessons you guys have learned that you think other people can learn from?
AD: I think we have learned a lot from navigating the space and the importance of building a sustainable business. We might have our ideas or bets about when adoption might happen, but at the end of the day, there’s a lot of external factors at play. So building a company that can benefit from that production, but also isn’t entirely independent on it is a lesson we learned the hard way.
“When we raised money, we spent it quite aggressively and then we had to figure out how to make sure we were building the business in a way that wasn’t dependent on adoption”
When we raised money, we spent it quite aggressively and then we had to figure out how to make sure we were building the business in a way that wasn’t dependent on adoption, which we’ve been able to do. And now the nice thing is that once you’re there, you can continue to operate the company and then wait for that adoption and when that inflection point occurs, benefit from it.
We currently have a sustainable business, soon to be profitable, which gives us a huge advantage in such a nascent space that is poised for tremendous growth. We can benefit from the growth, but can also survive as long as we need to until that growth occurs. But it’s just still very early. I’d say there’s still quite a lot of hype in this space. There’s still potential for all kind of things to go wrong and companies should be prepared for that. It could take quite a while for things to really take off and that’s okay, but I don’t think you should make your company dependent on mainstream adoption happening in the first quarter of 2017.
