holoride x Bitcoin Industry AMA — 2nd Sept, 2021
We love engaging with our community, and AMAs are a great way to answer your questions! Our first AMA in the month-long series was with the Bitcoin Industry Telegram group! If you missed it or want to check it out again, you can read the transcript below.
Enjoy reading and let us know in the comment section if you like the format and/or are missing any particular questions you’d like to see in future AMAs!
Bitcoin Industry (BI): Hello community, can we get started?
Nils Wollny (NW): Ready, Player One!
BI: When was the project founded?
NW: Hi folks, good to be here!
holoride was founded in December 2018. We announced holoride with a demo together with Audi and Disney at CES in Las Vegas in early 2019. Shortly after, we started operations. We are now a team of 30 holoriders.
BI: Great, how does blockchain fit into the holoride story?
NW: We will make our platform “transparent by design.” That means, we want to fairly and transparently distribute revenues amongst value-creating parties within our ecosystem, which includes both content creators and car manufacturers.
We also want to provide content creators with additional opportunities to commercialize creations on our platform.
And last, but not least, we want to enhance the passenger experience by allowing them to individualize their experience and trade items they have earned or bought on their rides.
BI: Can I contribute to the holoride ecosystem / can I create my own holoride experiences?
NW: If you are a content developer — please do so! You can register at developer.holoride.com to get access to our Elastic SDK to try it out.
Moreover, you can submit ideas and proposals for content that you would like to develop for our platform. We’ll check the proposals of studios, artists, and developers and put them to a vote in our community.
BI: What’s the difference between virtual reality, augmented reality, and extended reality?
NW: Good question!
Extended Reality (XR) is a collective term for Virtual Reality (VR), Augmented Reality (AR), and Mixed Reality (MR).
VR is the full immersion of a user within a computer-generated environment, AR is the enhancement of the real world by overlaying visuals and MR is a combination of the two.
BI: How many different experiences are there currently to choose from?
NW: Other than our demo games, and specific projects and partnerships that we’ve worked on, experiences are currently being developed ready for our launch in 2022.
BI: Do you have partnerships with any game studios?
NW: Yes, we do!
For example, Schell Games, who are also an investor in our company. Schell Games is the largest full-service education & entertainment game development company in the US. They are the developers of the famous VR games “I expect you to die” and “Until you fall.”
We will keep you posted on further partnerships which we will announce soon.
BI: What hardware is required to make holoride work? Will I need to carry a gaming laptop in my car?
NW: All you will need to use holoride in an enabled car is a personal mobile device — e.g., a VR headset that is compatible to run our application.
BI: Will there be support for the Unreal Engine in the future?
NW: Initially we are just supporting the Unity game engine.
We are planning to make our Elastic SDK engine-agnostic to cover other popular game engines — like Unreal — as well as proprietary ones of games studios.
BI: What other experiences will there be in holoride? (movies, work, etc?)
NW: We’re focusing on gaming, to begin with, but in the future, we plan to also offer experiences around entertainment, education, relaxation/wellbeing, and productivity.
BI: Is there a holoride token?
NW: Yes, there will be a holoride token 😉
BI: I don’t have any more questions. Thank you!
NW: Thank you! Maybe the community has?
Bring it on!
BI: We’ve received some community questions.
NW: Awesome!
BI: So, many investors just focus on the short-term price of a project’s token instead of the real value of the project. Can you explain the value of the holoride ecosystem over the long term?
NW: Good question.
We will build a vibrant media ecosystem for passengers that will allow for motion and location-aware content. It’s a new category that we call elastic content. It will consist of entertainment, wellbeing/relaxation, education, and productivity applications. We also envision being part of autonomous vehicles of course.
We will make transit time count!
BI: Please, tell us about the goal that you are planning to achieve in a year.
NW: Launch of our platform for passenger vehicles — with amazing, immersive content for many riders.
BI: How can holoride token holders benefit from participating in the project?
NW: The holoride token will supercharge our content ecosystem and enable value to be created for all ecosystem partners, including content creators, car manufacturers, passengers, and any additional partners.
This will be in terms of both revenue and experience.
BI: Please elaborate on the team experience?
NW: We have gathered talent from mobility, media, and tech. Myself and the other two co-founders all worked for Audi in digital business, immersive technologies, and autonomous driving development. I previously co-led one of Europe’s largest digital stock-listed agencies.
However, our team now includes great talent that has previously worked for companies like BMW, Byton, NIO, Apple, and Amazon.
BI: What is your opinion on partnering with bigger players and how do you approach them?
NW: We have gained so much from partnering and doing projects with Audi, Disney, Porsche, Discovery Channel, Mercedes-Benz, EvoBus, Ford, Universal Pictures — and many others that haven’t been communicated yet.
We have something very unique to offer, that creates gravity in the mobility and media/entertainment space. We were lucky that many of or partners approached us 😉
Thanks so much for all of your questions.
Ride on! 🚀
[DISCLAIMER: This transcript is not an official offer and should not be seen as such.]
About holoride
The German startup holoride creates an entirely new media category for passengers by connecting XR content with data points from the vehicle in real-time. These data points include physical feedback like acceleration and steering, traffic data, as well as travel route and time.
Open to all content creators and car companies, the technology has the power to change backseat entertainment forever; holoride technology significantly reduces motion sickness, opens up a new layer of immersion in games or educational journeys, and creates a stunningly immersive experience.
The tech startup was founded end of 2018 in Munich, Germany by Nils Wollny, Marcus Kuehne, Daniel Profendiner, and Audi, which holds a minority stake in the startup. It was hailed four times “Best of CES” (Las Vegas, Jan 2019) and has been acknowledged as “Best Inventions of 2019” by TIME Magazine. In 2021, holoride went on to win the prestigious SXSW Pitch and was also named Best in Show.
