The Birth of Survios:
It all began with Project Holodeck, which was started back in March 2012 at a virtual reality conference in Orange County, CA, with Nathan Burba, James Iliff, and Palmer Luckey. We found ourselves riding in a limo with famous researchers to see a telepresence demonstration, and realized something: What if we created a platform that achieved 90% of the immersion of a large vi
rtual reality installation for less than 1% of the cost? We had worked with VR installations, motion capture hardware, and high-end HMDs in the past, and the experience these technologies could provide was awe-inspiring. However the equipment and setup was very expensive and few people had access to this kind of immersive VR environment outside of research labs and motion capture studios. So we set out to change that, endeavoring to make VR cheap, accessible, and playable. Nathan and James launched Project Holodeck as an interdisciplinary effort at the University of Southern California’s Games program, and Palmer went on to found Oculus and launch the Oculus Rift to great success. We then brought together a team of technical artists and engineers at USC to tackle numerous challenges, such as avatar embodiment with motion controls, positional movement with the Rift, 3DUI in a shared virtual playspace, and game design for full-motion VR. Soon enough we were able to build a truly immersive VR environment that was intuitive, engaging, and (we think) super entertaining. We then showcased our VR games and hardware prototypes at venues across the globe, starting here in Los Angeles at Indiecade, GLIMPSE, and our own USC Demo Days, as well as Dublin's GAME: NEXT exhibition, the Wearable Technologies Conference in San Francisco, and the Sweden Game Conference in Skövde. From Project Holodeck we then founded Survios, and continue to focus on VR gaming and immersive technology. The name Survios comes from the English prefix 'sur' meaning "above, beyond" and the Greek 'βίος' meaning "life, reality" - taken literally, Survios for us means Beyond Reality. Survios Website: http://www.survios.com
Read more about Project Holodeck: http://www.projectholodeck.com
Follow us on Twitter : http://www.twitter.com/Survios
Connect with us on LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/company/survios
