Meet the ‘Pod’

The Pod Platform

No doubt everyone is familiar with the Star Trek ‘Holodeck’ and the ability to ‘teleport’ to other places or dimensions. Or similar sci-fi/Hollywood promises of a future enhanced by virtual reality, such as ‘Ready Player One’, ‘Total Recall’ or “Minority Report’. Spark XR has invented a device capable of delivering on the promise of such science fiction. Of course, we don’t actually teleport anyone anywhere – but because of our high-end delivery mechanism, the user will believe they really did take that trip! The XR-One Pod has applications in more than just entertainment, including Esports, simulation, training, travel, brands and events, museum installations and more.

The Spark XR-One Sensory Teleportation Pod incorporates a solid metal framing surrounded by a resilient plastic shell, which can be customized to suit specific branding requirements and messaging, creating a large and visible presence in any location.

There is a large entrance through which users enter and exit. A huge monitor sits to the left of the entrance, which acts as a promotional and informational screen for passers by. The screen can display videos or static images - the contents can be easily changed to suit local and timely announcements, advertisements, sponsorship and branding needs. On the let-hand side of the entrance is a smaller touch screen, which is used by consumers to book their time within the Pod.

The Pod uses a high-end Windows PC, which is located underneath the floor and is not accessible to the Attendant during normal usage. Instead, we provide a handheld tablet which is used to manage the user queue, including starting and stopping the experience.

Custom Pods

We sell custom Pods into vertical markets, delivering custom software and Pod configurations to meet a customer’s exacting requirements. The Pods are designed to use the appropriate level of VR technology required by the experience – as such they are not tied to a specific generation of hardware and can use the latest or the most relevant for the target applications.

The Pod can be customized to incorporate powerful, fully immersive, ready-to-use interactive sensory software, which combine to deliver impactful experiences for multiple vertical markets.

• Pods can incorporate one software experience - or a menu of different experiences

• The outer shell imagery can match a specific visual style or branding requirement

• Pods can be configured for free usage, or pay-to-use

• Experiences can be designed for solo usage, or networked for collaborative or competitive usage (users in different Pods participating real-time in the same experience)

• Sensory features can be adapted for customer’s requirements - such as haptic vests, different HMDs, alternate input devices, seating, smell, heat, cold and more

Pod Applications

Using the founders’ deep expertise from the video game industry, the skills of creating engaging, immersive content can be applied to vertical markets beyond entertainment. The Pod has been designed specifically to allow network play – as such, experiences can allow users in different Pods to collaborate together in problem solving, or to compete with one another, as appropriate. Additionally, creating content where the outcomes can be different based on the user’s actions, is also an important design criterion for our experiences – it isn’t necessarily the same each time it is used. This allows real progression and stepped learning.

Experiences are designed with the physicality of the Pod in mind. Users at all times stand in the same position in the Pod, and we have found that placing them on a moving platform inside the virtual world, such as a hoverboard, allows intuitive locomotion where it is needed. Users move left or right in the experiences by shifting their body weight to the left or right, recognized by the pressure sensors in the floor. This offers us many possibilities for designing unique and intuitive applications where the user’s actions mimic those in the real world.

The Pod can be adapted to use many different forms of sensory tactile input devices to interact in the virtual world, which can also facilitate finger tracking and natural hand interactions. For example, in AlUla Adventures, we incorporate hand-held controllers that utilize almost 100 sensors to track hand position, finger position, motion, and pressure through which we can allow users to reach out and grab items naturally. Optical and motion sensors in the head-mounted VR display (HMD) and fine-tuned algorithms and software bring it all together into a usable input / output. Combining these technologies allows, for example, a natural feeling throwing action and many other intuitive interactions and gestures which deepen immersion and so realism.

The haptic floor incorporates many different physical effects that can be tuned to create a wide range of different sensations for the user. As such, ‘bumps’ of different frequencies can be triggered in the virtual world, giving the user a tactile sensation that they actually just bumped into the object they see in front of them, for example, or the increasing vibrations of a jet engine accelerating.

Air circulating fans surround the user and can be turned on or off independently and run at different speeds, all controlled by the AI of the experience, and which contribute to a highly realistic sensation of motion, which can be very intense in the Pod if so required.

All of these sensory effects are controlled by patent-pending proprietary firmware developed by Spark XR, and which work in conjunction with the AI of the experience to react precisely and realistically to the real-time actions of the user.

Design Criteria

We design experiences for the unique spatial and sensory capabilities offered by the Pod, as well as the client requirements. This entails consideration of locomotion - how will a user move inside the virtual world, intuitive user experience - how to make user input obvious and easy, also feedback to the user of progress and achievement, and post-experience considerations (such as follow-up emails for next steps based on performance, etc.). Because of the very high immersion and sense of motion, we design carefully to minimize any sense of motion sickness, which is common in poorly designed VR experiences.