There's been no shortage of big tech players dipping their toes into virtual reality these days. But so far, there hasn't been much for consumers to actually get their hands on.
Today VR startup Jaunt is coming out with its first piece content in the form of a Paul McCartney concert. Available as a free app on your smartphone, the VR footage shows the concert from up on stage at San Francisco’s Candlestick Park. In addition to your smartphone, you'll also need to find some way of mounting the phone onto your head to view the app in VR--
Palo Alto-based Jaunt sells everything creative professional need to put together non-gaming VR content--what the company calls "cinematic VR." The 25-persosn company makes high-end 360 cameras to capture 3D video and the software that pieces together the camera feed and 3D audio into a special file that can play on VR headsets. Jaunt's content will play on every VR headset currently out there, including the Oculus Rift and Samsung Gear.
“We're building a platform for cinematic VR,” said Jens Christensen, co-founder and CEO of Jaunt. “Unlike a
This Paul McCartney concert is Jaunt's first release, but the startup has already begun partnering with a number of other creative professionals to produce more content, including a partnership with New Deal Studios to create a World War II VR film. Christensen also sees plenty of opportunity in creating VR content for travel, sports, real estate and education.
Eventually, said Christensen, the plan is to create a Jaunt app that will host non-gaming VR content for people to plug into. There will likely be a subscription model similar to Netflix where users can pay a monthly fee for access to a catalogue. For now, though, Jaunt is just coming out with individual apps as with the Paul McCartney concert footage released today.
“The long-term business is in content distribution,” said Christensen. “Think of it as a Netflix for VR.”
Jaunt was founded in April 2013 and hasn't had much trouble raising cash. So far, it's raised $36 million in venture capital. In August, a Series B round was led by Highland Capital Partners and included investment from Google's VC arm, Google Ventures.
Jaunt has a number of well-connected folks on its board of advisors, including early Netflix investor and Redpoint Ventures partner Tim Haley, IMAX Chairman Brad Wechsler, and Google Glass creator Babak Parviz, who is now a vice president at Amazon. Another advisor, director Mark Romanek, introduced Jaunt to Paul McCartney and helped make this VR concert app happen.
There have been a number of early bets being placed in the VR space recently. Most obvious, Facebook acquired Oculus earlier this year for $2 billion. Samsung has been putting a lot of effort into this area with the Samsung Gear, its VR headset. The Korean electronics giant also came out with its own 360 camera for capturing 3D video for VR with what it calls "Project Beyond." And somewhat related, augmented reality stealth startup Magic Leap received a $542 million investment led by Google.
It's still very early days for seeing much VR content, especially outside of games, but there's been some progress lately. Yesterday, the first full-length VR film came out for the Oculus Rift headset--a horror movie called "Banshee Chapter." Oculus has yet to release a VR headset model for consumers, however.
The hardware still feels a little rough around the edges. Testing out Jaunt's Paul McCartney app on a Nexus 6 on Tuesday, I could see the pixels on the smartphone display when it was up so close and it put some strain on my eyes. Christensen thinks VR will drive improvements in smartphone screen resolution, but right now he's mostly focused on getting enough content out there.
“The main challenge is availability of content,” said Christensen. “At the end of the day, that'll drive adoption. People don't care about the underlying technology. They only care about the experience.”
