The designer of the world’s first interactive 360 degree chair, Roto VR, has raised £1.5 million with the help of lead investor Consumer Venture Capital Trust, Pembroke VCT. The TVB Growth Fund, managed by The FSE Group, also invested in the round. SP Angel Corporate Finance acted as financial advisor to Roto VR on the fund raising.
Founded in 2015 by video games industry veterans Elliott Myers and Gavin Waxkirsh, Roto VR (www.rotovr.com) is a highly advanced interactive chair that addresses the physical problems of consuming VR, such as motion sickness and tangling cables, whilst also massively enhancing the immersive experience with haptic feedback (vibration effects).
The Roto VR chair software development kit enables developers to optimise their games for use with the Virtual Reality Chair. For example, with driving games the player experience can be augmented with extra depth of immersion when travelling through corners, with similar benefits for flight sims and other motion-heavy titles.
The innovative product is compatible with most VR Head Mounted Displays (HMDs) and is also compatible with all movies and games, as well as a host of additional accessories such as racing wheels and joysticks.
The Roto VR chair is also motorised and can auto-rotate to wherever the user is looking, allowing for effortless 360-degree viewing and exploration, thus users can experience the full panorama in comfort and for longer periods of time. The Roto VR chair’s inbuilt desktop supports input devices such as a keyboard and mouse, which opens the door to productive 360-degree desktop computing.
While company is due to launch the consumer and office version of the Roto VR chair imminently, the team has also identified a number of market opportunities across a range of industries in the out-of-home sectors, such as cinemas and arcades, and has begun developing a range of products to accommodate them.
The global Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality market is expected to reach $94.4bn in value by 2023 according P&S Market Research.