Jaunt was once a cinematic VR company which produced high-quality 360 video, and to boot even a professional-grade 360 camera dubbed NEO. Taking a step in a decidedly more AR direction with its recently revealed volumetric video capture solution, Jaunt further announced it’s also acquired both Personify’s ‘Teleporter’ volumetric video streaming tech and the engineers behind it.
As a talent and IP-driven acquisition, the move is said in a press statement to directly support Jaunt’s volumetric R&D initiatives for its Jaunt XR Platform, a solution that lets businesses create and deliver their own branded volumetric video content like livestreamed avatars of real people, deliverable to both VR headsets and AR-capable devices like flagship Apple smartphones and tablets.
According to Venture Beat’s Dean Takahashi, who visited Jaunt’s San Mateo, California headquarters last month, the company has created a pipeline that uses six Intel RealSense depth cameras; the resultant images are then automatically stitched into a single 3D avatar and livestreamed to supported devices.
Jaunt CTO and Founder Arthur van Hoff says adding both Teleporter and the talent behind it allows them to “increase the speed and scope of our research and development as we move further into the extended reality arena with the Jaunt XR Platform at the core of our business.”
Continuing: “We’re honing in on fully immersive virtual, mixed, and augmented reality experiences, and are thrilled to advance those technologies with the help of our new Chicago-based team.”
The deal includes seven Personify engineers, who will join Jaunt’s R&D team, four pending patents developed around Personify’s Teleporter technology, and Personify’s office in Chicago. Jaunt hasn’t disclosed the acquisition price.
Jaunt’s evolution to a B2B-focused company coincided with the late-2017 announcement of their Jaunt XR platform. The company has been involved in the VR cinematic space since its founding in 2013.