Positron, a Los Angeles-based VR technology studio, announced at Sundance that it closed a $1.4 million seed funding deal to further develop the next generation of the company’s VR motion chair, Voyager. Funding was provided by Lazar Ventures co-founders Cathleen Ihasz and Nicole Ihasz, and OWC.
Voyager was used at Sundance 2018 to debut the world premiere of Felix & Paul Studios’ space-themed VR experience made in collaboration with NASA, Space Explorers: A New Dawn. An earlier prototype of the chair premiered at last year’s Sundance, and was later used in The Mummy Zero Gravity Stunt Experience with Tom Cruise.
Positron says on their website that the Voyager VR chair platform has a full range of yaw motion (360 degree turning) with 35 degrees of pitch motion (reclining). The chair also contains a built-in PC with GTX 1070 GPU to drive the experience. As seen at Sundance, the viewing experience can be synchronized across a number of Voyager chairs for ‘communal’ viewing.
Jennifer Rundell, Positron COO and co-founder, says the investment will allow the company to further develop their Voyager platform “to include state-of-the-art features such as interactivity, 6 DoF tracking, scent, wind, and AI motion tracking.”
The company says Voyager VR chairs will be coming to cinemas, VR centers, hotels, museums and airports later this year as part of the launch of the Voyager Network, an out-of-home distribution network for premium VR.
