holoride Launches Elastic Software Development Kit on Unity’s Real-Time 3D Platform
Announced at the Game Developers Conference today, developers will be able to experience the Elastic SDK’s capabilities during a roadshow from Los Angeles to San Francisco this summer.
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Munich, July 21, 2021 - holoride, the Audi-backed company advancing the future of in-vehicle entertainment, today released its Elastic Software Development Kit (SDK) on the newly launched holoride Creator Space. Created to run on the Unity (NYSE: U) game engine, the world’s leading platform for creating and operating real-time 3D (RT3D) content, the Elastic SDK enables developers to access a powerful toolset to create immersive, in-car game experiences with ease.
holoride is building the world’s first immersive in-vehicle media platform by enabling processing motion and location-based data in real-time using the Unity game engine. holoride’s content adjusts to the motion of the vehicle and route and perfectly syncs with the passenger’s journey. Through this, holoride creates a new media category made for moving vehicles called Elastic Content, which allows for a novel approach in content creation.
The release of our Elastic SDK marks an important milestone for holoride in preparation for our market launch in 2022,” says Nils Wollny, CEO & co-founder of holoride. Wollny adds
We’re opening a world full of possibilities for content creators to start building contextual, immersive experiences for passengers. By eliminating tech and business complexity, we encourage content creators to unleash their full creative potential and embark on this ride to build great content.
The Elastic SDK is at the core of this creative development process and the powerful software that drives the holoride experience. It is a creative reinterpretation of real-world maps and geographic information that is projected into the Unity Scene, which is where creators work with content assets within the Unity platform. Creating content does not require any additional coding or developing skills for an initial build and, therefore, lowers the barrier for content creators to get started right away. By adding prefabricated assets like renderers, animations, rigid bodies, and audio, content creators can easily populate the worlds they create.
“From next-generation infotainment systems to augmented and virtual reality-powered experiences, Unity is changing how in-vehicle content is created and consumed,” says Timoni West, Vice President Augmented & Virtual Reality at Unity Technologies. West continues
holoride is revolutionizing the way that we can interact with moving objects, both in the digital and physical world and is representative of how Unity’s platform is the underlying SDK for the metaverse.
As people start to make better use of their travel time, in-vehicle Elastic Content becomes an attractive option for passengers – whether for entertainment value or to reduce motion sickness. Giving creators access to more experiential reality (XR) and VR technology opens up more avenues for content creation as vehicles become the next big thing in platform content.
To further the content creation process, holoride has built the Creator Space. The Creator Space includes everything users need for their development journey, including the Elastic SDK, documentation, and tutorials curated by holoride and continuously enriched by the developer community. Beyond these tools, it is a platform for developers, artists, and enthusiasts alike to collaborate in creating richer content.
To encourage content creators to get started with the Elastic SDK, holoride has built the Development Kit, a prototype that provides all essential data so creators can conduct real-world tests in a car. The Development Kit will allow content creators to demo the content they have built using the Elastic SDK and provide them with valuable insights aside from simulating it in the game engine.
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Pico Interactive will be the first virtual reality headset provider to support the holoride experience through the Creator Space. Developers who use Pico’s VR headsets will be able to take their creations beyond their computers and experience them in combination with holoride’s Development Kit.
Any developer or gaming studio is eligible to apply for one of the limited development kits. To apply for early access to the Creator Space, click here.
About holoride
German startup holoride creates an entirely new media category for passengers by connecting Extended Reality (XR) content with data points from the vehicle in real time. These data points include physical feedback, like acceleration and steering, traffic data, as well as travel route and time. holoride technology provides a new type of immersion into any kind of VR content, creating a breathtaking, immersive experience, and significantly reducing motion sickness. The tech startup was founded at the end of 2018 in Munich, Germany by Nils Wollny, Marcus Kuehne, Daniel Profendiner, and Audi, who holds a minority stake in the startup. It was hailed “Best of CES” four times (Las Vegas, January 2019), recognized as one of the 100 Best Inventions of 2019 by TIME Magazine and is part of the global innovation platform “STARTUP AUTOBAHN powered by Plug and Play.” In 2021, holoride went on to win the prestigious SXSW Pitch and was also named Best in Show.