23 September ’21 – Tiledmedia’s First Customer Launches
It’s taken a bit of patience, but it was well worth the wait. Tiledmedia’s first customer, Stage Inc., launched its amazing Stageverse service earlier this week.
But wait – Tiledmedia’s first customer? Didn’t Tiledmedia have many launched services already?
Yes, we do. But Stage was the very first customer to find us, the very first to sign an official deal, in 2017. We just agreed to keep it quiet until the service was released to the public – which has now happened.
The Stageverse experience is mind-blowing. If you are interested in the future of VR, check it out. In fact, anyone interested in the in the future of entertainment – and how VR will play a role in that – should check it out as well. I’ve had many a conversation during the height of the COVID period about virtual concerts, and what these should feel like. Stageverse is what the people contacting us were dreaming about. (But so far none actually built it. It’s not something you do in just a few months.)
Stageverse is an amazing combination of a virtual world (“metaverse” if you will) with 360 video. I won’t describe the entire experience: reviews that do so are available on Road to VR, The Ghost Howls and Variety. There are apps for iOS/ Android mobile devices and for the Oculus ecosystem. The mobile apps are very nicely done, but the best experience by far is in a headset.
ClearVR enables VR360 streaming
The first concert to launch, Muse’s Enter the Simulation is quite a production in and of itself. Sixteen (16!) cameras on and around the stage captured the concert. Muse fans can freely choose between those cameras with very rapid cam switches, or they can follow the “Director’s Cut”. Tiledmedia’s ClearVR sits at the heart of the experience, enabling streaming the VR360 at high quality and low bitrates.
This is important: Stageverse does NOT require downloading an insanely large app that contains all the content – how would you even do that with 16 cameras? Rather, all content is streamed, worldwide. This doesn’t just allow many cameras to be made available simultaneously, it also makes it easy to add content, and to do live events. While this sounds obvious, all too many VR apps still rely on downloads if they want to offer high-quality content. With ClearVR, there is no need to go that route.
The launch is special to us because Stage and Tiledmedia shared a vision of how VR can transform entertainment, 4 years ago. We have worked closely together over these four year, in which we added features at Stage’s request, and improved our product and services. This went both ways: we also helped Stage improve their experience and we worked on optimising the VR360 streaming, getting it ready for world-wide deployment.
Again, really excited to see this get off the ground. And can’t wait to see what comes after Muse!
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Stay tuned!