Unity is taking a shot at creating the standard for VR advertising starting with SAW!

Game Engine powerhouse Unity Technologies is taking a shot at figuring out VR advertising. This week Unity Technologies revelaed key components of its plan which detailed a customizable VR native ad format for brands to create their own integrated experiences. Called the Virtual Room It’s being created within the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) emerging ad experience guidelines.

Described as an easter egg or a hidden target behind the wall by Julie Shumaker, Unity Vice President of business development of advertising, this Virtual Room will be a part of the storyline, play for 30-60 seconds, and players have the option to explore in an exchange for some type of reward or benefit.

The first expected Virtual Room partnership is with Lionsgate for a new interactive VR ad promoting Saw 8: Jigsaw, the newest film in the Saw horror series.

Unity Hires Dr. Danny Lange away from Uber to be VP of AI and Machine Learning

Unity announced that it has hired Dr. Danny Lange as VP of AI and Machine Learning. He joins from Uber, where he was head of machine learning.

At Uber, Lange led the efforts to build the world’s most versatile Machine Learning platform to support Uber’s hyper growth.  As head of machine learning, Lange will lead Unity’s efforts around AI (Artificial Intelligence) and Machine Learning.

“Danny’s deep, technical background and expertise in Machine Learning align perfectly with the needs of our developers in the rapidly changing world of games and AR / VR,” said John Riccitiello, CEO of Unity Technologies. “We look forward to Danny creating innovative technologies our developers can use to help them optimize engagement and revenue for their products.”

Previously, Lange was General Manager of Amazon Machine Learning -- an AWS product that offers Machine Learning as a Cloud Service. Before that, he was Principal Development Manager at Microsoft where he led a product team focused on large-scale Machine Learning for Big Data. Lange spent 8 years on Speech Recognition Systems, first as CTO of General Magic, Inc., then through his work on General Motor’s OnStar Virtual Advisor, one of the largest deployments of an intelligent personal assistant until Siri. Danny started his career as a Computer Scientist at IBM Research.

He holds MS and Ph.D. degrees in Computer Science from the Technical University of Denmark. He is a member of ACM and IEEE Computer Society and has several patents to his credit.

Source: Unity Press Release.

Cats And VR

Unity Technologies raises $181 Million, company now valued over 1 Billion dollars.

 Unity Technologies, the largest global development platform for creating 2D, 3D, VR and AR games and experiences, today announced a $181 Million series C led by DFJ Growth and including China Investment Corporation, FreeS Fund, Thrive Capital and Max Levchin,  joining existing investors that include Sequoia Capital and WestSummit Capital. In addition, DFJ’s Barry Schuler will take a seat on Unity’s board of directors.

“Unity’s platform has revolutionized the game industry by allowing any size studio from Indie to Triple-A to create beautiful and compelling games and experiences and monetize them with their advertising and analytics services,” said Barry Schuler, partner, DFJ Growth. “Now Unity is poised to accelerate the advance of AR/VR with their unique ‘write once/ publish many’ engine which allows studios to easily support all hardware platforms without having to attempt to choose a winner.”

Based in San Francisco, Unity Technologies has been helping developers bring their visions to life for over 10 years and currently has almost 1,000 employees globally.  Unity developers can export their games and experiences to over 25 different platforms across 2D, 3D, VR and AR. 31% of the top 1,000 grossing mobile games globally, including great indie games such as Perchang, Sky Force Reloaded and INKS as well as the smash hit Pokemon Go, are made with Unity. Additionally, Unity plays an integral role in PC, console, VR and AR spaces, with 90% of Gear VR content being made with Unity, not to mention a huge variety of titles for PC, Oculus Rift, HTC Vive and others including THE VOID’s Ghostbusters: Dimension hyper-reality experience and Ubisoft VR game Eagle Flight and PC game Inside from developer Playdead.

From the 1983 Cold Blooded LP

"We continue to focus on helping developers in every way we can,” said John Riccitiello, CEO, Unity Technologies. "We do this by focusing on our three core principles; democratizing development, solving hard problems and enabling developer success.”

About Unity Technologies

Unity Technologies is the creator of a flexible and high-performance end-to-end development platform used to create rich interactive 2D, 3D, VR and AR experiences. Unity's powerful graphics engine and full-featured editor serve as the foundation to develop beautiful games or apps and easily bring them to multiple platforms: mobile devices, home entertainment systems, personal computers, and embedded systems. Unity also offers solutions and services for creating games, boosting productivity, and connecting with audiences including the Unity Asset Store, Unity Cloud Build, Unity Analytics, Unity Ads, Unity Everyplay, Unity Connect and Unity Certification. Unity Technologies serves over 5.5 million registered developers including large publishers, indie studios, students and hobbyists around the globe. For more information, visit: http://unity3d.com to see the latest games and experience created in Unity, go to: http://madewith.unity.com.

Unreal announces Google Daydream support!

Epic Games CTO Kim Libreri announced on the Google I/O stage  support for Daydream to Unreal Engine 4. Daydream integration is available now on GitHub (login required), and it's coming to the binary tools in the full Unreal Engine 4.12 launch, which is on track for release on June 1, 2016.

Here's what Kim had to say: "At Epic our mission is to give developers the very best tools for building immersive and visually impressive experiences with great performance on every platform we support. We have been creating VR experiences for many years now that not only push visual fidelity but what’s possible in terms of input, interaction, characters and gameplay mechanics

"Every project we work on extends the capabilities of Unreal Engine, and we pass these improvements to developers on a daily basis. Today we’re proud to be part of this new chapter in VR history."

Technical Director Nick Whiting discusses several details on the Daydream VR plugin for Unreal Engine 4. They are highlighting the support of the plugin, along with information on what developers can expect when creating for Daydream.

Cats And VR