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As a nascent business, the prolonged actuality (XR) area in Singapore remains to be largely represented and dictated by international norms and developments.
Large tech MNCs equivalent to Meta, Apple, and Sony lead the race, but, one homegrown startup — Refract Technologies — is seeking to disrupt the business by improvements in gaming and leisure.
Today, the largest barrier to the widespread adoption of immersive applied sciences is the restrictions of interactivity inside digital environments.
Virtual actuality (VR) headsets, like Meta’s spectacular Quest 3 headset, can solely supply a glimpse into the potential of immersive experiences. Sure, you may go searching digital areas with these gadgets — however your physique actions aren’t totally tracked, limiting the extent of immersion.
In order to beat this ache level, Refract Technologies has launched AXIS, a wearable and game-oriented full-body movement seize resolution.
The world’s first full-body movement seize system with inside out monitoring
Refract Technologies was co-founded by Chong Geng Ng, 37, Michael Chng, 38, and Eugene Koh, 39, again in 2018. The founders have many years of expertise working throughout various industries, together with the esports and gaming industries.
We had been engaged on a gaming-related venture and encountered a perennial query within the business: How would one bridge the hole between gaming and bodily exercise?
– Michael Chng, co-founder and CEO, Refract Technologies
After “many late nights” of deep analysis, the founders lastly settled on an answer — a wearable gadget that permits gamers to make use of their our bodies as sport controllers.
According to Refract Technologies, AXIS is the world’s first wi-fi plug-and-play full-body monitoring (FBT) system that mixes each skilled movement seize expertise with patent-pending inside-out positional monitoring.
Most immersive programs and FBT programs obtainable available in the market at present fall quick in terms of real-time usability. These gadgets are normally “clunky”, requiring exterior base-stations and setups which might be tedious, and include a excessive price ticket.
AXIS, nonetheless, is totally untethered and wi-fi. Furthermore, when used along side a VR headset, customers would solely must equip a minimal of 4 tracker nodes to register their physique actions in a digital setting.
In distinction, the vast majority of FBT programs would require and common of 17 or extra trackers to efficiently seize motion.
AXIS is remodeling gaming, sports activities and content material creation
Besides deepening the immersion of VR gaming experiences, AXIS’ movement trackers have varied use instances, starting from Vtubing (a type of content material creation the place streamers use movement monitoring programs to animate a digital avatar) to facilitating immersive coaching for prime threat occupations and levelling the enjoying subject for varied sports activities.
AXIS’ accessibility brings professional-grade movement monitoring to a a lot wider viewers. This empowers customers to carry these capabilities to each private {and professional} pursuits, starting from bodily enhanced gaming and content material creation to enterprise utilization equivalent to facilitating superior coaching.
– Michael Chng, co-founder and CEO, Refract Technologies
In 2021, Refract Technologies partnered with Samsung and the worldwide governing physique of taekwondo, World Taekwondo, to take away the limitations to the game with the debut of the world’s first digital taekwondo match.
During the match, gamers donned AXIS’ tracker nodes on their arms, legs, and head, permitting them overcome bodily limitations to compete throughout genders, weight courses, age teams and even geographies.
Creating “unprecedented technology” was a “daunting task”
Although the wearable gadget has discovered success in varied purposes at present, Michael candidly acknowledges that the startup’s early days was removed from straightforward. In reality, it took the startup 5 years to ideate, design and engineer AXIS’ {hardware} and software program.
While the co-founder’s collective private and business experiences enabled them to deal with most challenges within the creation of the tech, creating “unprecedented technology” was nonetheless a “daunting task” for Refract Technologies’ small group.
“We were aiming to address an issue that even gaming industry titans are still grappling with,” the CEO stated.
To make issues worse, the COVID-19 pandemic dealt a extreme blow to the startup because it was simply beginning off.
It was initially an enormous disruptor to our workflow and the group was compelled to adapt and innovate. On high of this we had been met with points referring to delays and merchandise sourcing as a consequence of shocks within the provide chain.
– Michael Chng, co-founder and CEO, Refract Technologies
In order to beat these struggles, the corporate determined to launch a crowdfunding marketing campaign in late 2021 to carry AXIS to the market. And to their nice shock, the response from the marketing campaign was overwhelming.
In simply 45 days, the startup managed to boost S$195,000 from 301 backers, surpassing their preliminary funding objective of S$133,000.
Refract Technologies has raised over S$15 million from buyers together with Sea Limited
Following the profitable crowdfunding marketing campaign, Refract Technologies has seen continued success and recognition, with the corporate having raised a complete of over S$15 million in funding coming from buyers equivalent to Sea Limited.
While obtainable for order, AXIS is now prepared for a wider market push to extra channels following heavy improvement and have wealthy updates previously yr.
We’re very lucky to have an inquisitive and passionate userbase who’ve been supportive all through all our phases. At the top of the day, we develop our applied sciences to raised the lives of all our customers.
Their enthusiasm and steady suggestions have been invaluable in offering us route for enchancment.
– Michael Chng, co-founder and CEO, Refract Technologies
Aside from the continuous software program and {hardware} updates for AXIS, Refract Technologies can be actively creating different blended actuality options as the corporate seems to increase its attain within the prolonged actuality area with XR locomotion in addition to facial monitoring and finger monitoring.
The firm has an inside sport developer, Deep Dive Studios, which is actively creating and prototyping sport ideas that the corporate hopes “to reveal to the market soon”.
Ultimately, Refract Technologies goals to “extend human experience beyond reality” by improvements in gaming-led expertise.
We hope to harness the huge potential of those applied sciences to boost lives; from creating immersive leisure experiences for customers and prosumers, to empowering enterprise purposes.
– Ikhwan Zainal, co-founder of Refract Technologies’ sport improvement arm, Deep Dive studios
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Featured Image Credit: Refract Technologies
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