SIEMENS

Varijo's headset-in the photo below
Company to support start-up Finnish in the development of a human eye VR

German industrial giant Siemens has invested in a virtual reality start-up aiming to bring the technology to heavy industry and provide a European rival to the likes of Facebook's Oculus.Siemens joined the $ 31m (£ 24m) funding round in Varjo, led by Atomico, one of London's top venture capital firms. Varjo, a two-year-old Finnish start-up, has developed a virtual reality headset that offers human-eye levels of detail.The start-up is working with the likes of industry giants including Airbus, Audi, Saab and Volkswagen to optimize virtual reality for their businesses.The funding is a major vote of confidence in a European challenge to Facebook-owned Oculus, which makes the Oculus Rift virtual reality headset, and Magic Leap, which is building augmented reality goggles.The start-up claims the level of detail of its headset gives an additional level of precision with its virtual reality imaging. It offers in the 50 megapixels of detail per eye, 20 times that of a consumer device.Varjo said it is planning to expand its team from 80 to around 200. It will launch the first version of its headset later this year. The start-up said that using virtual reality for precision design, industrial giants can save millions of pounds on design processes on new products.
The company is made up of former Nokia and Microsoft engineers, many of whom worked on Microsoft's own Hololens headset."It has been said it would take 10 years to achieve human eye resolution," said Varjo chief executive Urho Konttori. "Siemens is the leader in computer aided design." "We have a great opportunity to take the opportunity to take advantage of this opportunity." We are now kicking off the platform to allow design within the virtual environment. "The start-up uses dual panels for each eye in its headset, while most headsets use just one display per eye. Varijo gained the backing from Siemens' investment vehicle Next 47. Atomic partner and founder Niklas Zennström, one of the founders of Skype, led his firm's investment.Mr Konttori added: "We are happy there are VCs like Atomic in Europe. In the US there are VCs who are daring and take the leap, but when we first met Niklas and the team moved very quickly."



M. Field