If you're dealing with Virtual Reality today, you can't ignore realities anymore. With their photorealistic models of real places, realities caused a sensation last year in Silicon Valley. That's where the startup was founded. However, a few months ago, they relocated their headquarters to Berlin. In a 100 m2 loft at Colona Nova in Neukölln, one of Berlin's most vibrant neighborhoods, Daniel Sproll and David Finsterwalder create breathtakingly realistic 3D models.
SETTING: When you put on a VR headset, you can stroll through your models. You feel as if you're actually there. Incredible! And you're working with just photos. How does that work?
DANIEL: You take two photos, and the computer recognizes a common feature, the same point. If it's on both photos, you can draw a line to this point on each photo and calculate the depth using an angle. In the end, it's just trigonometry. And if you do that with a lot of points, it becomes a landscape again.
Realities work with photogrammetry. The result is photorealistic 3D models through which you can freely move.
SETTING: And the algorithm?
DANIEL: The algorithm has been around since 1850! It was mainly used in cartography.
DAVID: Yes, back then, it was all manual labor.
DANIEL: The funny story about it – David, my co-founder, is named Finsterwalder – and the guy who invented the first complete algorithm back then was Sebastian Finsterwalder. Legend has it that we have the corresponding descendant sitting here who is now dealing with it again!
DAVID: But today, it's much faster.
SETTING: What is fast?
DANIEL: Well, the church in France, that was about 20 to 25 minutes of shooting photos and processing for about a day. If it's a larger area, if it's dark, or if the geometry is very complex, you might spend a day taking photos. For the castle, it was probably a day with the drone and then a week of processing. But if you were to model it by hand, it would take much longer.
SETTING: How did realities actually start?
DANIEL: It started not too long ago. I met David at a VR meetup in Munich. We got into a conversation and kept meeting up. David comes from archaeology, where he worked with scanning and focused on how to get that into VR. I had worked with VR elsewhere, for Audi, for their show-room experience. Eventually, David asked me if we wanted to do something together. So, we got together last December, started, and then spent six months in America at an accelerator.
SETTING: How was that?
DANIEL: Very, very exhausting and very, very cool. It's definitely intense, seeing how the scene over there looks.
SETTING: How does it look?
DANIEL: Very, very focused. 24/7 business. So, it's quite a bubble, and there's also a lot of money being thrown around compared to here in Berlin.
SETTING: Why did you decide to come to Berlin despite that?
DANIEL: We debated for a long time whether to stay over there or come here. But since we're both German, dealing with visas would have been a huge hassle. And you burn an incredible amount of money over there because rents are extremely high. And because salaries are extremely high. So, we decided to set up an office here for now. We're a US company, but we'll do most of the work here for now.
SETTING: What role does Berlin's creative potential play in that decision?
DANIEL: It's a completely different approach that many people have here. It's more creative. More willing to engage with something that may not directly lead to money. So, it doesn't always have to be incredibly big. People do a lot because they think it's cool and because they believe in the idea.
SETTING: What is your goal, in which direction do you want to go?
DANIEL: Imagine it as a Wikipedia for places. So, a library of cool places around the world, you saw that globe we have as a menu [see video]. We want to eventually have as many points on it as possible that people can look at and learn more about. It's not just about the scan. You can pick up flyers, you can learn. We're currently playing with embedding videos and actors shot on a green screen. It really looks like they're standing in front of you. Another thing is multiplayer, so you can explore these places with friends from all over the world. Right now, we're working a lot with NGOs, with people from science who are already doing scanning, who have data sets. We help them get the data sets into VR to make them accessible to as many people as possible.
SETTING: That doesn't sound like gaming.
DANIEL: From the beginning, it was clear to us that we wanted to do more than just gaming. VR is perceived as mostly gaming in the public eye and is now being pushed by gaming. But it's a new medium, it's a new way to interact with digital content. What we're building isn't just for people who want to shoot zombies, even though that's cool and fun in VR. What we do, you can show to your grandma and take her to a place she may not be able to travel to anymore. Or someone else who doesn't have the opportunity to travel the world. Giving people the opportunity to do that is a very, very beautiful thing. And VR is perfectly suited for that.
SETTING: What were the biggest challenges for you as a startup?
DANIEL: How much time do you have? We both have relatively little experience with starting a company. We're doing it for the first time. We were very grateful that we could be at this accelerator from the start because we could ask a lot of questions there. Plus, there were many other companies around us, also in the VR sector, facing the same challenges. It's easier when you can coordinate a bit. Because everyone has already solved one of the thousands of problems you have. I think that saved us from many mistakes. Otherwise, VR is currently difficult because it's so new. You have a market that no one knows how it works, that doesn't really exist yet. The user numbers are so low that everyone says, oh my God, it's crazy to start a startup there. But we firmly believe in it and feel a lot of potential and momentum from the people in the field.
SETTING: How long will it take for VR to become mainstream or marketable?
DANIEL: I think there will be a big leap in the fall when PlayStation VR comes out. The market will significantly expand because it's hardware that people already have at home, where they just need to buy something extra. Many have to buy a completely new computer to operate the headsets that are available now. The next two years will be exciting. So, in 2016, very few expect to make money, but we hope that afterwards, there will be user numbers where you can start. But as long as it's just a huge amount of fun to shape this new medium, to find things out, and to experiment. And - to explore uncharted territory!
SETTING: What tips do you have for other startups?
DANIEL: Just do it.
DAVID: Just do it.
DANIEL: Don't be shy. Dare to ask a lot of stupid questions, meet a lot of people. Everyone has faced the same problem before, and you just have to get the right opinion. Preferably five! If you get five opinions, you get five different ones, but then you at least have an overview.
DAVID: Have a bit more confidence in yourself and don't be afraid of failure!
Realities are available for free here.
