Advanced Television

Crowd-funded VR 4K satellite close to launch

August 23, 2016

By Chris Forrester

It’s a scheme that’s guaranteed to give a highly-personalised Virtual Reality experience from some hundreds of kilometres out in space.

SpaceVR has raised some crowd-funding cash to start building Overview-1, a specially designed satellite that will be launched next June up to the International Space Station (on a scheduled CRS-12 mission) where it will then be deployed into a Low Earth Orbit, reports Via Satellite.

Overview-1 will carry 360-degree cameras plus 4K image sensors to capture extremely high resolution, fully immersive, 360-degree video of every moment that occurs on our home planet. The content will be viewable on any virtual reality device, ranging from smartphones to Oculus Rift to extreme resolution devices such as the StarVR.

“My dream, when I first had this idea at a hackathon 1.5 years ago, was to launch a VR satellite with NanoRacks. It seemed crazy and borderline unachievable. Now we are signed, paid, and moving towards something exponentially more borderline unachievable,” said Ryan Holmes, the founder/CEO of SpaceVR. “This is the most important milestone to date for SpaceVR and we’re honoured to share it with a group of pioneers that have been pushing what’s achievable since before we were born. Let’s launch cool shit into space!”

NanoRacks, a leading provider of commercial pathway solutions aboard the International Space Station, has been a partner, investor, and advisor of SpaceVR since its establishment in 2015.

Having raised a $1.25 million seed round in April, SpaceVR has used this new capital to accelerate the development of the Overview 1 on-board software, begin the development of our content delivery and distribution channels, and invest in a world-wide satellite dish ground station communication network.

By 2018 SpaceVR plans to have 6 satellites in orbit, and many more by 2019 if revenues flow as planned.

Categories: Articles, Funding, Production, Ultra-HD/4K, VR