January 14, 2021 – Theia Interactive, a provider of immersive software and solutions, has announced that it has received an Epic MegaGrant from Epic Games for the research and development of its new collaborative virtual reality (VR) tool, ‘BigRoom.’ The company stated that the grant will help to expedite the development of BigRoom through a series of new hires and additional funds for research.
According to Theia, BigRoom is being created for use with Epic’s Unreal Engine and will make it easy to create and share online meeting rooms where VR and desktops users can interact, review designs, and explore and edit projects created in Unreal. BigRoom is currently in a closed beta.
“Theia is working toward bringing real-time rendering and collaboration tools to the virtual design review process for multiple industries,” said Bill Fishkin, founder & CEO of Theia Interactive. “This Epic MegaGrant will help us improve the integration with Unreal Engine and deliver the next generation collaborative VR platform with BigRoom.”
This is the company’s second MegaGrant from Epic Games, something which Theia states affirms a strong, ongoing relationship between the two companies. The MegaGrant programme has seen Epic Games commit USD $100 million to support game developers, enterprise professionals, media and entertainment creators, students, educators, and tool developers to create new projects or enhance open-source capabilities for the 3D graphics community with the company’s Unreal Engine platform.
Theia Interactive was founded in 2014 as a visualization company, working within Unreal Engine to build high-fidelity immersive environments for AEC, retail, automotive, aerospace and other industries. In 2018, Theia branched into the software market with the commercialization of Optim, a formerly proprietary tool that helps speed up content creation and improve workflow in Unreal Engine.
The company continued experimenting with the collaborative potential of Unreal, and in 2020, launched its first multi-user collaborative VR template, allowing Unreal users to convene and interact within their projects in both VR and desktop mode. BigRoom is set to take that a step further. Theia confirmed that an open beta version of BigRoom will be announced soon.
For more information on Theia Interactive, please visit the company’s website.
Image credit: Theia Interactive
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Sam is the Founder and Managing Editor of Auganix. With a background in research and report writing, he has been covering XR industry news for the past seven years.