There was no way I was going to step over the edge of that cliff.
Neither was the Minister of Technology and Innovation, Amrik Virk.
It’s difficult to describe how real the Coombs-based company Cloudhead Games has made virtual reality.
Star Trek fans might get a better idea what it’s like from this description by Cloudhead Games president and creative director Denny Unger:
“It actually delivers on the promise of transporting you to another world,” said Unger. “It tricks your senses into believing you’re somewhere else. We call it the first generation holideck.”
Here’s what B.C. cabinet minister Virk said after he tried the technology:
“It was realistic — I was afraid to step one step further because it felt like I was going to fall off a cliff,” said Virk, in the region last week for B.C. Liberal caucus meetings. “Under water a whale came up and I wanted to reach out and touch it and I wanted to duck as the fin came by.”
Cloudhead Games was born in March 2013.
“We started in my garage,” said Unger. “We had three people who were leading the charge, blindly, to see where we could go.”
They grew and moved into the Town of Qualicum Beach’s digital studio, an incubator of sorts for small tech businesses like Cloudhead. They grew again and moved to a location close to Goats on the Roof in Coombs. They grew again and now are operating out of another location in Coombs, with 14 total employees.
Unger got some seed money for the company through the Kickstart crowd-funding website. Other funding followed through the help of the Innovation Island, a facilitator and liaison for the region’s tech sector, and the federal government’s Industrial Research Assistance Program.
Cloudhead is now, according to its website, “on a mission to create fully interactive and immersive VR experiences that set a new standard — across all platforms including HTC Vive, Oculus VR, Sony Project Morpheus, Samsung Gear, and those yet to be released.”
Said Unger: “The work we’re doing really is kind of on the leading edge of how to use this technology in totally different, new ways. It never has really been done on this level.”
While a trickle-down effect is inevitable to the fields of training or medicine, gaming is where it’s at right now. Titles that Cloudhead has been part of include Dragon Age and Mass Effect.
“It (gaming) is the biggest market on the planet,” said Unger. “It dwarfs the movie industry, it dwarfs everything. That’s where the major money is and that is where the people who are creating the hardware are focussed.”
Virk said Cloudhead’s success is evidence companies like this don’t need to be based in big cities.
“I’ve used them as an example to demonstrate that technology is something that’s not necessarily only in metropolitan areas,” said the minister. “My goal is for them to stay here and grow here.”
Virk’s cabinet colleague, Parksville-Qualicum MLA Michelle Stilwell, seems similarly impressed.
“Cloudhead Games is an ideal example of a local success story — gaining international recognition for the development of a pioneering virtual reality platform,” said Stilwell. “They contribute to our tech sector’s success, placing Oceanside and B.C. as a whole on the world-stage.”
