Voximplant Platform Brings Voice and Video to Games
April 18, 2017
By Paula Bernier
Executive Editor, TMC
Voximplant has come out with a software development kit that enables developers to easily add real-time communications capabilities to augmented and virtual reality applications. This is just another example of how WebRTC can come into play to add functionality and value to online experiences.
The Unity-based software development kit, available now for installation with a single click, is designed to bring real-time voice and video to online games that leverage augmented and virtual reality. It enables developers to build solutions so players can also talk or communicate via video with other players. That’s important, Voximplant CEO Alexey Aylarov says, because such experiences involve competition, social interaction, and teamwork. And embedding real-time voice and video communications into those experiences makes connections between people much more real, he said.
“With WebRTC at work behind the scenes to optimize bandwidth usage and allow for these ever more powerful communication solutions to function capably and scale as needed, the stage is set for a new world when it comes to how all of us interact, work together, and receive the services we require,” Aylarov wrote in a recent article for Technology Marketing Corp.
In an October interview with TMC (News - Alert), Aylarov described Voximplant as a company that provides a cloud platform for communications development. That, he said, can be used to create applications for IP to IP communications or IP to PSTN communications.
As for the AR/VR part of the conversation, reportedly 90 percent of Samsung Gear VR games and 53 percent of Oculus Rift games were created using Unity. Google Cardboard, Google Daydream VR, Microsoft (News - Alert) Hololens, PlayStation VR, and Steam VR all are supported by Unity.
International Data Corp.’s Worldwide Semiannual Augmented and Virtual Reality Spending Guide forecasts that the augmented and virtual reality market will grow from $5.2 billion in 2016 to more than $162 billion in 2020, representing a compound annual growth rate of 181.3 percent.
“For many years augmented and virtual reality were the stuff of science fiction,” said Chris Chute, IDC’s (News - Alert) vice president of customer insights and analysis. “Now with powerful smartphones powering inexpensive VR headsets, the consumer market is primed for new paid and user generated content-driven experiences. Recent developments in health care demonstrated the powerful impact augmented reality headsets can have at the industry level, and over the next five years we expect to see that promise become realized in other fields like education, logistics, and manufacturing.”
Edited by Alicia Young
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