XR Nation Citizen's Spotlight: Sense of Space

Citizen's Spotlight is a weekly series sharing an XR Nation citizen's story.

HELSINKI, FINLAND (June 2, 2021) – Sense of Space has creativity at heart with both founders, Victor Pardinho and Raquel Cardoso, coming from the art, design, and communication worlds. Sense of Space was born to offer creative freedom and agency to all storytellers who want to embrace the great potential that volumetric video holograms bring to their craft but who might not have a highly specialized technical background that allows them to use the few overly-complex tools available out there or big budgets to hire tech teams.

When Victor started researching digital storytelling using volumetric video workflows at Aalto University, the need to create easier and more accessible tools for hologram-based content creation became clear. Even though Victor had spent years learning how to use game engines and how to code immersive experiences in them, other creative friends and colleagues weren't able to experiment with this powerful new technology. This was a challenge shared by many non-techie communicators out there, but the volumetric video market, which was still in its infancy, seemed to be focusing only on capture technologies, leaving post-production issues behind. Sense of Space came to life to fix that.

In 2019, Victor and Raquel founded Sense of Space and started to create what is now Sense XR, the most intuitive tool to build, view, and share WebAR hologram experiences. It was designed with creatives in mind from the very beginning, and it comes with a recognizable UI/UX design and workflow that allow most people, who have edited 2D videos in simple tools, to start creating experiences with 3D holograms, audio, and 3D data right away — no complex coding required.

Besides making post-production accessible to all, Sense of Space is also working on the distribution side. Being able to reach people efficiently and effortlessly to share a hologram experience is just as important as being able to create the experience in the first place. For this reason, Sense of Space developed the possibility to publish holograms in WebAR with a single click.

All users of Sense XR PRO can publish their hologram content to WebAR with the push of a single button. They will get a web link and a QR code that can be distributed to anyone, making their experience available to more than 3 billion people around the world. To guarantee the very best experience to viewers, Sense XR PRO has native adaptive streaming, guaranteeing that experiences run smoothly across different types of network connections — either 4G, WiFi, or 5G — allowing viewers to see holograms in the highest possible quality and in the most efficient way for their specific scenario. Today, Sense XR is the only WebAR player with native adaptive streaming for volumetric videos in the world.

Sense XR PRO also comes with a web editor that allows creatives to develop more complex hologram experiences. Once users publish a hologram, they have access to Sense XR WebAR Editor, which allows them to edit the code behind the player to create a full WebAR experience using known frameworks like ThreeJS or A-Frame. Besides being able to develop interactions in their experience, creatives can upload files, images, 3D models, and videos.

Today, the web editor is code-based, but Sense of Space is working to make it more and more accessible to all. We are currently developing templates, which will enable users with basic coding knowledge to fully edit their experiences. We are also working on a visual web editor that will be highly intuitive and will demand no coding knowledge to be used.

"Sense of Space's mission is to build tools for 3D content creation that are accessible both in terms of workflow and pricing, enabling creators from all walks of life to adopt holograms in their digital experiences. We are very close to living in a world where recording ourselves and others volumetrically will be as easy as making a video with our smartphone, and we want to support the endless creative possibilities that come with it. We want everyone to be able to create immersive and interactive experiences with their own realities," said Sense of Space founder, Raquel Cardoso.

For more information on Sense of Space and to try the Sense XR Beta visit www.senseofspace.io.

You can find Sense of Space on Twitter and Facebook.