Basemark

Basemark
Information
Industry	Software, performance benchmarks, automotive and defense augmented reality
Founded	2015
Founder	Tero Sarkkinen
Headquarters	Helsinki, Finland
Notable Personnel	Tero Sarkkinen (founder and CEO)
Products	Rocksolid (Rocksolid Studio, Rocksolid Engine), Basemark GPU, Basemark Web, GPUScore benchmarks, VRScore (legacy), VRTrek
Website	https://www.basemark.com

Basemark (legal name Basemark Oy) is a Finnish software company headquartered in Helsinki. It began in 2015 as a maker of graphics and system performance benchmarks, when its founder Tero Sarkkinen bought the benchmark business of Rightware in a management buyout. In virtual reality, Basemark is known for VRScore, a PC and headset benchmark built with Crytek on CryEngine, and for VRTrek, a two-sensor device that measures the latency of a head-mounted display.

Basemark later moved into automotive software. Its current main product, the Rocksolid platform, is used to build augmented reality (AR) and human-machine interface applications for vehicles, and in 2026 the company also promoted it for defense situational-awareness systems. The company states that VRScore development has been on hold because of low demand in the VR market.

Reviewed 19 October 2026. Checked every dated claim, name, number and quote against the 26 cited Basemark, Crytek, PR Newswire, Road to VR, Tom's Hardware, Geeks3D, TechCrunch, VentureBeat, Auganix, Business Finland and EIC sources. About review dates.

History

Founding from Rightware

Sarkkinen had founded Rightware about five years before Basemark. A Business Finland profile republished by Basemark says he had originally bought Rightware's business out of Futuremark. On 7 May 2015, in a release dated from Espoo, Sarkkinen announced that his new company, Basemark Ltd, had acquired Rightware's benchmark business unit. The products that moved to Basemark included Basemark ES, Basemark OS and Basemark X, and all existing customers, licenses and agreements were transferred unchanged. Arto Ruotsalainen and the rest of the Rightware benchmark team joined the new company, and Mika Heikinheimo, founder of Symbio, and Seppo Kolari invested and joined its board. Sarkkinen stayed on as a Rightware shareholder and board member, and the release listed him as founder and CEO of Basemark. At that time the company gave Espoo as its headquarters.

In December 2016 the Chinese software company Thundersoft agreed to buy Rightware, maker of the Kanzi automotive user interface tool, for 64 million euros. Business Finland describes Thundersoft as having acquired Rightware from Sarkkinen in 2017, a few years after he founded Basemark. Basemark had bought only the benchmark unit; Rightware remained a separate company.

Benchmarks and virtual reality (2015-2018)

On 6 August 2015, in a release dated from Frankfurt am Main, Basemark and Crytek announced a partnership to build a VR system test on CryEngine. Their announcement said the test would cover frame rate, memory consumption, latency and 3D audio performance, and would recommend graphics settings for different VR headsets. The product was unveiled as VRScore at the Game Developers Conference on 15 March 2016. At GDC 2016, Road to VR identified Arto Ruotsalainen as Basemark's CEO.

Basemark released the VRTrek Library, the VRTrek measurement device plus an SDK, on 20 December 2016, and the full VRScore PC benchmark on 30 January 2017. The company's press boilerplate at the time described Basemark Oy as a privately held company headquartered in Helsinki whose tools were used by semiconductor and device companies including AMD, Imagination Technologies, Intel, NVIDIA, Qualcomm, Renesas and Samsung. It listed VRScore, Basemark GPU Vulkan, Basemark ES, Basemark Web, Basemark OS and Basemark X as its products.

Basemark GPU, a cross-platform graphics benchmark for Vulkan 1.0, OpenGL 4.5 and OpenGL ES 3.1 on Windows, Linux and Android, was released in June 2018; the company said Metal and DirectX 12 support would follow. Version 1.1, released on 27 November 2018, added Direct3D 12 tests. It was free for personal use, while professional versions went to members of Basemark's Benchmark Development Program and to corporate users. Basemark's graphics benchmark division now operates under the GPUScore name, and its site lists newer ray tracing benchmarks alongside Basemark GPU and Basemark Web.

Automotive software

According to Business Finland's 2020 profile, Basemark launched its real-time graphics and compute software, Rocksolid Engine, in 2017 for the automotive industry. The same article described Sarkkinen as chairman of the board and the company's largest shareholder. An EIC Scaling Club profile of the company says the team explored the VR market with performance testing software and shifted its focus to computer-aided driving after the VR market declined quickly. The same profile says Basemark has provided software development services to BMW since 2018.

On 9 February 2022 Basemark announced that it had helped BMW Group develop AR applications for the electric iX. The first, an AR over-video application, shows navigation arrows over the live front-camera image on the infotainment screen and helps with parking. On 5 May 2022 it launched the Rocksolid AR SDK, a set of development tools and runtime systems for in-cockpit automotive AR that supports OpenGL ES and Vulkan. The release named Sarkkinen as CEO and founder and listed offices in Finland, Germany and the United States.

In April 2024 Basemark raised 22 million euros in a Series B round that combined equity, grants and loans, bringing its total funding to 34 million euros. ETF Partners led the round, with Finnish Industry Investment (Tesi), Constructor Capital, Business Finland, the European Innovation Council and private investors taking part. Auganix reported that Basemark had secured its first series production deal with a US carmaker in 2023. On 26 March 2026 Basemark announced a partnership with Lucid Motors on the AR head-up display of the Lucid Gravity. Lucid developed the display hardware, features and interface design in-house, and Basemark engineers implemented Lucid's feature specifications with Rocksolid tools. In June 2026 it signed a memorandum of understanding under which HELLA Ignite GmbH (Ignite by FORVIA HELLA) will add Rocksolid to its automotive AR offering for carmakers.

Defense work (2026)

By September 2026 Basemark described itself as a European dual-use technology company. It joined the NATO Innovation Continuum in March 2026, where it said it would support an AI-enabled training initiative in that year's cycle. On 27 August 2026 it announced a demonstration with Patria in which an operator in Tokyo remotely controlled a Patria AMV armoured vehicle at the Parola military testing area in Finland, about 7,800 km away, while Rocksolid fused data from several sensor and vehicle systems into one operator view. In September 2026 it appointed Douglas Allen, a former British Army officer, as a strategic advisor for the defense sector, and joined the Finnish Defence and Aerospace Industries association (PIA). Basemark says Rocksolid supports smart helmets, head-up displays, vehicle screens and remote operating stations, with armoured-vehicle crews and commanders as its first defense focus. In the September 2026 announcements Sarkkinen was still named founder and CEO.

Products

Product	Type	First released	Status (October 2026)
Basemark ES, Basemark OS, Basemark X	Mobile and embedded benchmarks	Before 2015 (from Rightware)	Legacy products; Basemark X receives customer support but no updates
VRTrek	VR headset latency measurement device and SDK	20 December 2016 (VRTrek Library)	Not listed on GPUScore's legacy products page
VRScore PC	VR benchmark built on CryEngine	30 January 2017	Development on hold; kept as a legacy product with community support
Basemark GPU	Cross-platform graphics benchmark	June 2018	Listed under GPUScore's other benchmarks
Rocksolid Engine	Real-time graphics and compute engine for vehicles	2017 (per Business Finland)	Runtime of the Rocksolid platform
Rocksolid AR SDK / Rocksolid Studio	Automotive and defense AR development tools	5 May 2022 (AR SDK)	Current flagship product

VRScore

VRScore combined CryEngine with Basemark's performance measurement framework. At its March 2016 unveiling, Basemark and Crytek said it supported HTC Vive, Oculus and OSVR headsets, used DirectX 12, could run with or without a headset attached, and measured interactive VR, non-interactive VR video and VR spatial audio. It also included the Power Board online service, with performance rankings for headsets, CPUs and GPUs. Corporate versions included the VRTrek device and were available at once to corporate customers through Basemark's early access program and Benchmark Development Program; free consumer versions were scheduled for June 2016. Crytek built the test scene, Codename: Sky Harbor, in-house as a real-time cinematic VR short; Road to VR saw an early version running on an Oculus Rift at GDC 2016, where Sarkkinen and Ruotsalainen were presented as Basemark's co-founders.

The June 2016 date was missed. VRScore PC launched on 30 January 2017 with DirectX 12 and DirectX 11 support. Basemark said it had developed the benchmark with AMD, Intel and NVIDIA, and that the Corporate and Corporate Premium versions would ship immediately, with consumer versions to follow. Road to VR's first look described three modes: a System Test that renders Sky Harbor in stereoscopic 3D with recorded head motion to measure the PC, a VRTrek Test that runs the scene in the headset to measure latency, dropped frames and duplicated frames, and a VR Experience mode for watching the scene. It also listed NVIDIA multi-resolution shading and Lens Matched Shading options, available only in DirectX 11.

In its January 2017 review, Tom's Hardware described five editions: a free consumer build, Professional, Media, Corporate and Corporate Plus. The free build was limited to the System Test and the VR Experience demo. The System Test recorded the average frame rate of a 4K baseline scenario, then ran feature tests at the resolution set by each headset's runtime. The review also described a "VRReady Meter" similar to the indicator in Valve's SteamVR test. Road to VR contrasted VRScore's analytical approach with Futuremark's VRMark. Basemark's GPUScore site now says VRScore development is on hold because of low demand in the VR market, and that it is kept as a legacy product with community support.

VRTrek

The VRTrek device has two photodiodes and connects to a PC's 3.5 mm microphone jack. The PC triggers timed flashes on the headset display, the sensors report the brightness changes through the microphone input, and the software compares the time of each flash command with the time the flash appears. This lets it measure the left and right eyes separately. Basemark said VRTrek also detects dropped frames, duplicated frames and display persistence. Road to VR listed the device's specifications as an 8 μs response time, a 12 degree field of view, 0.2 ms accuracy and precision below 0.01 ms. Tom's Hardware reported that the two sensors sit 2.5 inches apart and that Basemark approved only Realtek audio controllers for the measurement.

XR work

Basemark's VR work was centred on measurement: VRScore and VRTrek were designed to test whether a PC could run VR content and to measure how long a frame takes to appear on a headset's displays. Its later AR work is in vehicles. Rocksolid AR targets AR head-up displays, instrument clusters, infotainment displays and e-mirrors, and includes localization and motion tracking, latency-reduction algorithms and content placement that avoids covering critical information. The same platform is now offered for defense, where Basemark describes it as fusing sensor, vehicle and command-system data in real time for operators.

See also

• VRTrek
• VRMark
• Crytek
• Automotive head-up display
• Latency