IrisVR
| IrisVR | |
|---|---|
| |
| Information | |
| Type | Private company |
| Industry | Virtual reality, Architecture, engineering and construction software |
| Founded | 2014 |
| Founder | Shane Scranton, Nate Beatty |
| Headquarters | New York City, United States |
| Notable Personnel | Shane Scranton (Co-founder and CEO), Nate Beatty (Co-founder and CTO) |
| Products | Prospect, Scope |
| Parent | The Wild (2021), Autodesk (2022) |
| Website | https://irisvr.com |
IrisVR was an American software company that built virtual reality tools for the architecture, engineering and construction (AEC) industry. Its main product, Prospect, converted 3D building models from design applications such as Autodesk Revit, Rhino, SketchUp and Navisworks into immersive VR walkthroughs that could be viewed on desktop VR headsets, letting design teams review a building at full scale before it was built.[1][2]
The company was founded in New York City in 2014 by Shane Scranton and Nate Beatty.[1][2] It raised about 10 million US dollars over its lifetime and reported more than 60,000 users before it was acquired by the AEC-focused VR collaboration company The Wild in February 2021.[3] The Wild, including the IrisVR technology, was in turn acquired by Autodesk in 2022.[4] Prospect by IrisVR is no longer sold; Autodesk directs former users to its successor product, Autodesk Workshop XR.[5]
History
Founding
IrisVR was started in 2014 by Shane Scranton and Nate Beatty, who had met as students at Middlebury College, from which Scranton graduated in 2012 and Beatty in 2013.[6] Scranton came from an architecture and visualization background and became chief executive, while Beatty, a software developer, became chief technology officer.[1] The company was based in New York City.[2]
Before raising venture capital, IrisVR built up a profile through startup competitions and accelerators. It won the LaunchVT competition in Vermont in 2014, took the top prize in Metamorphic Ventures' virtual reality startup challenge in early 2015, and went through the Techstars accelerator in New York as part of its Winter 2015 class.[7][8][2]
Series A and growth
On October 25, 2016, IrisVR announced an 8 million US dollar Series A round led by Emergence Capital, whose general partner Kevin Spain joined the company's board. Other investors in the round included Indicator Ventures, Pritzker Group Venture Capital, Valar Ventures, Azure Capital Partners, Locke Mountain Ventures and Morningside Group. The round brought the company's total funding to about 10 million US dollars.[2][9] At the time the company said 45 of the top 100 global design and architecture firms had used its beta software and that its products had been downloaded in more than 100 countries.[2]
Acquisition by The Wild
On February 24, 2021, The Wild, a Portland-based company founded in 2017 that offered shared VR and AR workspaces for design teams, announced it had acquired Prospect by IrisVR. The deal covered the IrisVR trademark, the Prospect and Scope products, and related intellectual property and assets.[3][10] The companies said the two product lines would run alongside each other, with The Wild aimed at early-stage design collaboration and Prospect aimed at coordination and review of detailed building models.[11]
Acquisition by Autodesk
On March 24, 2022, Autodesk announced an agreement to acquire The Wild, bringing both The Wild and the IrisVR products into Autodesk. Chief executive Andrew Anagnost described XR as part of the company's cloud platform strategy and tied the move to remote collaboration, lower-cost VR hardware, and reduced travel and rework in construction projects.[4][11] At the time of the acquisition The Wild reported serving more than 700 customers across its two platforms.[11]
Autodesk later folded the acquired technology into a new product, Autodesk Workshop XR, an immersive design review workspace for AEC teams. Prospect by IrisVR and The Wild were retired in favor of Workshop XR, and Autodesk's documentation points former Prospect customers to the newer product.[5]
Products
IrisVR shipped two products, both offered as free downloads with paid subscription tiers.[1]
| Product | Description |
|---|---|
| Prospect | Desktop application that imported 3D models and turned them into navigable VR walkthroughs for design review and coordination; the company's main product[1][12] |
| Scope | Lightweight viewer for panoramic and 360-degree renderings, used for simpler immersive visualization[1] |
Prospect
Prospect ran on a Windows PC and worked as a one-click export from design tools rather than as a standalone modeller. It imported models from Autodesk Revit, Rhino and SketchUp (and OBJ files), and later added Autodesk Navisworks, compressing them into files that could be viewed in VR on demand.[1][12] Inside the headset a user navigated with handheld controllers that acted as pointers and menu panels, and could toggle building layers, draw 3D annotations, take measurements, and change the time-of-day lighting to study how a space would look at different hours.[1]
The software targeted desktop VR headsets, supporting the Oculus Rift and HTC Vive.[1] On August 27, 2019, IrisVR released a version of Prospect for the Oculus Quest, a standalone VR headset, so that models could be reviewed away from a wired workstation; the workflow still used the PC application to convert files and sync them to the headset over the cloud.[12] Prospect supported multi-user sessions in which as many as twelve people in different locations could meet inside the same model and walk through it together.[12]
VR and AR relevance
IrisVR is an example of enterprise VR applied to design review in the AEC sector. Rather than producing entertainment content, Prospect let architects, engineers, and building information modelling (BIM) and virtual design and construction (VDC) teams inspect a building at true-to-scale before construction, catch coordination problems such as clashes between systems, and present designs to clients in an immersive form.[1][12] The product line's path, from an independent VR startup, to acquisition by The Wild, to absorption into Autodesk and replacement by Autodesk Workshop XR, tracks the broader consolidation of standalone AEC VR tools into the established design-software companies.[3][4][5]
References
- ↑ 1.00 1.01 1.02 1.03 1.04 1.05 1.06 1.07 1.08 1.09 "VRchitecture: How IrisVR Is Bringing One-Click Virtual Reality to Revit and Rhino". https://architizer.com/blog/practice/tools/iris-vr/.
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 2.5 "IrisVR raises $8M to bring virtual reality to architecture and design". October 25, 2016. https://www.builtinnyc.com/2016/10/25/vr-startup-iris-vr-nabs-8-million-series.
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 "Collaborative VR company The Wild buys IrisVR's Prospect". February 24, 2021. https://www.archpaper.com/2021/02/collaborative-vr-company-the-wild-buys-irisvrs-prospect/.
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 "Autodesk to Acquire The Wild, Extended Reality (XR) Solutions Provider for Immersive and Collaborative Workspaces for Design and Construction". March 24, 2022. https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/autodesk-to-acquire-the-wild-extended-reality-xr-solutions-provider-for-immersive-and-collaborative-workspaces-for-design-and-construction-301509714.html.
- ↑ 5.0 5.1 5.2 "Does Workshop XR replace The Wild and Prospect by IrisVR?". https://workshopxr.autodesk.com/faqs/does-workshop-xr-replace-the-wild-and-prospect-by-irisvr/.
- ↑ "Four Middlebury Alumni on Forbes 30 Under 30 List". January 2017. https://www.middlebury.edu/announcements/news/2017/01/four-middlebury-alumni-forbes-30-under-30-list.
- ↑ "LaunchVT awards prize to IrisVR". July 15, 2014. https://vtdigger.org/2014/07/15/launchvt-awards-prize-irisvr/.
- ↑ "Real Estate Technology IrisVR Wins Metamorphic Ventures' Virtual Reality Startup Challenge". January 15, 2015. https://www.globenewswire.com/de/news-release/2015/01/15/697798/34537/en/Real-Estate-Technology-IrisVR-Wins-Metamorphic-Ventures-Virtual-Reality-Startup-Challenge.html.
- ↑ "IrisVR raises $8 million Series A to bring VR to architecture and design". October 25, 2016. https://techcrunch.com/2016/10/25/irisvr-series-a/.
- ↑ "With VR/AR collaboration top of mind, The Wild acquires IrisVR Prospect". February 24, 2021. https://www.geoweeknews.com/news/with-vr-ar-collaboration-top-of-mind-the-wild-acquires-irisvr-prospect.
- ↑ 11.0 11.1 11.2 "Autodesk to acquire The Wild to boost XR capabilities". March 25, 2022. https://aecmag.com/vr-mr/autodesk-to-acquire-the-wild/.
- ↑ 12.0 12.1 12.2 12.3 12.4 "IrisVR introduces standalone VR solution for AEC professionals". August 27, 2019. https://www.geoweeknews.com/news/irisvrs-introduces-standalone-vr-solution-for-aec-professionals.