Toggle search
Toggle menu
5.4K
6.1K
230
53.3K
VR & AR Wiki
Toggle preferences menu
Toggle personal menu
Not logged in
Your IP address will be publicly visible if you make any edits.

Pixvana

vrarwiki.com · VR & AR Wiki
More actions
Pixvana
Information
Industry Virtual reality video software
Founded 2015
Founder Forest Key, Scott Squires, Bill Hensler, Sean Safreed
Headquarters Seattle, Washington, United States
Notable Personnel Forest Key (CEO), Scott Squires (CTO and creative director), Bill Hensler (chief product officer), Sean Safreed (VP of product management), Rachel Lanham (COO)
Products SPIN Studio, SPIN Play, FOVAS


Pixvana was a Seattle software startup that built cloud-based tools for processing, editing, streaming and distributing 360-degree and VR video. It was founded in 2015 by Forest Key, Scott Squires, Bill Hensler and Sean Safreed, and came out of stealth in December 2015 with a seed round of about 6 million US dollars led by Madrona Venture Group.[1][2] Its main product was SPIN Studio, a cloud platform for stitching, editing, publishing and playing back what the company called "XR video". Its Field of View Adaptive Streaming (FOVAS) technology streamed the part of a video the viewer was looking at in higher resolution than the rest.[3]

Pixvana's streaming SDK was built into Valve's Steam 360 Video Player, which launched in beta on 10 May 2017.[4][5] The company raised 20 million US dollars in total. GeekWire reported that it later moved to an enterprise focus through VR training services, and that it shut down toward the end of 2019. Key and other former Pixvana executives then started Voodle, a short-form video messaging app for workplaces.[2]

Reviewed 21 October 2026. Founders, funding rounds and investors, product launch dates and features, Valve/Steam partnership details, staff counts, enterprise projects, shutdown and Voodle pivot, quotes and Steam app status checked against every cited Road to VR, GeekWire (archived), UploadVR, Newsshooter, SiliconANGLE, Geo Week News, NVIDIA, Training Industry, Steam and Forest Key source. About review dates.

History

Founding and seed funding (2015-2016)

Road to VR reported the company's debut on 14 December 2015. Madrona Venture Group led the round, with Vulcan Capital and angel investors also taking part. Key described the company's role as an "IT backbone" for VR video and said Pixvana was not building a consumer service. Key had worked on Silverlight and Flash. Squires had been CTO at Industrial Light & Magic, Hensler had been CTO of Adobe's Creative Suites, and Safreed had worked as a project manager on OpenGL.[1] In later profiles GeekWire described Squires as a Sci-Tech Academy Award winner and Lucasfilm veteran, Hensler as a former senior director of engineering at Apple, and Safreed as a co-founder of the film and video software company Red Giant. It also reported that Key had studied film history at UCLA and started his career on Lucasfilm's visual effects team. He had then worked at Adobe and Microsoft on Flash and Silverlight, and he sold the hotel marketing startup Buuteeq to Priceline in 2014.[6]

GeekWire gave the seed round as 6.1 million US dollars. It listed angel investors including 'Soma' Somasegar, Mike Galgon, Geoff Entress, Charles Fitzgerald and John Keister, and reported that the company had grown from six employees in December 2015 to 19 a year later.[7] In a blog post of 19 May 2016, Key proposed the name "field of view adaptive streaming", or FOVAS, for the company's method of splitting a VR video into many smaller streams, each optimized for one viewing direction.[8]

First products and the Valve partnership (2016-2017)

In late September 2016 Pixvana released its first commercial products. SPIN was a cloud publishing service with three stages: an uploader, the SPIN Publisher for organizing media into channels, and the SPIN Player for viewers, which had a Kiosk Mode for stores, festivals and museums. The company announced FOVAS at the same time, claiming it could deliver "up to 50 megapixel" resolution within the viewer's sight.[9]

At Steam Dev Days in 2016, Valve announced a partnership with Pixvana and the content delivery network Akamai to build a Steam 360 video player.[10][5] Pixvana and Valve also proposed an Open Projection Format (OPF). Newsshooter reported that Pixvana's approach used a frustum-shaped "viewbox" projection with 30 viewports, keeping the highest resolution in front of the viewer. Key said this let viewers stream 8K or 10K video at around 4 Mb/s, about the bandwidth of a 2K stream.[11] In UploadVR's hands-on with a SPIN Player demo for HTC Vive and Oculus Rift, the 8K to 10K test videos sharpened "typically within 100-400ms" after a head turn. Sarah Stumbo, a VR software engineer at Pixvana, told the site the player could stream 8K and 10K video "at just 3 mb/s".[10]

On 12 December 2016 Pixvana announced SPIN Studio, which combined SPIN Publisher and SPIN Player with three new components: SPIN Stitch, SPIN Story and SPIN Finish. Key called it a "cloud-first, cloud-only VR native solution". A public beta was planned for early 2017, and GeekWire named Tippett Studio and the Seattle Sounders as beta clients.[7]

Valve's Steam 360 Video Player entered beta on 10 May 2017. Valve said it "leverages the Pixvana SPIN Studio technology to enable adaptive streaming in Steam VR". Launch content included Fox's Alien: Covenant In Utero, Warner Bros.' LEGO Batman: The Batmersive Experience, Rooster Teeth's Red vs Blue 360 episodes and the Pacific Northwest Ballet's Silent Resonance.[4] Road to VR reported that Valve had integrated Pixvana's SPIN Play SDK, which played several formats through OPF, which Pixvana described as a free and open standard. SPIN users could publish VR videos directly to the Steam store. Valve's Sean Jenkin said Pixvana's SPIN SDK had been "a great asset" in providing an integrated way to watch linear VR content on Steam.[5] Later player builds took in changes to the SPIN SDK and added support for Pixvana's Diamond plane and Varisqueeze formats.[12]

Series A and the full SPIN Studio release (2017-2018)

On 20 November 2017 Pixvana announced a 14 million US dollar Series A round led by Vulcan Capital. Raine Ventures, Microsoft Ventures, Cisco Investments and Hearst Ventures joined, and Madrona Venture Group invested again, which brought total funding to 20 million US dollars.[3][13] Key had pitched more than 50 investors using a 15-minute VR video made with the company's own software. GeekWire reported that the company then had 24 employees and was based in Seattle's Fremont neighborhood. By that time FOVAS ran on Samsung Gear VR, HTC Vive, Oculus Rift, Windows Mixed Reality headsets and Daydream.[6][3]

In early 2018 the company added "VR Casting". The SPIN Play app could be paired with a SPIN Studio account in a "pair-and-share" process, so that videos could be sent to chosen headsets without building a separate app for each piece of content.[14] The full version of SPIN Studio followed in September 2018. Its main addition was editing inside the headset: with an Oculus Rift, Oculus Touch controllers and the SPIN Play app, creators could place graphics, sounds and links in a scene while watching the video streamed from the cloud. The release also included camera-agnostic stitching and support for mono 180-degree and stereo 360-degree video. Pixvana said its cloud stitching had cut a 30-shot test project from a few days of rendering to under two hours. The service was sold in Starter, Pro and Team tiers.[15]

Enterprise training and shutdown (2018-2019)

From 2018 Pixvana also produced VR video projects for business customers. In November 2018 it announced a partnership with Limbix to create VR scenes for adolescent depression and anxiety, developed with researchers from Harvard, the University of Texas at Austin and Stony Brook University. The project used a Yi Halo Jump rig with 17 camera modules to film stereoscopic 360-degree video at 8K resolution with 4-channel ambisonic audio. It had 22 shots arranged into four branching storylines.[16] In March 2019 the company announced "TableVision" for the cruise line Seabourn. This VR training program helped waiting staff learn a dining room with 105 tables and 12 serving stations. GeekWire reported that Pixvana then had 23 employees. Tamara Turner, its vice president of corporate strategy, said that almost all of its enterprise customers relied on the company's creative services, which ran from ideation to post-production.[17]

In April 2019 Squires and Paul Barsic described how the cloud pipeline had incorporated the NVIDIA VRWorks 360 Video SDK. He also described SPIN Play's two distribution modes. In Share Mode a viewer entered a nine-character code to watch a playlist. In Guide Mode a presenter could synchronize dozens of headsets, start and stop playback and track where viewers were looking.[18] SPIN Studio 2.0, introduced on 10 July 2019, was aimed at corporate learning teams. It added Q&A, quizzes and scavenger hunts, analytics including gaze heatmaps, and playback on 2D screens as well as headsets. Pixvana said the rebuilt pipeline rendered up to ten times faster than the previous version and delivered "5.7K" streams for Oculus headsets. A free casting tool, SPIN Studio Lite, was announced alongside it.[19]

Pixvana shut down toward the end of 2019. GeekWire quoted Key as saying that "AR/VR might just not be relevant right now in the world, in any appreciable business scale way." Former Pixvana executives launched Voodle, a short selfie-video app for colleagues, in June 2020. The other three co-founders were not involved with Voodle.[2] In posts from January 2023, Key wrote that "development of Pixvana was shuttered in late 2019" because the VR market proved "too-early". He described SPIN Studio as technically ambitious but "the most catastrophically irrelevant (measured by adoption by end-users we achieved)" work of his career, and wrote that Voodle had also failed to find product-market fit.[20][21] As of October 2026, Pixvana's Steam apps were marked as no longer available on the Steam store.[22][23]

Products

Product Introduced Description
FOVAS (Field of View Adaptive Streaming) Named May 2016; announced September 2016 Streams a set of viewport-optimized versions of a video, giving the current viewing direction the most detail.[8][9]
SPIN (SPIN Publisher and SPIN Player) September 2016 Cloud upload, channel management and a headset player with a Kiosk Mode.[9][7]
SPIN Studio Announced 12 December 2016; full release September 2018; version 2.0 on 10 July 2019 Cloud stitching, editing, finishing, publishing and analytics; in-headset editing from 2018.[7][15][19]
SPIN Play SDK 2017 Playback and streaming SDK integrated into Valve's Steam 360 Video Player.[5]
Pixvana SPIN Play Steam release 4 May 2017 Free headset app for casting SPIN Studio content at up to 8K resolution; later used for Share and Guide modes.[22][18]
Pixvana 360 Production Series 8 May 2017 Series of 360-degree videos by Pixvana Productions released through the Steam 360 Video beta.[23]
SPIN Studio Lite 10 July 2019 Free version of the platform for uploading and casting XR video to headsets.[19]

XR work

Pixvana worked on the problem of streaming high-resolution 360-degree video to headsets over ordinary networks. In its 2016 description of the problem, UploadVR noted that standard 360 video was often delivered at 4K, of which only about 20 percent is in a headset's field of view at any moment.[10] Pixvana's answer was FOVAS, together with projection formats that wasted fewer pixels than the usual equirectangular layout. Squires and Barsic later wrote that equirectangular video "has significant drawbacks, including wasted pixels at the zenith and nadir", and that the company's Diamond plane format projected the image onto an icosahedron to reduce data size.[18] The company also moved stitching and rendering to the cloud. Key wrote in 2023 that jobs could be split across more than 100 nodes, so that a task needing ten hours on one workstation finished in minutes. He also wrote that SPIN Play was available in the Windows, Oculus, Google and iOS app stores and could run offline after syncing, which made it practical to manage fleets of headsets for events and training.[21]

See also

References

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 Ben Lang (2015-12-14). "Pixvana Raises $6 Million for Cloud-based VR Video Processing and Delivery". Road to VR. https://www.roadtovr.com/pixvana-raises-6-million-for-cloud-based-vr-video-processing-and-delivery/. Retrieved 2026-10-21.
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 Taylor Soper (2020-06-29). "TikTok for the workplace? VR startup Pixvana pivots to Voodle, a short video app for colleagues". GeekWire. https://www.geekwire.com/2020/tiktok-work-vr-startup-pixvana-pivots-voodle-short-form-video-app-employees/. Retrieved 2026-10-21.
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 Scott Hayden (2017-11-20). "Pixvana Raises $14M Series A Investment for Cloud-based VR Video Platform". Road to VR. https://roadtovr.com/?p=167063. Retrieved 2026-10-21.
  4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 Valve (2017-05-10). "STEAM 360 Video Player Now In Beta". Steam. https://store.steampowered.com/news/29364/. Retrieved 2026-10-21.
  5. ↑ 5.0 5.1 5.2 5.3 Scott Hayden (2017-05-10). "Valve and Pixvana Bring High-quality Adaptive VR Video to Steam, Beta Launches Today". Road to VR. https://roadtovr.com/valve-pixvana-bring-high-quality-adaptive-vr-video-steam-beta-launches-today/. Retrieved 2026-10-21.
  6. ↑ 6.0 6.1 Taylor Soper (2017-11-20). "Pixvana raises $14M from Vulcan, Microsoft, top VC firms for VR production platform". GeekWire. https://www.geekwire.com/2017/pixvana-raises-14m-vulcan-microsoft-top-vc-firms-vr-production-platform/. Retrieved 2026-10-21.
  7. ↑ 7.0 7.1 7.2 7.3 Taylor Soper (2016-12-12). "Pixvana unveils VR editing and production software one year after raising $6M seed round". GeekWire. https://www.geekwire.com/2016/pixvana-unveils-vr-editing-production-software-one-year-raising-6m-seed-round/. Retrieved 2026-10-21.
  8. ↑ 8.0 8.1 Forest Key (2016-05-19). "Field of View Adaptive Streaming for VR". Forest Key's Blog. https://forestkey.com/2016/05/19/field-of-view-adaptive-streaming-for-vr/. Retrieved 2026-10-21.
  9. ↑ 9.0 9.1 9.2 Joe Durbin (2016-09-29). "Pixvana Announces Two New Products For Online VR Content Sharing". UploadVR. https://uploadvr.com/pixvana-spin-fovas. Retrieved 2026-10-21.
  10. ↑ 10.0 10.1 10.2 Ned Atkins (2016-10-17). "Valve Partners with Pixvana to Improve 360-Degree Video Experience". UploadVR. https://uploadvr.com/valve-pixvana-360-video/. Retrieved 2026-10-21.
  11. ↑ Sarah Redohl (2016-11-01). "Pixvana packs 10K resolution into 2K streaming speeds for Steam's 360 video player". Newsshooter. https://www.newsshooter.com/2016/11/01/pixvana-packs-10k-resolution-into-2k-streaming-speeds/. Retrieved 2026-10-21.
  12. ↑ "New Build Available #2333444". Steam Community. 2017-12-01. https://steamcommunity.com/games/613220/announcements/detail/1468600715676310719. Retrieved 2026-10-21.
  13. ↑ Eric David (2017-11-20). "Pixvana raises $14M for its cloud-based VR studio - in a VR pitch, naturally". SiliconANGLE. https://siliconangle.com/blog/2017/11/20/pixvana-raises-14m-cloud-based-vr-studio-pitching-business-vr/. Retrieved 2026-10-21.
  14. ↑ João Antunes (2018-03-15). "Pixvana's VR Casting offers a simpler way to share and experience VR storytelling". Geo Week News. https://www.geoweeknews.com/articles/pixvanas-vr-casting-offers-simpler-way-share-experience-vr-storytelling/. Retrieved 2026-10-21.
  15. ↑ 15.0 15.1 Kyt Dotson (2018-09-25). "Pixvana launches native VR cloud-based editing platform for creators". SiliconANGLE. https://siliconangle.com/?p=453659. Retrieved 2026-10-21.
  16. ↑ Kurt Schlosser (2018-11-28). "Pixvana helps develop therapy in virtual reality aimed at kids dealing with depression and anxiety". GeekWire. https://www.geekwire.com/2018/pixvana-helps-develop-therapy-virtual-reality-aimed-kids-dealing-depression-anxiety/. Retrieved 2026-10-21.
  17. ↑ Kurt Schlosser (2019-03-27). "Training workers in VR: Seattle startup Pixvana teams with cruise line operator to help train staff". GeekWire. https://www.geekwire.com/2019/pixvana-keeps-shipping-vr-solutions-time-teaming-cruise-line-operator-help-train-staff/. Retrieved 2026-10-21.
  18. ↑ 18.0 18.1 18.2 Scott Squires, Paul Barsic (2019-04-17). "Using VRworks in the Cloud with Pixvana SPIN Studio". NVIDIA Technical Blog. NVIDIA. https://developer.nvidia.com/blog/using-vrworks-cloud-pixvana-spin-studio. Retrieved 2026-10-21.
  19. ↑ 19.0 19.1 19.2 "Pixvana Enhances XR Platform to Accelerate and Scale the Creation and Distribution of Enterprise Training". Training Industry. 2019-07-10. https://trainingindustry.com/press-release/learning-technologies/pixvana-enhances-xr-platform-to-accelerate-and-scale-the-creation-and-distribution-of-enterprise-training/. Retrieved 2026-10-21.
  20. ↑ Forest Key (2023-01-09). "What happened to Pixvana / Voodle?". Forest Key's Blog. https://forestkey.com/2023/01/09/what-happened-to-pixvana-voodle/. Retrieved 2026-10-21.
  21. ↑ 21.0 21.1 Forest Key (2023-01-16). "What was Pixvana?". Forest Key's Blog. https://forestkey.com/2023/01/16/what-was-pixvana/. Retrieved 2026-10-21.
  22. ↑ 22.0 22.1 "Pixvana SPIN Play". Steam. Valve. https://store.steampowered.com/app/623970/Pixvana_SPIN_Play/. Retrieved 2026-10-21.
  23. ↑ 23.0 23.1 "Pixvana 360 Production Series". Steam. Valve. https://store.steampowered.com/app/630530/. Retrieved 2026-10-21.
Retrieved from "https://vrarwiki.com/index.php?title=Pixvana&oldid=52918"