WorldViz

WorldViz
Information
Industry	Virtual reality software and hardware
Founded	2002
Founder	Andy Beall, Matthias Pusch, Peter Schlueer
Headquarters	Santa Barbara, California, United States
Notable Personnel	Matthias Pusch (CEO as of 2021), Andrew Beall (chief scientist as of 2022)
Products	Vizard, SightLab VR Pro, Vizible, Precision Position Tracking (PPT), VizMove Projection VR, VizMove PRISM
Website	https://www.worldviz.com

WorldViz is an American virtual reality company based in Santa Barbara, California. It was founded in 2002 by Andy Beall, Matthias Pusch and Peter Schlueer. Its main software product is Vizard, a Python-based development platform for VR applications that grew out of software Beall wrote for psychology experiments at the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB) in the 1990s. The company also makes the Precision Position Tracking (PPT) optical tracking system, projection-based VR rooms sold under the VizMove name, the experiment builder SightLab VR Pro and the collaboration software Vizible.

WorldViz's first customers were university research labs; in 2016 Beall described applications in architecture and construction, product design, training and research. In April 2015 it raised a Series A investment of undisclosed size from Intel Capital. The company's about page lists more than 1,500 customers and a team of 24 people.

Reviewed 13 October 2026. Checked founding, founders, origins at UCSB, Intel Capital funding, 2015-2017 interviews and Vizible launch reporting, current product pages, the 1999 and 2017 papers (via Crossref and PMC) and all wiki links and categories against cited sources. About review dates.

History

Origins at UCSB

Andrew Beall studied cognitive science at Brown University and earned a PhD in experimental psychology at UCSB, followed by postdoctoral research in MIT's department of aeronautics and astronautics. According to UCSB's profile of the psychologist Jack Loomis, Loomis and Beall, then his graduate student, began developing virtual reality technology for basic psychological research in 1991; much of Loomis's later work on space perception and the visual control of driving and flying used that system. Loomis, Jim Blascovich and Beall described the approach in a 1999 paper, "Immersive virtual environment technology as a basic research tool in psychology".

In a 2016 interview Beall said his VR work began in 1992 as part of his doctoral thesis, as a way to build virtual experiments for studying people. Because commercial headsets were too expensive for a graduate student, he built his own head-mounted display from Sony Watchman televisions in 1994. The software from those labs was called VRUT and ran on a Unix workstation at UCSB; it was later renamed Vizard. Pusch, who has degrees in engineering and psychology from German universities, wrote in 2003 that he had used VRUT in psychology studies before joining Beall as a co-founder of WorldViz.

Founding and research market (2002-2014)

Beall said he had been giving his tools away for free, and by 2002 enough researchers were asking for them that one of his co-founders saw a market. Researchers with government grants needed a company that could support a hardware-agnostic software platform, and WorldViz initially sold exclusively to university research labs. Its early products were mainly software that tied together the head-mounted displays of the time; the company later also made its own tracking hardware. Beall said that for most of the company's history about half of its customers' projects were government-funded, non-military work, and that WorldViz had worked with military contractors but not on military projects.

In a 2017 post marking the company's 15th year, WorldViz named Accenture, Boeing, Caterpillar, Lockheed Martin, MIT, NASA, Nokia, Perkins + Will, Suffolk Construction, Stanford University and Turner MRS among its customers. Road to VR reported in 2015 that WorldViz had helped Stanford deploy its Virtual Human Interaction Lab.

Intel investment and enterprise VR (2015-2017)

On 14 April 2015 WorldViz announced a Series A round from Intel Capital. Neither company disclosed the amount. Road to VR described it as a "multimillion" dollar investment and reported that Intel, as the sole investor, followed a policy of not disclosing the amount. Beall told the site it was the first time the company had decided to consider outside funding. The release said the money would go toward developing and distributing WorldViz's enterprise VR applications. Gregory Bryant, a vice president of Intel's Client Computing Group, said that combining WorldViz software with Intel's RealSense 3D technology would let developers and device makers create VR content and deploy it on a wide range of devices. CEO Andy Beall told Road to VR that for most of the company's past customers, one item on the bill of materials "would be a $40,000 headset". Vizard had recently added support for consumer hardware such as the Oculus Rift and the Razer Hydra.

In May 2016 Peter Schlueer, then described as the company's founder and president, discussed WorldViz bringing its warehouse-scale motion tracking to Unreal Engine 4 and Unity 5 on UploadVR's Presence podcast, which cited tracked areas of 50 by 50 meters. At SIGGRAPH 2016 Beall told the Voices of VR podcast that the company's warehouse-scale optical tracking covered spaces of about 30 by 30 meters and was meant to be run by professionals such as architects without a dedicated motion-capture staff. He also spoke about vection, the illusory sense of self-motion, and about multi-user social VR sessions in which he hosted customers live inside a virtual space.

WorldViz previewed a VR communication tool called "Project Skofield" in 2016. At SIGGRAPH 2017 it presented the product as Vizible, a networked service in which people in different locations join a shared virtual space, view 3D presentation material together and talk over voice chat. Tom's Hardware reported that it was aimed at corporate sales teams and would launch in October 2017 at US$250 per seat per month, with support for the Oculus Rift with Touch, the HTC Vive, 3D displays and CAVE projection systems. AEC Magazine wrote that WorldViz was targeting the aerospace, automotive, construction, engineering and architecture sectors, and that Vizible's Presentation Designer was a drag-and-drop editor in which 2D material such as PDF training manuals or PowerPoint slides could be added alongside 3D content.

Research tools and simulation rooms (2021 to present)

On 8 June 2021 WorldViz introduced SightLab VR, a drag-and-drop tool for setting up eye tracking experiments in VR. The announcement quoted Matthias Pusch as CEO. TEDxSantaBarbara's page for Beall's talk on the emotional impact of VR, dated December 2022, lists him as co-founder and chief scientist of WorldViz. In July 2026 WorldViz published a video of a six-sided PRISM simulation room driven by Fujifilm ZUH12000 projectors, filmed at InfoComm 2026.

Products

Product	Type	Description
Vizard	VR development platform	Python-scripted platform for building VR applications, with connections to headsets, projection systems, motion trackers, eye trackers, gloves and biofeedback devices. Sold in free, development and enterprise editions; the current documentation is for Vizard 8.
SightLab VR Pro	Experiment builder (Vizard plugin)	Graphical and Python tool for building VR experiments, with session replay, gaze and fixation analysis, heatmaps, BIOPAC physiological data sync and multi-user sessions; introduced as SightLab VR in 2021 and described by WorldViz as a plugin for Vizard.
Vizible	Collaboration software	Multi-user VR sessions built from 3D models and 360 media, with replay and data analytics; WorldViz lists support for desktop PCs, Meta, SteamVR and OpenXR devices.
Precision Position Tracking (PPT)	Motion tracking hardware	Six-degree-of-freedom optical-inertial hybrid tracking for multiple users; WorldViz states coverage of 50 by 50 meters and more, with native plugins for Vizard, SightLab and VRPN.
VizMove Projection VR	Projection VR system	Single-wall, corner and multi-sided 3D projection setups for groups of up to 15 people wearing 3D glasses, positioned by WorldViz as a lower-cost alternative to CAVE installations.
VizMove PRISM	Simulation room	Projection-based room for scenario training in healthcare, emergency medical services and simulation centers; includes a 360-degree camera so customers can capture their own locations.

WorldViz also sells turnkey headset labs (VizMove Walking VR), a portable system called VizBox, and design, development and consulting services.

Use in research

Vizard and PPT appear in published VR research. WorldViz says it publishes a yearly list of papers that used its software and that more than 300 labs and researchers use its tools. The company quotes Jack Loomis as saying that "Vizard was conceived and developed specifically for conducting experimental research using virtual environments".

A 2017 study in i-Perception by Diederick Niehorster, Li Li and Markus Lappe measured the tracking accuracy of the HTC Vive for scientific use and compared it with a research-grade WorldViz PPT-X system combined with an InterSense InertiaCube. The authors collected data through Vizard 5.5. After tracking was lost and recovered, the Vive showed large position offsets, while the PPT system's offsets never exceeded 0.35 cm.

See also

• Motion capture
• Enterprise VR
• Collaborative virtual environment