Varjo shows off Teleport for turning real-world places into virtual experiences

Varjo, a leader in industrial-grade VR/XR solutions, today unveiled Teleport, an innovative service for turning real-world places into virtual experiences.

Teleport promises to transform how users create and interact with 3D environments for a wide range of spatial computing applications.

This technology preview highlights the service’s capability to quickly generate photorealistic 3D capture scans of real-world environments directly from an iPhone and allow users to view these scenes from a variety of devices, including PCs, VR headsets, and more.

Until now, XR experiences have been limited by the amount of 3D content that could be generated. The process required advanced skills in real-time 3D graphics or photogrammetry, and the time to create assets and build a scene could be weeks or months.

Using Teleport by Varjo, anybody can create a high-resolution 3D model of their environment without any previous expertise. Turning a room or an outdoor place into a virtual experience is as easy as scanning it with a smartphone. Teleport reconstructs the real-world scene with accurate lighting, shading, textures and reflections using breakthrough advancements in 3D gaussian splatting and machine learning technologies, Varjo said.

The resulting 3D reality capture can be viewed and experienced with a range of devices, starting with Varjo headsets, other PC-connected OpenXR headsets, or Windows desktops.

“Varjo is further bridging the gap between real worlds and virtual worlds by introducing the world’s first high-resolution end-to-end scan-to-VR solution. Teleport by Varjo can radically reduce the time and cost associated with digitizing real-world places, making immersive experiences rooted in reality more accessible and effective,” said Patrick Wyatt, chief product officer at Varjo, in a statement.

This reality reconstruction technology is expected to enhance a variety of immersive applications. For 3xample, it enables users to virtually visit and interact with remote locations in great detail, which is crucial for fields such as training, mission planning, and remote assistance. By providing an accurate digital twin of real-world environments, it aids in creating more effective training scenarios and planning tools, thereby improving preparation and operational efficiency.

“The Finnish National Opera and Ballet is looking forward to utilizing Teleport in our operations. Together with our XR Stage modeling tool, we expect it can improve the evaluation of new incoming rental productions significantly, as the digital twins of real-world sets can be investigated on the virtual stage in their authentic size and form, instead of trying to figure out their visual appearance and fit on stage only based on photos and CAD images,” said Hannu Järvensivu, XR Stage Project Manager at the Finnish National Opera and Ballet, in a statement.

Varjo’s virtual and mixed reality hardware and software are currently used by over a quarter of Fortune 100 companies to enhance astronaut and pilot training programs, expedite automotive production, and advance medical research. With the new Teleport technology, Varjo is expanding its service offering to provide the highest-quality tools for moving workflows from the physical world to virtual environments.

Varjo invites users interested in trying out the technology to join the waitlist at varjo.com/teleport. The service is expected to become generally available later in 2024. Varjo will demonstrate Teleport for the first time at Augmented World Expo in Long Beach, California, on June 18 to June 20.