Transformer vos rues, vos places, votre quartier en un parc d’attractions en réalité mixte, c’est […] Cet article Et si votre quartier devenait un parc XR ? DreamPark l’a fait a été publié sur REALITE-VIRTUELLE.COM.

Augmented World Expo 2025 will draw more than 6,000 attendees, 400 speakers and 300 global exhibitors to its event June 10 to June 12 in Long Beach, California. The speaker lineup includes Snap CEO Evan Spiegel, Atari cofounder Nolan Bushnell and Oculus/Anduril founder Palmer Luckey. If the show is any indication, the XR industry isn’t doing so bad. A variety of market researchers are forecasting fast growth for the industry through 2030. Ori Inbar, CEO of AWE, believes that the XR revolution is “ready to conquer the mainstream.” But to get there, he believes the industry still needs to create “head-turning content that must be experienced.” Of course, the red hot days of the “metaverse,” inspired by Neal Stephenson’s Snow Crash sci-fi novel in 1992, is no longer driving the industry forward. With less focus on sci-fi, the industry is focused on practical uses for mixed reality technology in the enterprise and consumer markets like gaming. But will XR and the metaverse be overrun by AI, or will it carry them to the mass market destination? Much is riding on how committed Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta will be even as it reprioritizes some resources away from XR to AI. Meta, which acquired Luckey’s Oculus back in 2014, has invested billions every quarter in the technology, with no profits so far. But, in a very unexpected turnaround, Zuckerberg and Luckey buried the hatchet on the past differences and set up an alliance between Meta and Anduril — the latter being Luckey’s AI/drone defense company. Zuckerberg has new competition from his own nemesis, Apple, which launched the Apple Vision Pro in February 2024. However, Apple has slowed down its development of the next-generation XR headset, while Zuckerberg has put more emphasis on AR/AI glasses. Spiegel, the CEO of Snap, has focused on augmented reality glasses. His Spectacles are now in their fifth generation, powered by the Snap OS and authoring tool Lens Studio. Nolan Bushnell, founder of Atari and Chuck E. Cheese, will deliver a one-of-a-kind talk on the main stage with five of his children, who are continuing his pioneering vision in gaming through XR. Brent Bushnell, Nolan’s eldest son, recently debuted DreamPark, a new XR startup that turns any park or playground into a mixed reality theme parks. Others speakers include Vicki Dobbs Beck – VP, Immersive Content Innovation, Lucasfilm & ILM Immersive; Ziad Asghar – SVP & GM XR, Qualcomm; Brian McClendon – Chief Technology Officer, Niantic Spatial, Inc.; Jason Rubin – VP, Metaverse Experiences, Meta; Hugo Swart, Senior Director of XR Ecosystem Strategy and Technology, Google; Jacqui Bransky – VP Web3 & Innovation, Warner Records; Chi Xu – CEO and Founder, XREAL; Helen Papagiannis – AR Pioneer and XR Hall of Famer; and Tom Furness – Grandfather of VR and Founder, Virtual World Society. AWE Builders Nexus will be a new program focused on startups this year. Startup founders, developers, designers, product managers, and business leaders alike will get the resources they need to build something extraordinary, get advice and funding, scale through partnerships, and win customers, Inbar said. The event will also feature the AWE Gaming Hub. I also interviewed some companies that are showcasing technology at the show. Here’s some snippets from what they are going to show. Pico VR Pico started out in Beijing, China, in 2015 and is now hitting its 10th anniversary. It is making the standalone Pico XR headsets, and it was acquired by ByteDance, the owner of TikTok, in 2021. In September 2024, the company launched the Pico 4 Ultra Enterprise headset, filling out the high end of its product line in addition to its G3 and Neo 3 legacy headsets. Pico also has its set of full-body motion trackers to its product offerings to allow for full-body and object tracking. That’s helping it with its focus on location-based entertainment in markets such as China. It’s focused on WiFi7, hand tracking and motion tracking. Leland Hedges, head of enterprise business at Pico, said that the LBE market in China has grown by 1,000% in the last six to nine months Pico has an app for PC streaming and another app for managing devices over a LAN. Pico can track play spaces with columns or cordoned-off areas. Hedges said the company will share 15 different user stories at AWE in public places such as zoos, museums, aquariums and planetariums. Convai Purnendu Mukherjee, CEO of Convai, showed me a bunch of demos at the Game Developers Conference where it has been able to create avatar-based demos of generative AI solutions with 3D animated people. These can be used to show off brands and greet people on web sites or as avatars in games. At AWE, Convai will also off learning and training scenarios for education and enterprises through a variety of simulations. Convai can render high fidelity avatars that are effectively coming from the cloud. At GDC, Convai scanned me and captured my voice so that it can create a lifelike avatar of me. These avatars can be created quickly and answer a variety of questions from website visitors. The idea is to enable non-technical people to create simulations without the need to code anything. In a demo, Convai’s avatar of me said, “I’ve been covering the games industry for many years now at games beat I’ve seen it evolve from the arcades to the massive global phenomenon it is today. I love digging into the business side of gaming, the technology, the culture, the whole shebang.” Convai will announce pricing for its self-serve platform as well as an enterprise subscription fee. Doublepoint Ohto Pentikäinen, CEO of Doublepoint, has a technology that detects the gesture you can make with your hand. It captures that movement via a smartwatch and allows you to control things on a TV interface or an XR device. With Android XR, Doublepoint is showing off demos where gesture control can unlock a more intuitive and comfortable augmented reality experience for those wearing AR glasses. Xreal is one of the glasses makers that is using the technology for controlling an AR user interface with gestures. “Our technology is able to fully control a XR system. A stat that we can update you on is that there’s 150,000 people who have downloaded the technology so far, and we have a developer community of over 2,000 people since January 2024,” Pentikäinen said. Now the company is starting its own Doublepoing developer program, and this adds layers on top of the enterprise client. So now the company can provide technology for indie developers or startups that are building augmented reality or AI hardware experiences. “We’re empowering developers in AR robotics and AI hardware, and we’re providing everything that we’re providing the enterprise clients, but for a much reduced price,” Pentikäinen said.

AR developer DreamPark secures $1.1m in seed funding round Investment will support expansion plans, partnerships with established IP, and growing its development team Image credit: DreamPark News by Sophie McEvoy Staff Writer Published on May 30, 2025 Mixed reality developer DreamPark has raised $1.1 million in a seed funding round. DreamPark develops AR experiences at physical locations via markers including QR codes that change real-world spaces with digital features. Led by Long Journey Ventures with participation from Founders Inc., the investment will help the firm accelerate creating partnerships with established IP, expanding the amount of rental Quest headset units it has, and growing its development team. So far, DreamPark has installed experiences in Santa Monica and the LA County Fair, with plans to expand to Seattle, Orange County, and corporate events. "We're not just creating content, we're building a platform that revitalises communities by giving people a reason to gather, play, and connect in physical spaces in real life," said DreamPark CEO and co-founder Aidan Wolf. "DreakPark bridges the digital and physical worlds, creating a new category of play where the magic of virtual worlds enhances real-life connections. We're reimagining what's possible when the spaces around us become canvases for shared adventure and imagination." DreamPark co-founder and business director Brent Bushnell added: "We're building the world's largest theme park – one that exists everywhere and is accessible to everyone. We want to make getting out to play worthwhile again. "This investment allows us to expand our footprint of access points across the country rapidly, develop partnerships with premium IP holders, and continue enhancing our technology to deliver magical experiences that bring people back to real-world spaces."

DreamPark, the creator of what it calls “the world’s largest downloadable mixed reality (XR) theme park,” said it has raised $1.1 million in seed funding. The investment will accelerate DreamPark’s mission to make Earth worth playing again by transforming ordinary spaces into extraordinary adventures through mixed reality technology. I got a demo of the game in Yerba Buena Park in San Francisco and it made me smile. It also made me think it was part of a pretty good plan to convince property owners to get more out of their entertainment venues. But we’ll get to that in a bit. Long Journey Ventures led the investment round, with participation from Founders Inc. The company is the brainchild of Aidan Wolf, CEO of DreamPark; Kevin Habich, cofounder; and cofounder Brent Bushnell. They came up with the idea while working at Two-Bit Circus, a zany entertainment venue in Los Angeles run by Bushnell. Bushnell encouraged the idea, incubated it and became a cofounder. The DreamPark founders (left to right): Brent Bushnell, Aidan Wolf and Kevin Habich. Positioned at the forefront of mixed reality innovation, DreamPark said it is capturing a significant early advantage in the global XR (extended reality) live event market, valued at $3.6 billion in 2024 and projected to surge to $190.3 billion by 2034 at a 48.7% compound annual growth rate (CAGR). This explosive growth trajectory presents an opportunity that DreamPark’s technology and business model are uniquely designed to address, the company said. “We’re building the world’s largest theme park – one that exists everywhere and is accessible to everyone. We want to make getting out to play worthwhile again,” said Bushnell. “This investment allows us to expand our footprint of access points across the country rapidly, develop partnerships with premium IP holders, and continue enhancing our technology to deliver magical experiences that bring people back to real-world spaces.” Bushnell is the eldest son of Atari cofounder Nolan Bushnell. And the younger Bushnell knows the costs of investing in physical properties, as he runs Two-Bit Circus in downtown Los Angeles. It’s built inside a physical warehouse, and Bushnell’s company has to pay for that property — even weathering the pandemic. But with DreamPark, he can reinvigorate a physical venue without investing anything in a new property. By contrast, a new virtual reality entertainment venue can cost more than $1 million to open. Hands-on demo DreamPark foundes in Yerba Buena Gardens park in San Francisco. Wolf and Habich, and Bushnell’s sister Alyssa Bushnell, showed me the DreamPark virtual theme park in San Francisco in the park near the Metreon building. There was a concert going on at the time and it was very noisy. But the game worked fine anyway. Looking down at my feet, Wolf said the QR code on the mat on the groun was an “access point.” That’s where you can scan and enter the virtual world. The company is still building a front end for distributing the headsets, but people will be able to bring their mixed-reality headsets from home and play the same content. “We’re setting these up all over,” Wolf said. “Once an area is mapped, it’s there and you just show up and play. The big difference here is that DreamParks are places. They exist in the real world.” Don’t be surprised if you see people doing this soon. The mapped area was around 50,000 square feet in the park, so it was a pretty big game space. Soon, the company will break into 100,000 square feet for the game with another update. That’s about 10 times the restricted size of Meta’s VR headsets. “We’re going way past the usual limits,” Wolf said. “I think this fundamentally changes what mixed reality means. Now it’s not this living room experience bound to the couch. It’s an actual world to walk around and explore and touch. Once we get people there, we’re gonna really see that cognitive shift, where now augmented reality (AR) is something I can go out and experience, like enjoying a concert.” The cofounders gave me a headset to wear. The first one didn’t work, but a second one functioned fine. It was a modified Meta Quest 3 headset that was locked down so it would play just the DreamPark game. It took a short time to load and then I looked through the headset. Thanks to the outward-facing cameras, I was able to see the park in mixed reality. That meant I didn’t trip over anything as I walked around. I held the headset to my forehead and looked around. I could see a Mario-like set of bricks floating in the air, and floating virtual coins along the physical path. I started walking around and picking up the coins and tapping the bricks to collect points in the game. I didn’t go where there were people lying on the grass, but I didn’t manage to navigate to some lava pits in the middle of the park. The founders pointed out that far away from me, on the Carnaval concert stage, there was a boss. Normally, if there was no concert, I could have waltzed over to that location and engaged in a boss fight. DreamPark overlaid on the Third Street Promenade in Santa Monica, California. The graphics were rudimentary, 8-bit style, and yet I didn’t mind it at all due to the novelty of seeing them overlaid on the real world. Still, I was reluctant to go walking in the lava pits, as that was a bad idea in the virtual world and I somehow felt like it would be a bad idea to walk there in the physical world. “Our graphics are more cartoonish, but our Wizard theme has a more realistic look,” Wolf said. “We’re creating four theme parks.” One of them is a sci-fi Crash Course, which is an obstacle course. And DreamPark is working with a partner as well. There’s one with a psychedelic theme and one that is ambient fun. It’s easy to turn the experience into a multiplayer game. You can, for instance, race around the park and complete a timed experience in competition with your friends. The appeal of a virtual overlay on the real world DreamPark mixes the virtual and real worlds. DreamPark transforms physical locations into immersive mixed-reality environments through its network of access points: physical markers, like QR codes, that, when scanned with a Meta Quest 3 headset or mobile device, unlock digital overlays on real-world spaces. The company has already established successful installations at Santa Monica’s Third Street Promenade and The LA County Fair, with planned expansions in Seattle, Orange County and several expos and corporate events. It’s pretty cheap to create new locations. All they really have to do is scan an area, overlay a digital game filled with simple games, and then drop a mat with a QR code on the property so people can scan it and start playing the game. For property owners, this means they can draw people back to their location, getting them to re-engage with the place because people want to play a digital game at the physical place. It’s a way to enhance the value of a physical property, using virtual entertainment. Bushnell pitched the idea for DreamPark on CNBC’s Shark Tank television show. The sharks didn’t go for it, but the publicity from the show helped surface investors, Bushnell said. (The Bushnell family is going to appear at Augmented World Expo in Long Beach, California, in June). “As a longtime investor, I have seen countless pitches promising to merge the digital and physical worlds, and DreamPark is the first that truly delivers on the real-world metaverse,” said Cyan Banister, cofounder and general partner at Long Journey Ventures, in a statement. “Aidan is a visionary builder of immersive systems, and Brent is a pioneer in playful public spaces, making them the perfect team to make emerging tech feel human, accessible, and unforgettable. They’ve cracked the code on location-based AR, delivering a 10x experience that’s as magical as it’s scalable. This isn’t just immersive entertainment; it’s a whole new category.” The funding comes when retail landlords and event venues seek innovative solutions to drive foot traffic and increase engagement. While typical VR venues cost over $1 million to build, DreamPark delivers a fully immersive, multiplayer experience that pays for itself in its first month of revenue. DreamPark in Santa Monica. “Our capital expense is like one of a hundredth of our competitors, which is amazing. And then this lets us move astronomically faster than everyone else. I kind of believe in a Nintendo philosophy, which is, they take antiquated technology, but they use it in a new way that makes it valuable. We’re using access points,” Wolf said. There’s no construction or permanent infrastructure required. It’s a radically more affordable way to turn underused spaces into high-impact destinations. “We’re not just creating engaging content, we’re building a platform that revitalizes communities by giving people a reason to gather, play, and connect in physical spaces in real life,” said Wolf. “DreamPark bridges the digital and physical worlds, creating a new category of play where the magic of virtual worlds enhances real-life connections. We’re reimagining what’s possible when the spaces around us become canvases for shared adventure and imagination.” The seed funding will support DreamPark’s aggressive expansion plans, including deploying access points across new locations, launching partnerships with major IP holders to create branded theme park experiences, and expanding the company’s fleet of rental Meta Quest 3 headsets units nationwide. DreamPark is growing the development team to accelerate content creation and platform capabilities. DreamPark’s leadership team brings deep experience from companies including Two-Bit Circus, Smiley Cap, and SNAP, Inc., positioning them to execute their ambitious vision of creating the infrastructure for worldwide mixed-reality entertainment. Where it’s going What alien technology is this? Bushnell said the team has been working for around two years. But the founders have been involved with AR for more than a decade. They showed up at Two-Bit Circus and started making mixed-reality games, which take into account physical reality as a game space. There are about 10 contractors in the company working on content. They found that players are happy to wear the headsets for 30 minutes at a time, particularly when they are playing with friends. “We see ourselves more as a tech company than like a location based entertainment company. We hope to stay small as a core team while still reaching millions or billions of people,” Wolf said.The games are in a private alpha testing phase now. “I would say that the headset we currently have in our hands is the exact headset we need to bring this to the masses. So the nice part about the company we’re building is we aren’t waiting for some like watershed moment,” Wolf said. “We’re not waiting for anything now. We’re just getting it into lots of places where people already congregate.”DreamPark is coming out with an app that will let users scan their local park and then start using that space as a level, Wolf said. But DreamPark itself will create partnerships with some of the best places itself and get permission to do the game on the properties. At Two-Bit Circus, for instance, DreamPark could extend the entertainment into the outdoor parking lot, giving more square footage for entertainment. Bushnell had a great moment when he was playing an AR game with drift racing on a racetrack in the Two-Bit Circus parking lot. He noted that mixed reality doesn’t have the Achilles Heel of VR, which is that it makes half the people nauseous. “That was really the moment that broke my brain for mixed reality,” he said. “We were on actual drift bikes, pedaling around collecting coins. And I went twice around that thing, chasing after somebody else on a drift bike. And, you know, my heart rate was at 150. And I was just absolutely going bananas. And I took the headset off, and all that world that had motivated me to pedal my ass off was gone. It just really felt like this is not just going to change entertainment. This is going to change therapy and fitness and learning.” Bushnell said so many other kinds of entertainment are based on deploying huge amounts of capital. But this kind of theme park could be up and running in a matter of minutes. Bushnell believes people will be happy to buy tickets to get a chance to play. He said his four-year-old kid loves it, as does his 82-year-old father. DreamPark is adding virtual entertainment to real venues. To me, it felt a bit like the beginning of the world of Cyberpunk 2077, while Bushnell said it reminded him of the Korean drama, The Memories of Alhambra, where people wear contact lenss displays and have an adventure overlaid on real streets. “These are beautiful places naturally. Let’s augment them with a little more cool storytelling, and you’re off and running,” Bushnell said. “The world is lonely and isolated, We think of this a path to being social again, getting people out in public. And we want to invite landlords of all stripes to host DreamParks.” GB Daily Stay in the know! Get the latest news in your inbox daily Read our Privacy Policy Thanks for subscribing. Check out more VB newsletters here. An error occured.