Before the Reality: The Story of OVR
We often get asked about how it all began for OVR. Those who’ve known used our app see it as an exploratory tool, allowing you to see your world through a new layer, giving it new dimensions you didn’t realize were there before.
Of course, it’s a lot more than that, and it will be a lot more than that. The specific ideas we envision for the OVR platform are discussed at great length in our whitepaper. Its features, ecosystem and technologies are all summarized on our website, and patiently being developed and brought to reality by our diligent team.
To be sure, AR is an exciting new technology (among many new ones), especially when complemented by machine learning, AI and blockchain. That itself should be a thrilling ride on its own. But we’re not just building an AR app for the sake of building one.
“Three years ago, together with other 5 angel investors, I founded a club focusing on innovation and startups called Unicorn Trainers. Today, it has more than 70 associates.
It was here that I met Davide (CEO), one of the first associates to join. Then, I was working and coding on machine learning applied to finance. His vast knowledge of deep learning meant that we quickly bonded. Later, we found out also that we were both believers in crypto. I recall selling him my Ethereum mining rig when he said he wanted to use the GPUs for machine learning… but I believe he’s actually still mining! ;-)
And then, 8 months ago, Davide told me about his geolocalized AR project and it was just like when I first heard about Bitcoin… it didn’t sound like a viable idea at first, but later I thought, this actually might work, and then finally, I became so in sync with his vision that I came on board myself and now, we’re striving together to transform this vision into reality.” — Diego Di Tommaso (COO), on the birth of OVR
How do people change the world? By starting to improve it
OVR started out just like many other stories in this space. We are, after all, a startup, and like many startups, what we have today was built on little more than an idea, and a dream among the few of us, that we one day hope to be shared by many.
The technologies we considered are all decidedly complex ones, but we were fortunate to have also some of the brightest talents and loudest advocates in the space working on OVR. Davide Cuttini (CEO) is a serial entrepreneur, with vast knowledge of AI and robotics, years experience developing AR engine and machine learning models. We’ve got Mattia Crespi (CSO and co-founder), an IFTF research affiliate and a well known futurist and tech evangelist. Diego di Tommaso (COO and co-founder) has been training tech unicorns for years, and is a senior advisor at PwC.
And that’s not even mentioning the other blockchain experts, AR developers, software engineers and technicians on our team (check them out!)
In short, we not only have the know-how, we speak passionately for the tech, and truly believe in its potential. And what better way to see results than to develop our own solution? And because of our expertise and our passion, we believe that OVR has got the most advanced app on the market even if we are behind competitors in terms of funding stage.
“We’ve been developing single purpose AR apps for the past five years and it’s frustrating to find that there is still no unique platform available for developers to easily build on. At the same time, we’ve encountered many AR developers voicing the same frustrations. And so, OVR was our response to this problem,” — Davide Cuttini, CEO.
Why AR and why blockchain?
We like to refer to AR as to the Spatial Internet, that will allow for a new level of interaction with information. Smart cities with their cloud of interconnected IoT devices will generate tons of data, and only the use of AR will allow to transform those into useful information, insights and wisdom digestible from human brain.
“AR is an unavoidable cognitive extension that our society will leverage the abundance of data and computational power. We’re just at the infancy of AR technology, affordable and high fidelity smart glasses will allow for the explosion of AR… yet smartphones, already today show us the potential of this technology that can deliver utility to final users even through the screen of a smartphone,” — Mattia Crespi, CSO.
Because the entire OVR ecosystem is underpinned by virtual land ownership, blockchain is the only practical solution to grant trustless ownership to OVRLand owners. It also provides a secure, verifiable and automated way for users to get paid by advertisers, pay per interaction, rent virtual space, and use all the services on the platform and marketplace.
Building an AR platform on its own could not solve the issue of trust. We wanted developers to have the freedom of building solutions without having to worry that the platform’s creators could change the rules at will. Blockchain was the way for a decentralized solution, eventually giving ownership of the platform to all its stakeholders.
Coming together
Bringing AR, and mobile devices, and blockchain tech all together will be a tricky task but we believe we’re at a tipping point in terms of hardware and blockchain development:
- Almost 60% of smartphones already support AR, and this number keeps growing thanks to computational abundance generated by Moore’s law.
- Mobile data is abundant and cheap and we’re at the dawn of 5g network that will increase bandwidth in orders of magnitude. This allow us to download and deploy in real time very heavy and complex 3D models.
- Ethereum blockchain faces scalability challenges that limit opportunities to onboard non-cryptosavvy mobile users… at the same time second layer solutions such as Loom allows to overcome Ethereum’s limitation while retaining the opportunity to peg to the main chain for full decentralization and security.
Why you should try OVR
AR and OVR isn’t just about new tech for the new generation. It’s not just about gaming either, as we’ve shown many practical applications in a previous post.
“We believe AR is for everyone and should be inclusive as a tech. For children, OVR can be a magic tool that allows them to see the real world merge with the imaginary one. Those uncomfortable with new consumer tech should also remember what e-mail did to physical mail… we believe AR will do something very similar to the way we interact with information and computers,” — Diego di Tommaso, COO.
To say it in the simplest terms possible, we want our app to be a magic mirror to an augmented world.
About OVR
OVR is a cutting edge AR platform powered by the Ethereum Blockchain. OVR makes it possible for users provided with a mobile device or a smart glass to live interactive augmented reality experiences customized in the real world. OVR can be defined as a new standard in augmented reality where geographical experiences are based on user’s position.
Website: https://www.ovr.ai/#intro
Like on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/OVRtheReality
Follow on Twitter — https://twitter.com/OVRtheReality
Join on Telegram: https://t.me/OVRtheReality
