Companion is a patented technology designed to facilitate device-agnostic participation in shared immersive experiences. Using Companion, a quick onboarding process from a user allows them to bring their device into a multi-user virtual environment, seamlessly augmenting the user / player’s experience.
During my time as Head of Development at Draw & Code, we were regularly building immersive experiences for partners or our own products. At the time, modern VR and AR were still very much in their infancy, and we were unsatisfied with the limitations that consumer devices imposed; either support was missing outright, or users needed to own specific (and expensive!) hardware to enjoy an experience. When it came to multiplayer / multi-user games and experiences, this limited support locked users out, and frustrated the development of shared experiences, especially in environments where we wanted people to turn up as they are, and be able to participate.
Companion was born out of these experiences: I led the design and development of a system which allowed the seamless onboarding of devices to allow users to participate in a shared virtual world. In practice, this might mean that a user with a VR headset could enjoy a full VR experience, whilst bringing their phone into the experience to take advantage of the device’s gyroscope or touch-screen. A user without a VR headset could view the same experience on a flat screen, or if their device supported it, an AR view with a physical spatial anchor to allow correct spatial orientation and positioning within the virtual world.
Using Companion, devices could act as a player’s main device, or could be brought into the shared experience as peripherals or augmentations.
You can find out more about Companion on the Draw & Code website, and by reviewing the patent award (Patent GB2551323).
