For $1, you can make the world a better place.
SimplifyXR is an Augmented Reality software that allows non-programmers to create heavy duty, industrial AR Applications twenty times faster.
This powerful software was created by our team of AR Developers, Graphic Artists, Multimedia Specialists, Instructional System Designers, Quality Assurance, Security, and Subject Matter Experts who hail from the very demanding aerospace, ship building, automotive, construction, oil & gas, and defense industries.
Our team uses SimplifyXR in-house to develop heavy-duty AR Applications for our customers in Aerospace, the US Military, Construction and Manufacturing.
Now we’re making it available to the public.
We’ve done all the heavy lifting, so you can create powerful, precise, high-fidelity AR from day one.Until now, it has only been used by our in-house team for challenging industrial AR requirements. Because we use our own product internally, we continually invest in the care and feeding of this product, to continually make it very easy to use, flexible, and capable of developing hard core AR experiences.
Help us make SimplifyXR a better product, with Four Powerful New Features.
Our Story
Five years ago, we were approached by the United States Navy, for an equipment maintenance solution that would result in zero errors, reduced time on task, and better, faster training. Their desire was an all-in-one on the job performance aid and training solution and that would help maintainers, artisans and soldiers rapidly and accurately repair very expensive aircraft and equipment that are critical to global safety.
They needed a solution, very quickly, with a very high degree of accuracy and fidelity for large, massive objects that maintainers would walk around, inside and out of, in harsh, dirty, real world environments.
They wanted a perfect solution that would keep the user engaged while in the real world, giving them knowledge at the point of need, allowing them to perform and validate their work on training and complex tasks such as design, assembly and maintenance.
In Augmented Reality (AR), you’re subject to God’s world, and that world moves around, has noise pollution, and interrupters at every point. The user is not in control of the environment. We liked that AR can keep the user in the real world, getting knowledge they need when and where they need it, while continuing to perform and validate their task, and also get collaborative feedback from local or remote subject matter experts.
We had some challenges with AR. The first solutions – even the best ones out there – caused terrible vertigo because the view overlay would jitter so badly. And obviously we couldn’t have our customers getting dizzy or sick.
AVATAR continually improves upon the existing vision sciences and hardware on the market.
We took what these products had, and applied some innovative science and ingenuity — we eliminated jitter, drift, and the need to place markers (or decals) on objects. AVATAR used the object itself to identify, launch and lock the AR experience. Utilizing our technology, the user has 100% confidence in the solution from day one.
We tested the product with about a hundred aircraft maintainers, and the response was overwhelming.
One (grown) man actually said, “I want to cry.”
We had quite a few maintainers saying “I wish I had this 30 years ago.”
Tests showed our first AR system, the Augmented Reality Maintenance Aid (ARMA) reduced time to trouble shoot by 75%, and reduced time to train by over 90%. Other AR systems our team constructed provide a 90% reduction in the time to perform Quality Assurance functions while reducing errors to zero.
ARMA was featured on the Science Channel and AMC Network. It was also featured at Sea-Air-Space 2018 (the largest Maritime Exposition in the US), and recognized as Best in Class by Vuforia for object recognition and accuracy, and was selected winner of a prominent Military Innovation Showcase.
Reducing Time to Develop
Although AVATAR had solved some of the biggest hurdles in enterprise AR, other challenges arose.
To develop a high-fidelity, industrial-grade AR that did not rely on markers, or just SLAM (Simultaneous Localization and Mapping) to launch and anchor the AR experience, was taking 4 to 5 times longer to produce than expected. With the evolution of Artificial Intelligence (AI), machine learning and Internet of Things (IoT), the platform needed to support both inbound data and outbound data storage from any (highly secured) data source.
We looked at the available AR development tools, but none met the requirements of our customers.
So our team developed an AR Development Software that could be used by any subject matter expert, not just a software developer, to create the high quality, heavy duty AR Experiences. The product had to work with not only the HoloLens, but iOS devices, android tablets, and ruggedized hardware. The result was SimplifyXR.
SimplifyXR is being used to create suites of products for specific industries, such as Construction.
SimplifyXR contains a Content Management System, and bundles assets in such a way that the user can make updates to the AR Experience without having to re-create everything from scratch.
Using drag and drop, visual workflow functionality, SimplifyXR offers both simplicity for creating most AR applications, as well as robust customization for complex projects.
What Makes SimplifyXR Better?
SimplifyXR is our secret sauce. No other AR Development tool has all of the following capabilities all in one package today. Now you can have the recipe.
Reusability – SimplifyXR’s architecture is modular, separating asset content/asset bundles (such as CAD models) from the AR application script, allowing you to build an application once (such as a Quality Assurance Inspection application) and reuse that application for different objects (such as two configurations of an engine). You don’t need to go through a whole build of the application for the device. This saves tremendous time, and ensures consistency throughout the application.
Fully Customizable – Our fully extensible architecture is unique in that we allow the developer to add custom developed components and integrate via a Unity API (automatic programmer interface). The benefit of the Unity environment is that it has a very wide pool of established talent to draw from.
Platform Agnostic – Unlike other large companies, SimplifyXR doesn’t lock you into using its other products. We take an agnostic approach to critical aspects of your project, giving you ultimate flexibility. And yet, with the AR landscape changing at an expontential speed right now, SimplifyXR is keeping its eye on the vision to support the industry as it changes and the “Big 5” span their wings.
Vision Science Agnostic – We support Vuforia and VisionLib, and with this campaign we will add support for ARKit, ARCore and others that the community needs. Take full advantage of the flexibility of SimplifyXR, configuring your AR experience to support object tracking, CAD tracking, planar tracking, markers, SLAM (Simultaneous Localization and Mapping), or a combination.
CAD/Animation Tool Agnostic – Integrate with any CAD/Animation tool supported by Unity (the ubiquitous AR development platform), giving you flexibility to use the tools you already have and know.
Hardware Agnostic – our solution supports Microsoft Hololens, iOS devices, Android, etc.
Feature Rich – Out of the box, SimplifyXR has a powerful workflow-based engine with over 207 pre-built directives or actions that require no coding whatsoever – basically, everything most companies need to develop a very wide range of AR applications. You can create a combination of visualization, AR, and step by step solutions in one application. It’s not just one of those choices. These features will increase with the inputs of you, our community.
Why Kickstarter?
As we work with more and more customers, we are hearing about critical features that would hyper-power their AR Experiences. The four features we are adding with your pledges are:
#1 – Analytics and Performance Metrics – Record and visualize end-user performance metrics and analytics related to the effectiveness of the AR experience and how the experience is being used.
#2 Simplified Creation – allows your best subject matter experts to create AR experiences for others while working on the job, ensuring best practices become standardized across all users.
#3 – Vision Sciences – we will add additional support for other vision sciences,including but not limited to ARKit and ARCore.
#4 – Your Choice – We want to make SimplifyXR 2.0 your preferred AR Development Tool, so the fourth feature will be the most brilliant idea(s) that YOU, our backers, provide to us. This way, our campaign will enable a product tailor built for you, with you.
What’s in a Name?
To us, AVATAR (the name we had long before Cameron used it for his small movie), means Advocate of the User – The Maintainer, Designer, Teacher, AR developer, First Responder, Warfighter. Our solutions are developed with the user in mind first, by understanding their world, responsibilities and needs before we write a line of code. And Partners – we cherish all our customers and the technology community – as Partners. We are all one, and we all ultimately want to make this world a better place.
AVATAR Partners Gives Back to the Community
For the past 16 years, we have donated a percentage of our profits to worthy causes, such as Domestic Violence (Laura’s House and OC Women’s Shelter of Long Beach, (Children’s Safety and Success (United Way of Orange County, Women’s Philanthropy Fund, Local Food Charities), Disabled Veterans (EOD Warrior Foundation, Wounded Warrior), Global Health (AIDS United), Environmental Efforts and Global Disasters (American Red Cross), to name just a few.
Thank you. Our team looks forward to singing your name in a song …. Cheers, Marlo
Augmented Reality is in a highly dynamic state, with the major players competing for the best hardware, vision science, etc. Everyone wants to make money in this game, but we want a solution that is flexible to fit all needs. Because SimplifyXR is hardware, vision science and CAD/animation software neutral, we know that the AR Experiences developed by you in SimplifyXR will also be reliant on these hardware and vision solutions. We will mitigate this risk by maintaining our agnostic, fully extensible architecture, as we go forward. Your pledge will support this!