5 Apr 2023
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Sam Sprigg
From Start-up to XR Leader: Varjo’s AWE Story
Auggie Awards
Submissions for AWE’s Auggie Awards close at the end of this week, which means there is still time to get your nomination in for your XR project, release, campaign, experience, solution, platform, device – or anything else related to AR and VR technology.
With 16 categories to choose from this year, including a new ‘Best Snapdragon Spaces™ App’ category sponsored by Qualcomm Technologies, Inc. that comes with a $10k cash prize, there is an opportunity for whatever you have been working on related to XR to be showcased in this year’s Auggies.
With the Auggie Awards finalists being announced in less than two months’ time, we wanted to share the journey and success story of one of the XR industry’s most highly respected brands when it comes to virtual reality headsets – Finnish XR technology company Varjo.
From VR Start-up to XR Leader
The company’s name means “shadow” in Finnish, but its products are anything but dark and dull. Varjo has been making waves in the VR industry since it first came on the scene with its stylish, innovative and high-performance headsets. In fact, Varjo’s XR devices are designed to deliver virtual and mixed reality experiences that can offer human eye resolution experiences.
So, how did Varjo achieve all of its remarkable feats to date? And how did the company go from being a start-up at AWE to collaborating with major global brands, as well as the most recent winner of the ‘Best Headworn Device’ category in the Auggie Awards?
Jussi Mäkinen, Varjo’s Chief Brand Officer (pictured below), told us about the beginning of the company’s XR journey, through to where it is positioned in the industry today as a leader in the field of high-fidelity XR hardware.
Demos in a hotel room that sparked dialogue with the XR industry
Varjo was founded in 2016 and was driven by a vision of creating VR headsets that could match the resolution and quality of human vision. There was a lot of hype and over-promising with regards to features and functionality of existing technology in the XR industry at the time, and as a result, the company realized early on that in order to convince users, investors and the overall industry that their vision was achievable, they had to actually be able to show people what their product could do.
Varjo therefore needed to find the best place to showcase their technology and demonstrate how it helped to solve common issues with VR devices such as low resolution, blurry images, and limited field of view (FoV), which hampered the immersion and realism of VR applications.
That is where AWE and its passionate community came in, according to Mäkinen. In their first visit to AWE, Varjo didn’t even have a finished product, and their attendance was more of a reconnaissance mission. In fact, as Mäkinen recalls, in one of their early years of attendance at AWE, Varjo held a demo party from their hotel room at the event to allow invitees to see and try out their prototype device. Word quickly spread, and what was planned as a quick show-and-tell for a few select guests, quickly spiraled into long queues down the hotel hallway, with expo attendees all excited to try out an incredible piece of VR hardware that they had heard about from other guests. Palmer Luckey, the founder of Oculus even stopped by their room to offer words of encouragement to the team, according to Mäkinen.
Despite nearly missing their flight home due to the huge demand from people to try out their prototype, the vibe was extremely positive, and demonstrated to Varjo that they had something special that needed to be shared with people on the AWE expo floor. After this realization of the demand for what they were workin on, Varjo decided to make AWE the main industry event for the company, as they figured it would be the best place to start dialogue with the wider community and XR industry professionals.
The first milestone Auggie Award
Varjo officially debuted its prototype headset at AWE in 2018, where it won the Auggie Award for ‘Start-up to Watch.’ The award gave Varjo a lot of welcome exposure across the XR industry, and the buzz and excitement around the company that was received as a result of winning was partly what helped Varjo to convince investors that what they were working on was truly something special.
“We knew that we had an incredible team and product, but we also knew that we had to be credible in the eyes of our investors,” stated Mäkinen. “Once we received that first award, we felt like we had achieved a major milestone – it really put us on the map. Not only were we then seen as a credible player in the industry, but we were able to come out in front of the world and present our technology. It also helped us to get noticed by other investors.”
All the hard work that Varjo had put in since the beginning of its journey in 2016 was really starting to pay off. As much as obtaining funding is seen as a real tangible milestone to solidify a company’s achievements, for Mäkinen winning this first Auggie Award felt like its own major milestone, in that it helped to act as proof that the Varjo team’s conviction in their product and vision was well placed.
From start-up to XR industry leader in just four years
Winning this first Auggie helped to add fuel to the fire that was the burning desire of the whole Varjo team to work even harder and push even further within the XR industry. The following year at AWE 2019, Varjo announced its XR-1 headset, along with its collaboration with Volvo Cars – the first of many major global brands that the company would work with and receive investments from.
Volvo used Varjo’s headset to design and test new car models in mixed reality. The auto manufacturer was impressed by Varjo’s ability to deliver photorealistic MR experiences that could simulate different lighting conditions, materials, and textures, as well as overlay digital elements on top of the real world thanks to Varjo’s video passthrough functionality.
Since then, the company has gone on to work with a number of leading global brands, including Airbus, Audi, Boeing, Kia, Lockheed Martin, Saab, Siemens, Volkswagen and many more. Its headsets have been used for various purposes, such as training pilots and astronauts, designing buildings and cityscapes, conducting scientific research, and creating immersive entertainment experiences. Varjo has also partnered with leading software developers, such as Unity, Unreal Engine, Autodesk, iRacing, and others, to ensure compatibility and integration with popular VR platforms and applications.
The company has continued to innovate and improve its products over the years and in 2020, Varjo launched its XR-3 and VR-3 headsets to bring the next generation of immersive technology to the workplace. The devices feature improved resolution, a wider field of view, better ergonomics, and advanced hand tracking. 2022 saw the release of the company’s latest device with the Varjo Aero headset, which is a lighter and more affordable version of the company’s flagship VR-3 headset.
It was in 2022 that Varjo also received its second Auggie Award, winning the ‘Best VR Headset’ category thanks to its impressive Aero product – a remarkable achievement for a company that was considered a start-up with a prototype device only four years earlier. The award demonstrated Varjo’s leadership and excellence in the VR industry, as well as its ability to deliver cutting-edge technology that meets the needs and expectations of professional users across a wide range of industry verticals.
For Mäkinen, receiving these two Auggie Awards were some of the highlights of his career, with some of the proudest moments for him being when Varjo’s products have been showcased and launched on the expo floor at AWE’s annual events.
In fact, it is at AWE where Varjo has been able to get its products into the hands of fans, VR enthusiasts, consumers, and YouTubers who have subsequently posted video content and reviews sharing the impressive work that the company has been doing. It was partly this feedback from the VR community that inspired the company to work on its Aero device, since all of its other hardware has been created with a B2B focus in mind. As such, the one place where non-business users were able to experience these B2B devices has historically been at AWE’s events in Santa Clara.
A future as bright and crisp as the company’s headsets
Varjo is not resting on its laurels. The company is constantly working on new features and products that will push the boundaries of XR even further. One of its latest innovations is the Varjo Reality Cloud, which is a cloud-based service that enables users to stream photorealistic VR content from anywhere in the world. The service also allows users to create digital twins of real environments and objects, such as their homes, offices, or products, and share them with others in VR. This enables a new level of collaboration and communication across distances and devices.
The beauty of what Varjo has created lies not only in the stylish and sleek XR headsets that it creates, but in the fact that the company’s products are so much more than just their specs. A list explaining resolution, FoV, refresh rate, weight, and other VR device specifications, as impressive as they are in Varjo’s case, can only give you part of the picture. The full, high-fidelity, human eye resolution-quality picture truly has to be experienced by trying out Varjo’s devices first-hand.
And this is in part where its success lies. Varjo’s headsets seemingly unlock that awe that many veteran VR users only felt the very first time they tried out the technology, regardless of the device. This is down to a multitude of factors, including the craftsmanship of the headsets themselves, to the incredible demonstrations that Varjo carefully selects to showcase the absolute best abilities of its hardware each and every time they show them off in a public setting. But one thing is guaranteed that no matter what your experience is in a Varjo headset, it is bound to be one that you will not forget.
With the company now a firmly established key-player in the XR industry, it seems likely that in the years to come, Varjo could stand to add to its collection of Auggies trophies, and we truly can’t wait to see what the company chooses to submit to the competition next.
Join Varjo, along with hundreds of other exhibitors at AWE USA this year in Santa Clara, CA, from May 31-June 2, 2023. Varjo will be located at Booth 1042 on the 100,000+ sq ft expo floor at the event, where you’ll be able to check out the company’s incredible XR devices and demos.
Image source: Varjo
