Taiwanese technology company HTC has signed a strategic partnership with the municipal government in Shenzhen Province, southeast China. The deal will create a $1.5bn virtual reality investment fund and a research centre into the underlying technology.
The centre will be called the China VR Research Institute, and it will research, among other things, sensors, displays, graphics, data visualisation and human-machine interaction. The aim is to bring together business people, university researchers and finance experts to boost the Shenzhen’s VR infrastructure.
The technology will be applied to a wide variety of sectors, including healthcare, the military, engineering, design and manufacturing, HTC said.
The research will be funded by the Shenzhen Industry Guiding Fund, a venture capital fund. According to the scheme’s backers, it will be the world’s largest single VR-focused fund.
Cher Wang, the chairwoman of HTC, said: "It’s a great honour for us to enter into the strategic partnership agreement with Shenzhen. As a pioneer and market leader in the VR industry, HTC possesses groundbreaking technology and expertise. We hope that we can take this opportunity to merge this with Shenzhen’s local industry and academic institutes."
HTC is best known in the VR world for its Vive system, one of the first to go on sale.
For more visit Vive’s website.
Industry rivals like Oculus also have their own research groups dedicated to solving the many problems that VR technology still has to iron out.
Image: HTC’s Vive system in action (HTC)
