Introducing self-developed low-dizziness dynamic XR seats, ShallxR secures financing at the ten-million-yuan level | Financing debut

Author | Ye Danxuan

Editor | Yuan Silai

Hardcore Keji has learned that recently, VR technology startup ShallxR announced that it has received a new round of 40 million yuan in financing, invested by Anji Botai Investment Co., Ltd. It is understood that this financing is mainly used for its subsidiary, Zhejiang Nova Cockpit Technology Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Nova"), to build a new generation of XR dynamic platform, and to establish the supply chain foundation for products and solutions.

ShallxR was founded in 2018 and is a high-tech startup focusing on the XR field. Based on the years of accumulation of the core founding team, ShallxR has a relatively high reputation in the overseas XR geek camp, and the attempt to provide "10-minute mind blowing XR memory" for XR consumers in the European and American markets has achieved initial results. In 2024, ShallxR and Botai Co., Ltd. jointly established Nova, dedicated to promoting the intelligence of seat equipment.

According to the "2024 White Paper on the Development of China's Immersive Industry", the consumption market scale of China's immersive industry reached 92.7 billion yuan in 2023, an increase of 44% compared to 2019. It is expected to reach 112.4 billion yuan in 2024, exceeding the 100-billion-yuan scale.

Based on the observation of the domestic market environment, in July of this year, founder Tang Jianhong, in collaboration with the European team, launched the ShallxR iFly Chair (hereinafter referred to as the "Flying Chair") in the domestic market.

Currently, in the public's perception of XR experience products, most are still limited to VR head-mounted display devices developed by domestic and international giants, such as Meta's VR headset Quest 3S or ByteDance's Pico. Company founder Tang Jianhong observed that the unit price of VR personal head-mounted display devices is generally high, and except for the geek group, the public has not yet established a specific understanding of the playability of XR devices.

From the current LBXR (location-based extended reality) scenario, Tang Jianhong and his team found that "sitting and playing" is most in line with people's habits. However, the XR seat products in the domestic market generally have the problem of homogeneous experience, and more importantly, they do not carry high-quality XR game content.

Tang Jianhong disclosed to Hardcore Keji that a good XR experience requires the integration of the head-mounted display, seat, and content. Among them, the seat equipment carries the enhancement and interaction of all physical sensations except for vision, such as swaying, vibrating, tactile, or weightlessness experiences. The dynamic control technology of the equipment has become an important decisive factor for the XR experience.

ShallxR iFly Chair

It is understood that the existing traditional VR egg chair-type devices in China mainly use electric cylinder servo motor or crank multi-degree-of-freedom motion system technology, with a relatively small dynamic range and limited motion angles, and cannot rotate flexibly. As a result, the experience level that consumers can obtain is greatly reduced.

In response to this pain point, ShallxR has adopted the team's self-developed planetary gear dynamic solution in the integrated dynamic control technology of the Flying Chair. After equipping with this solution, the dynamic control can achieve a millimeter-level dynamic accuracy, and there will be no stuttering or "breaking the immersion" experience during the game. At the same time, the dynamic range achieved by this solution can reach a 40-degree roll, a 70-degree pitch, and a 360-degree rotation. Compared with devices using traditional control technologies, the dynamic range can be increased by up to several times.

The problem of dizziness, which is often criticized in the XR experience, is also the focus of the planetary gear dynamic solution. The team uses the optoelectromechanical software synchronization technology to reduce the delay and significantly alleviate the problem of device dizziness.

Tang Jianhong believes that the domestic consumers' understanding of the playability of XR devices can be quickly established through an excellent XR experience in an offline scenario. For ordinary users who receive less XR sensory stimulation, a 10-minute game in an offline experience scenario reduces the threshold of the XR experience from the expensive personal head-mounted display to the shared seat game, gradually generating the desire for repeat purchases through attempts.

In terms of the team, the company's founder and CEO, Tang Jianhong, once led the team to set a world record for crowdfunding of virtual reality products, creating the world's number one VR head-mounted display product and the second XR dynamic seat product in the XR track crowdfunding, and has a significant influence in the overseas geek circle. Its core team comes from well-known Internet companies such as BAT and well-known enterprises in the XR industry.