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Over the past few years, NZ has been steadily pushing innovation in the areas of virtual reality, gaming and human interface technologies. We’ve seen some big international players eye and buy NZ gaming firms like Wellington-based NZXR - recently bought by Niantic, the people behind the wildly successful Pokemon Go app.
A lot of the early Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality work in New Zealand actually took seed at The Human Interface Technology LAB - HIT Lab, a University of Canterbury research institute and an offspring of its US-based parent.
HIT Lab turns 20 this month and in this Voices episode, Kadambari Raghukumar speaks to David Huang, who graduated from the lab in April this year and Dr Adrian Clark, Senior Lecturer in Applied Immersive Game Design at HIT lab.
Hear the full conversation:
HIT Lab has had such a successful track record that over the last 10 years alone, it’s attracted about NZ$14 million in research funding.
David recently developed what he claims is one of the world’s first smart phone AR app - the pandemic had a big part to play in the impetus for this, particularly developing the app for younger users.
The app is called Oasis AR and it’s been downloaded worldwide over 20,000 times and continues to grow steadily in its user numbers.
"The AR and VR market is going to boom in the next three to five years, this is really just a beginning" says David.
Hear the whole interview with David Huang and Adrian Clark:
