XR Central: Guiding the world into new realities

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1.Tell us about your company and how did you come together?

XR Central is a start-up based out of Gurgaon. We specialize in metaverse creation for a diverse array of industries, as well as creating interactive design content using immersive technologies such as virtual and augmented reality (VR and AR).

The company was founded by Anshul Agarwal and Shrey Mishra. The organisation's vision is to democratize the way XR technology has been used to solve real world problems. As such, XRC is rapidly expanding its footprint in the Metaverse and Web 3.0 spaces to enable individuals and organisations to be metaverse-equipped. We are doing so with our in-house product called MetaQube, a metaverse builder powered by a gaming engine which will enable individuals and companies to build their own metaverse within minutes.

2.Everyone is talking about the metaverse and AI being the next big thing, what is the hype about according to you?

Put simply; the metaverse is a new place for everyone to conduct business. The technology and concept is so new that people will invent new ways to create and test its boundaries and add to our collective understanding of the power of digital environments. It's similar to the onset of the internet, or mobile technology, which enabled a boom in wearable tech and parallel development in communication, healthcare, and retail.

3.You are a tech company dealing in AR & VR, with 5G around the corner you think it is the best time to focus your energies into this realm?

Of course. A scale rollout of VR and MR will come a little later, because as you rightly said, the metaverse is also heavily dependent on 5G to make it truly ubiquitous. Currently, the technology and internet coverage in less populated, rural areas in India do not support a full-fledged metaverse. It does however support AR and WebVR enabled solutions which work over lower bandwidth and across mobile devices.

4.Most interesting part is the tribute you have given to the late Lata Ji. Please expand on that in your own words?

The tribute experience was built using the super-fast and super-powerful metaverse builder the MetaQube (platform by XR Central), enabling visitors to have a fast, seamless, and cross-device experience. In the experience, visitors will be able to select avatars, toggle between first person and third person views, and interact with friends and family in a beautiful, immersive virtual setting. The XR Central team has additionally come up with a unique interactive feature which will allow visitors to create their own melodies in the experience.
The #Metatribute experience features state-of-the-art spatial audio, which mimics the behaviour of sound waves in real-life environments, and above all, this #Metatribute project is the team's effort to honour one of the legends of our country.

5.What big things are you looking forward to?

The fact that there will be near-infinite applications for the metaverse. Our near future plan is to build use cases around fan zones (especially sports), brand experience centres, learning & training rooms for corporates and the ed tech industry, and art galleries and fairs (provide artists a new platform to showcase work). The core of our platform will be immersive collaboration and community for the developers and creators. We are really looking at democratizing the way immersive solutions have been architected and consumed. Cost, time to market and infrastructure of the entire metaverse (XR solutions) will be disrupted with our platform MetaQube.

6.How much of the world is going to change by what you are doing?

Our aim is to provide organisations and individuals with the tools and the understanding to transition smoothly into the emerging metaverse reality. When we speak about smooth transition, we are cognizant of the fact that we must not force any behavioural changes. Hence, we are continuously learning human behaviour in sync with the technological advancements and continuously applying the same to our platform to give a real life like feel and emotion. Given the range of applications of the metaverse, we could be looking at a technological change which is similar to the adoption of mobile tech. So that would be a pretty significant change in the way people run things. This change will be incremental, not sudden; but people and corporations will need expert XR practitioners and XR Central to guide them through it.