ALPHACIRCLE
Transcending the Boundaries of Immersive VR Experiences

Virtual Reality (VR) has always promised a whole new world within sight, reaffirming itself as the ‘technology of the future.’ With each passing day, the technology is completely blending in with multiple facets of our daily lives foraying into video games, medicine, education, and beyond. Yet, there is one inconvenient truth the entire industry is familiar with poor image quality. It is this longstanding barrier hindering the growth of the VR market that Seongnam-based ALPHACIRCLE has set out to eliminate forever.

The inferior image quality is primarily due to the limitation of computational capability in smartphones and standalone HMD (head-mounted display) playback devices, which prevents the visual artists or engineers from rendering their videos in 8K 3D resolution. As the size of the visual representation area for HMD playback devices is very different from that of TVs or monitors, the image quality gets all the more degraded. Furthermore, VR video represents the full 360-degree space surrounding the user and the image quality perceived through a user’s field of view on VR devices is only standard definition (SD), therefore failing to create a truly captivating 3D virtual experience.

On that note, ALPHACIRCLE has developed the most advanced video engine software that dramatically improves VR image resolution played through smartphones or HMD devices to deliver incredible VR experiences.

“Through our proprietary solution, ALPHAView, creatives and visual professionals are easily able to produce a pure 8K 3D VR on smartphones or HMDs; with an image quality four times more superior than 4K 3D VR videos to make VR a stunning reality,” states Hyeonwoo Kim, Sales Director of ALPHACIRCLE.

ALPHAView is built upon two core technologies that play a crucial role in processing the software: image segmentation and playback synchronization.

Image segmentation is based on segmenting the 360-degree VR video into a certain number of images in order to intensively increase the number of pixels by optimizing the resources on the viewing angle.

Likewise, playback synchronization technology is used to adjust the rendered images on par with the user’s field of view and switch them seamlessly without any frame errors. As a result, users are able to experience a seamless movement when they turn their heads in different directions and thereby can enjoy VR content with the most superior image quality that they have never seen before.

What best articulates the excellence of ALPHACIRCLE’s revolutionary software is a slew of success stories and accolades that define how the company is setting new touchstones in VR based experiences with its leading-edge solution. The company has collaborated with ‘Genie Music’, one of Korea’s largest music content producers, to release the world’s first paid VR music album by the popular K-POP girl group ‘Mamamoo’ and then additional music albums with SF9 and ONF – two boy groups were separately produced in the following years.

More than 50 thousand units have been sold in total, prompting future collaborations between the content producers and ALPHACIRCLE. In addition; the company also partnered with CJ ENM, one of Korea’s largest entertainment and media companies to hold VR exhibition events and musical performances of ‘Shinbi’s Haunted House Adventure” throughout multiple venues, and delivered a brand new experience for fans who were waiting to watch the ever-popular anime series in a more immersive environment. What’s more, ALPHACIRCLE also cooperated with KITA (Korea International Trade Association) to produce 50 promotional 360 VR videos meant to be uploaded to their e-commerce platform to support 50 distinct small-scale enterprises.

Moving ahead, ALPHACIRCLE wants to focus on its ongoing project in which the company is working on its next-generation solution named ‘ALPHAStage.’ Combining live-action and graphical elements, ALPHAStage will be particularly supplied to those concert organizers and creators who would like to bring together a mesmerizing VR concert without spending much on stage installation and other production requirements. “We are also planning to add live-streaming and advanced interactive features to ALPHAStage that would usher in a whole new form of live concert experiences in the near future,” says Euihyun Shin, CEO of ALPHACIRCLE.