We have all witnessed that 2016 became the year of extreme blooming of virtual reality around the world. The VR landscape in China has also been developing since the last year. Huge companies, such as Alibaba, all dived into the field of VR and AR one after another in order to keep up with the trend and provide better service. Simultaneously, many young people seized the opportunity, lots of start-up companies emerging in VR industry as a result.

Onlight VR is one of these companies that followed the trend tightly. It is a young but fast-developing company which focuses on producing VR contents. It has been less than two years since Onlight VR was founded. However, the company has already grown into one of the most competitive VR production companies in China. I talked with Guangpu Zhang, the CEO of Onlight VR, and asked him about his current VR live streaming  projects, as well as his opinion on the future of the industry.

The Foundation of Onlight VR

Currently, the team Onlight VR consists of six people. The founder of Onlight VR is Guangpu Zhang and his classmates Yang Meng and Tian Zhang. They all graduated from Shanghai University. G. Zhang has the background of Digital Media Techniques. Meng and T. Zhang majored in Broadcast TV Engineering. The three of them used to hold College Student Electronic Music Festival together. Technical supervisor Zhixiang You is a PhD student in Shanghai University, focusing on 3D printing and virtual reality new media study. R&D engineer comes from Shanghai Vancouver Film School, proficient in coding and 3D engine.

When talking about why he came up with the idea of establishing a virtual reality start-up company, Zhang said he was completely blown away by the virtual reality technology the second he tried it. “ I’ve learned a lot about digital media during my school years, and I know the technical side as well. I really believe VR will be the next bomb that’s going to hit the entire media industry. I talked to my self: Why not? We are still young. We've got the gut to change the world”, Zhang said.

VR Live Streaming

Since Onlight VR founded, the company has been developing fast. Till now, not only did they created a lot of 360 videos that applied to fields from advertising to film, but they also collaborated with several well-know companies in China and accomplished many crucial innovative projects. This is huge to a start-up company which has been out there less than two years in the industry.

The Poster of Strawberry Music Festival

One of the major projects they did is live streaming of Strawberry Music Festival. The music festival business is growing in China nowadays. When talking about what cultural events do they turn to spend their leisure time, a lot of people rank music festivals at the top of their chart. Therefore, there’s no wonder why festival holders and VR companies wants to explore more ways of promoting themselves. Because music festivals have great live vibes, it is perfect to apply live VR streaming to it.

“Virtual Reality TV and film contents will have huge markets. However, this kind of contents requires to be on a certain artistic level, besides basic equipment, so VR live streaming became the first step, a kind of transfer station, along the journey of eventually realizing the VR film dream.”

The Logo of Visual World Challenge

Another live streaming project that Onlight VR is on to now is Visual World Challenge. It is claimed to be the first outdoor survival VR live streaming reality show around the world. The show will invite 10 participants in total. The whole process of the game show, from special field training in Discovery base, to the 72-hour final outdoor surviving competition, will be live streamed.

The viewers can expect the show to be a live version of “The Survivor” and “The Hunger Games”, and the final competition result will be determined completely by the fans, from the supply of props to the rising of ranks.

One of the greatest advantages of the show being streamed in VR is that, as Zhang mentioned, the viewers will see the whole show from an omniscient perspective. The final outdoor competition will be held in a primeval forest, so the VR users will feel as if they were in the same fierce environment, which is the middle of the wilderness. “We will bring them the most thrilling experience”, said Zhang.

The program will launch in this June, and stream for 15 days. The show is being prepared tensely right now. Onlight VR say that the team has strong faith in the outcome.

Looking Into The Future

Talking about the company’s future, Zhang says they are thinking about recruiting more talents and expand the their business.

“We are offered with more and more collaboration opportunities, a lot of them from the well-known big companies in China. I am still a firm believer in virtual reality. There will definitely be more people using VR in the nearly future. I am pretty positive”, Zhang said.