This timeline shows select milestones that got us to where we are today since our founding in 2013. Click on a headline for more information or checkout our blog posts:
High Fidelity was working on a number of internal projects and prototypes in Q1 and Q2 of 2020. We had working prototypes of our 3D audio technology that could now be used via a web browser on nearly any device. In May, we decided to open it up to the public for beta testing. Read more about our thinking here: Come Together, in High Fidelity
In our quest to help find the on-ramps to the virtual reality metaverse, we had a revelation: We were using our platform as our virtual headquarters office. "Toward A Digital World" gives some insight to our thinking at the time.
We also launched a 3D avatar creator that allowed you to take a selfie with your phone and customize your own avatar. Learn more about Virtual You, the app we launched into the Apple and Google app stores.
By mid-2018 we began doing load test events to try and get as many people as possible into one virtual space at the same time — no sharding. During our October 2018 test, more than 700 visitors from 45 countries joined our October 6 load test, and we reached peak concurrency of 423 people!
Read more about our early VR load tests.
After five years in development, we released the first public iteration of our our near-field audio technology designed for virtual world. Read "Whisper In My Virtual Ear."
High Fidelity launch a distributed digital asset registry that was design to power a virtual worlds economy.
What quickly followed was the ability to exchange payments between avatars on the blockchain.
Thanks to our investors, we got our hands on a developer kit of the HTC Vive in the spring of 2015.
And in July we had it working within High Fidelity along with an Oculus Rift — in the same virtual space. Read more about the "First Contact."
The first iteration of a basic marketplace was launched and designed to be a sharing point for world-builders wanting to share digital assets like scripts, avatars, building materials, educational tools, and other things needed to create VR content.
In 2012, the first generation of consumer-grade VR hardware came to life with Oculus's Kickstarter campaign, which raised $2.5 million, and subsequently sold to Facebook in 601 days after that. High Fidelity's mission has always been to build the next generation of virtual worlds — so we started building "the internet for VR."
Read the company's official launch annoucement in the blog post from April 2013.
This was our first logo!
From the beginning we have focused on creating an audio experience to make it engaging and immersive for people to use. We continue to build on our patented technology today.
Read more about our design thinking here.
Our first attempt to bring avatars to life involved capturing data on movement, facial, and gaze information from as many channels or devices as we can and streaming this data, along with very high quality audio, at low latency and high FPS.
Read more about our early prototypes.
