It’s been a while since we’ve heard from UK-based Cooperative Innovations. Today, though, it’s got plenty of news to share.
First up, it’s raised some cash. The team today revealed it had raised £500,000 (about $653,000) in a round of seed funding. Investors include Craig Fletcher, Ascension Ventures and Trend Investment Group. Cooperative Innovations says it will use this money to expand its team (it’s now hiring), but also launch something a little different.
Cooperative Innovations is also announcing pilot licensing for its VR/AR avatar mapping system, Ikabod. It’s designed to more accurately represent a user’s physical movements through their virtual bodies. Like other animation systems, it does this using the position of the headset and controllers. But the developer claims Ikabod also uses real-time animation corrections to deliver more realistic results. that hopefully means no more elbows suddenly shooting off in weird angles.
It’s currently available as a plug-in for Epic Games’ Unreal Engine. Speaking to Upload, studio CEO Simon Barratt said that Ikabod was focused on that engine for now but the team would look at bringing its tools to other platforms in the long term.
We should see Ikabod in use in the studio’s upcoming game, Raiders of Erda.We’ve been excited about Erda for some time. It’s a fantasy action game with co-op support. Players will take on quests, raiding dungeons with swords and arrows. In a preview back in 2017, we said it was like a dream come true for dungeon crawling fans. No word yet on when it might release and on what platforms, but we’ll keep an eye out.
Elsewhere, the studio says it’s also working on another unannounced multiplayer VR title.
