Rethinking arctic diving experience. Diving in freezing water may not be everyones cup of tea. We are working to make participation on arctic diving possible for even those who prefer not to leave the warmth of their living room but still has curiosity to see what lies beneath the surface.

Virtual reality (or meta verse, if you prefer redefinitions of old things) has taken some baby steps during the last decade. The current breed of VR Goggles enables immersive experience in 180-degree field-of-view footage that really is an awesome experience. Our aim is to utilize this technology for live diving experience thru your VR headset (Playstation or Oculus).

Needless to say there are “few” technical hurdles to overcome before this is a reality. The main underlying challenge is the bandwidth requirements. More pixels equals better quality, higher frame rate equals better experience. Diving is not happening in places where there is fiberoptic cable available so it has to be done over mobile communication networks (either terrestrial or satellite). Those technical requirements are the polar opposite of traditional technical properties of mobile communications.

Best VR camera systems can capture 8K video currently which is roughly 4000 x 4000 pixels per eye. Current breed of top of the line consumer VR headsets have resolution of 2000×2000 pixels per eye which roughly translates to 4K video. Current high compression rate codecs such has HEVC (h.265) can transfer 4K video with bandwidth of 12Mbps for 24 fps video which is very much achievable uplink speed even for 4G network or modern high speed satellite communication systems. There are several buts there, as real life speed is very often entirely different thing from theoretical maximum.

But technical building blocks are there to offer real-time live virtual reality diving experience to streaming customers. Stay tuned for updates!