Innovators of Tomorrow—Pedro Kayatt

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Welcome to Innovators of Tomorrow. I'm your host Bob Duffy, here to bring you the sights, sounds, and inspirational work from developers in our innovator community from around the globe. 

Today, we are talking with Pedro Kayatt. Pedro is a leading innovator from Sao Paulo, Brazil. He's an avid game developer and entrepreneur, and Pedro is currently focused on VR, through his own company, VR Monkey, as well as collaborating with other publishers in Brazil. So let's talk with Pedro. 

Welcome to the show, Pedro. Thanks for calling in from Sao Paulo. 

Thanks for having me on the show, Bob. 

So, I'm excited to talk to you, Pedro, because VR is an area that you're into, and a lot of our community members are also really excited about VR. So my first question is, what are you working on? What are you doing in VR? 

Well Bob, we are working so many fields in VR, right now. We are working with industry-- doing industrial training. We are working with educational. We are doing, of course, games-- because everybody loves games. Right? 

Yeah. I love games, as well. But you are doing some things beyond gaming and entertainment. So now, the question I have for you is, on that side of things, are you trying to do some things that have a positive impact on the world with VR? 

Yes. Of course, Bob. As you understand, we are from Brazil. It's a developing country, and we must make it better. Right? And we understand that the only way that we can make our country better is through education. 

So our main idea is that, for instance, we have the [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH], that we are hosting at one of the biggest museums in Brazil. It's got a [INAUDIBLE] control. And there, we can have-- 25 people can experience half an hour of the prehistory of Brazil. And this makes people understand not only the educational part, through experiencing it, but also make the people understand that they can build that kind of technological environment. They can be part of it. So we are trying to inspire people to also be better than us, to create even further things, even better than what we do. That's very important for us, here at VR Monkey. 

That's great to hear. It's inspiring to hear, as well. And I think we all know-- those of us who have done VR-- you can't really understand it until you've done it. And it's cool that you're giving people a taste of it. 

But I want to ask about kind of that balance of doing something that's a personal passion of yours, to actually having it make sense on the business side. So how are you managing that? 

That's not easy. That's not easy, at all. Because, you know, through a 2D screen, people doesn't get what is Virtual Reality. They look through a trailer of something Virtual Reality, and they don't understand why it's so amazing. When you put the VR headset on, then you understand that this is amazing. 

For instance, educationally, it's amazing. But school doesn't have the money to pay for, like, Virtual Reality equipment-- even worse here, in Brazil, because of the taxes. So what we do, we are working with business models that we can borrow the equipment, and the schools just pay a license to use the equipment and the content. So we have this kind of control to help people to not spend too much money on the start, so they can really experiment before they buy something, before they are spending money. This is one of the main ideas that we are holding now. 

That is really neat. So one of the other questions I get from developers a lot is, really, how do you focus on all of the platforms? So you've got the stuff from the mobile side, to the consoles, to Vive and Oculus, and with mixed-reality stuff from Microsoft-- many, many, many more coming. So how do you guys deal with that? I mean, do you focus on one side of it? Or are you just spread across all of it? 

It's hard. But we understand that we want to reach most of the people that has headsets. There are not too many people using headsets, right now. So we focus on creating content for standalone devices and mobile headsets. But then we have a pipeline, here in the company, that can scale up these experiences. So the idea that we make it with very basic graphics for these standalone devices, and then we can scale it up for HTC Vive and Oculus Rift-- bringing much more quality to the visuals, and much more experience with the 6DOF. So this makes a lot of difference, and we can reach anybody who has a headset-- that's our main idea. 

All right. So another area that I know developers are struggling with-- because they want that six degrees of freedom. Right? They want the more immersive VR. And that's dealing with motion sickness. Have you guys run into this? Are you doing anything to help with motion sickness? 

I'm very sensible for motion sickness, Bob. So I'm a great tester, here in the company. Because, what I test, I just take it off and say, oh, my god. I'm going to throw up. Sorry, guys. This is worst. And it's hard-- it's really hard to get that feeling. 

So, for instance, in our last game, Apocalypse Rider-- that we are about to launch-- the idea is that you're riding a motorcycle, and you can just steer the bike moving your head. It makes much less motion sickness. Because when you get it, you are just driving. It's easy. You don't get the sickness. You don't get this disconnection between the reality and the virtuality. So the virtual is much easier to understand when you are moving your body to do something. On this, we do a lot of research, trying to get the great sensation, and trying to make people just see. 

All right. So you've got a lot going on. But what's next for VR Monkey? 

Well, we just got a funding from [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH]-- that's a government institution here in Brazil-- and we are building what we call the Virtual Lab. That's a Virtual Reality laboratory, where you can do experiments in chemistry, and math, and physics-- everything-- just using virtual reality with motion controllers, [INAUDIBLE] for precision, everything. And it's safe and cheap-- cheaper than real laboratories. And we understand that we can just change the location as it is doing this. 

And also, we are working several other games. We are about to launch-- after Apocalypse Rider, we are launching Viking Days. That's a game that you kind of experience living as a Viking-- but, like, running from giants, luring dragons, forging swords-- it's really amazing. [INAUDIBLE] And the motion control is easier, so you'll hit the stuff. You're just launching axes. It's amazing. 

And we have more games to come. One of them-- it's a pretty awesome idea-- it's basically a not-a-job simulator. So you try to not work. You would love that. 

Yeah. I want to do that-- so I can not work, and be a Viking. 

Exactly. 

Excellent. That's great. So Pedro, you are really fantastic, and all the work that you're doing here. And I want to just give a special thank you for taking time to come on out and do the show. 

Thank you very much, Bob. Thanks for having me. 

You can connect with Pedro and follow along with his project at the link provided. Also, we encourage you to learn more about the Intel Software Innovator Program, and what Intel is doing in the field of VR. 

That wraps up this installment of the show. Be sure to Like this video, and subscribe to the Intel Software YouTube channel, to keep learning about innovators of tomorrow. And, on behalf of an amazing video crew, thanks for tuning in. I'm your host, Bob Duffy. We'll catch you later.