Improbable, a spin-out of Cambridge University, has raised $20m in series A backing from investment firm Andreessen Horowitz as the computing firm looks to corner the market for the backdoor functions of the growing virtual reality market.
Launched in 2012, the series A marks the first investment round for the UK-based firm.
Improbable is creating software which will essentially act as the foundations upon which a simulated world can be built. With an eye on the gaming sector, which will be increasingly making use of virtual reality as headsets begin to roll out this year, Improbable is looking to make the process of creating a virtual world a simpler one for games programmers.
One of the main problems games developers face when creating open worlds for players to engage in is the scale of the worlds. Generally, programmers will have to create shortcuts to give the gamer the illusion of scale when in fact only a small handful of entities actually exist in the game at any one time. So, for example, while the hero is saving the princess from castle A, the horde of villainous creatures he’ll have to fight through to save the next princess from castle B are yet to spawn.
Improbable’s tech will instead allow for millions of entities to co-exist within the same world simultaneously. Improbably also plans for the software to simplify the process of creating the worlds, allowing developers to focus on creating the world rather than getting into the nuts and bolts of how it’s going to work.
Chris Dixon, general partner at Andreessen, will join the firm’s board as part of the deal, and sees uses for Improbable’s technology beyond gaming: “Improbable is useful in any field that models complex systems — biology, economics, defense, urban planning, transportation, disease prevention, etc. Think of simulations as the flip side to “big data.” Data science is useful when you already have large data sets. Simulations are useful when you know how parts of the system work and want to generate data about the system as a whole. Simulations are especially well suited for asking hypothetical questions: what would happen to the world if we changed X and Y? How could we change X and Y to get the outcome we want?”
