The people
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Working at Mirage VR
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On the TechWaterloo stage
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About
Mirage VR was founded by Chuang Li with Rui Lin, James Jiang and Peter Lai, and built full-body, multiplayer VR that let a group walk through a shared physical space rather than stand in place — high-fiving each other, talking and coordinating inside the same experience. The company came through Velocity, the University of Waterloo's incubator, and opened a hyperreality experience centre in downtown Kitchener. Li's February 2017 TechWaterloo talk, titled "Shorting VR", is unusual for coming from inside the category at its peak of optimism: he walked through 2016 headset sales — roughly a quarter of a million Oculus Rifts, half a million HTC Vives and three quarters of a million PlayStation VR units, which he called a disappointment — noted that Rift and Vive sales had flatlined over two months of 2016 while investment into VR tripled, and argued that the opportunity was not consumer hardware but location-based VR, effectively an arcade rebuilt around premium equipment nobody would buy for the home.
Backers
Not established. The company was affiliated with Velocity, the University of Waterloo incubator; no investor is on the public record.
Quick answers
What did Mirage VR build?
Free-roam, multiplayer virtual reality. Each player wore a lightweight computer on their back with hand and foot sensors, and moved physically through a shared space rather than standing in one spot, so groups could interact inside the same experience.
Why did its founder argue against VR?
At TechWaterloo in February 2017 Chuang Li presented 2016 headset sales figures, flatlining Rift and Vive sales and a tripling of investment, and concluded that consumer VR was ahead of its adoption curve — which is why he was building location-based VR instead.
Where was Mirage VR based?
Kitchener, Ontario. It came out of Velocity, the University of Waterloo's incubator, and opened a free-roam VR experience centre in the downtown.