Flashspoter - Sony Interactive Entertainment (SIE), the owner of the PlayStation brand, has just acquired Cinemersive Labs, a British startup. The startup is famous for developing a virtual reality application called Parallax which can convert regular 2D photos and videos into 3D volumes that can be explored with the movement of the head. The core technology developed by Cinemersive is a special artificial intelligence device to convert two-dimensional images into 3D shapes without the need for a special camera.
The entire Cinemersive team now joins Sony's Visual Computing Group division, a research team focused on graphics technologies such as game rendering, video coding, and generative AI models. Sony stated that the acquisition aims to advance visual Computing in games through the implementation of machine learning. The main Target is to improve the visual appearance of the gameplay, improve rendering techniques, and open up new levels of visual fidelity for players.
This acquisition is not just about buying VR technology, but rather an investment in the data pipeline for the future of gaming graphics. To train the AI model to produce realistic three-dimensional graphics, Sony needed large amounts of 3D data. Conventional methods such as object scanning or manual creation by artists proved to be expensive and slow, while Cinemersive technology offered a shortcut by leveraging the billions of 2D photos already available.
Sony itself in the past two years has directed a huge focus on improving machine learning-based graphics. PlayStation 5 Pro is designed with a new GPU, faster storage, and PlayStation Spectral Super Resolution (PSSR), an AI upscaling technology that allows the console to run games at lower resolutions and then upgrade them to 4K. Even in March, Sony released the latest version of PSSR which is able to issue more performance than PS5 Pro.
In addition, Sony is also working with AMD on a project called Project Amethyst. This multi-faceted collaboration aims to improve ray tracing and upscaling on future consoles. Cinemersive's 2D to 3D conversion technology can be one of the training data sources for the AI models on the project.
The added value of this acquisition lies in the efficiency of the 3D content it offers. Instead of creating 3D models from scratch, Sony could take advantage of an infinite number of existing 2D photos and videos. This not only speeds up the development of game assets, but also opens up new features such as creating characters or game environments from just a few phone photos.
The acquisition also created a clear differentiation from competitors such as Microsoft and Nintendo. Although they are also developing AI for graphics, Sony's approach by acquiring a startup focused on converting 2D to 3D is a unique move in the industry. Sony is not only relying on hardware improvements, but also innovations on the data pipeline side that have rarely been touched by other players.
For gamers, the changes from this acquisition will probably not be felt in the near future. But in the next three to five years, the technology born from this move could change the way people see, create, and play games. What was originally only possible in large studios with expensive equipment, now has the potential to result from simple photos taken from everyday mobile phones.