March 10, 2021: SURREAL Events—a virtual experience production company with offices in Chicago, Atlanta and Portland—has launched SURREAL, a web-based, 3D virtual environment where audiences can experience fully customizable and unparalleled events. 100% browser-based and pixel-streamed from the Cloud, SURREAL can scale from 50 to 50,000 participants for real-time, interactive events.
Conceived in 2020, SURREAL was aggressively developed in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, which has decimated the live event and trade show industry. A best-in-class virtual Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) for intuitive, immersive events, SURREAL provides clients with a strategy for hybrid events that integrates both physical to virtual experiences.
SURREAL was built with Unreal Engine, the same revolutionary gaming engine behind Epic Games’ Fortnite and Disney’s The Mandalorian. This not only enables realistic, real-time 3D rendering but allows SURREAL to be configured into any environment—real or imagined—to fit the needs of clients and event organizers.
“SURREAL complements physical events without the traditional limitations of IRL, such as cost, carbon footprint or physical location,” said Josh Rush, Co-Founder and CEO of SURREAL. “While face-to-face communication is lasting and impactful, virtual connections are equally as powerful and important—and can seamlessly extend experiences by removing the limitations of time or location in the form of a preview, post-party or exclusive VIP offering.”
SURREAL serves clients and audiences across any industry:
· Corporations & Organizations (conferences, trade shows, meetings, virtual offices)
· Education (from high school to higher learning)
· Music (festivals, tours, concerts, arena shows & venues)
· Film & Television (broadcast, red carpet events, premieres & promotions)
· Arts & Humanities (openings & exhibits)
· Sports & Athletics (eSports, leagues/teams & venues)
From tradeshows and conferences, sporting events and fan engagements, SURREAL is not here to replace real life but offers an enhancement of what is possible. In addition, the SURREAL platform’s key features include:
· Customizable “Real” Venues: create an event from pre-built venue templates, or design an entirely bespoke world.
· Personalized Avatar Creator: select from pre-built templates or create a custom digital twin.
· Intuitive Navigation: easily locomote around the space via computer mouse, teleport function or WASD / arrow keys.
· Social-First Interactions: communicate organically via video, voice or text tools anywhere on the platform.
· Presentation Tools: Run slides, websites, streamed or pre-recorded video using easy-to-use presentation tools.
In order to enhance the lifelike quality of the avatar creator, SURREAL recently partnered with DNABLOCK, one of the world’s leading platforms for creating bespoke, photorealistic 3D avatars and cinema-quality animated content. This partnership will enable clients and attendees to create high-definition, custom avatars that mirror facial and physical features. By enabling avatars to be mapped to a simple photo upload through DNABLOCK’s avatar API, SURREAL is taking its social-first approach to the next level by creating a true digital identity for users that does not exist on any other platform. For more information, contact Evie Smith at [email protected].
About SURREAL
SURREAL is a first-of-its-kind virtual event platform enabling audiences across industries to connect, collaborate and celebrate in entirely new ways. Web-based, hosted in the Cloud and pixel-streamed to participants, SURREAL provides a “digital twin” to physical events and experiences—bridging the possible and impossible in any virtual environment imaginable. Designed to be social-first, gamelike and avatar-based, SURREAL inspires organic meetings and real-world “collisions” in a variety of spaces and with intuitive tools that make it easy to converse and connect with colleagues. Visit surrealevents.com for more information.
