VR App Dev for Production Company
- AR/VR Development
- $200,000 to $999,999
- Jan. 2016 - Feb. 2020
- Quality
- 5.0
- Schedule
- 4.5
- Cost
- 5.0
- Willing to Refer
- 5.0
"The visual fidelity of their products is very high."
- Media
- Sunnyvale, California
- 1-10 Employees
- Phone Interview
- Verified
After going through the project requirements and providing research-based recommendations, Lucid Reality Labs developed an Android and iOS VR app using Unity. They developed the cloud infrastructure on AWS.
Lucid Reality Labs delivered high-quality work at a great price, resulting in customer satisfaction. Their work generated revenue for the business and was successful in the eyes of the third-party clients. Not only was the team organized, but they were also flexible and specialized in their methods.
A Clutch analyst personally interviewed this client over the phone. Below is an edited transcript.
BACKGROUND
Introduce your business and what you do there.
Wheelhouse Media is a production company based in Charlotte, North Carolina. My official title is head of VR/AR or head of immersive technology.
OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE
What challenge were you trying to address with Lucid Reality Labs?
We needed to create a VR music album. The concept was to create 360-degree videos for different tracks. These were the very early days of VR, around 2016.
This label company was representing a music group called, and they wanted to do 10 different VR tracks, one for each song in the album, and release them as an Android and iOS app.
SOLUTION
What was the scope of their involvement?
We dove deep into the details of what would and wouldn’t be included, based on the client’s overall goal. Lucid Reality Labs made a lot of recommendations based on their development experience, in terms of what was the right platform to use, and what the right architecture was.
There was a discussion on whether we wanted to have the videos embedded into the app. Users would then need to download a large app, but the playback would be immediate.
The alternative would be to host the videos on the cloud and stream them, but that would present a bandwidth issue for people on the road and without access to Wi-Fi, and those connections wouldn’t be suitable for a proper viewing experience.
Lucid Reality Labs did the research to ensure that we would pick a good option. The core application was built with Unity, and the big benefit there was that we could deploy it to both stores, as per the client’s requirement. The cloud infrastructure was built on AWS.
What is the team composition?
I worked with Alex (Founder & CEO), Eugene (CTO), and a product manager. My daily or biweekly contacts were with the product manager. Every so often, I would interact directly with the developers.
How did you come to work with Lucid Reality Labs?
I believe I initially found them on a platform for software contractors. Prior to this one, I was working on a personal project, and I found Lucid Reality Labs. I wanted to turn that into a startup, but I decided to drop it after a few months.
The work itself was great, so, when I had this request from Wheelhouse, they were my first choice. I knew they’d do a great job of delivering.
How much have you invested with them?
I’ve spent $220,000–$230,000 on their services so far, across several projects.
What is the status of this engagement?
We started this project in January 2016. My relationship with Wheelhouse ended in February 2020, when COVID-19 started and they weren’t able to produce videos anymore. Otherwise, I have little doubt that we’d still have ongoing projects there. I still do projects with Lucid Reality Labs outside of Wheelhouse.
RESULTS & FEEDBACK
What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement?
Lucid Reality Labs is one of the few companies I’ve worked with that has a relatively low cost without compromising quality. They have a high level of quality, delivery, and communication matched with pricing that allows me to be profitable. That’s why I keep going back to them.
All of our deliveries have been successful. We have high levels of customer satisfaction, and there were a few instances where the project led to more business with the customer. Specifically, the candy manufacturer client deployed the application we built for them internally, to all their employees.
The app was pushed to about 30,000 phones, as part of an internal marketing effort, and it was a big success. They’re looking to roll it out publicly now, which in itself is a testament to the quality of Lucid Reality Labs’ work. We were extremely happy with the revenue generated as a result of their work.
How did Lucid Reality Labs perform from a project management standpoint?
They were very organized from the onset. After scoping, they provided us with a detailed development schedule with the cost. It was easy for us to communicate that to the client, as well as to make sure that we had a large enough buffer when we priced it in order to include our own overhead.
Lucid Reality Labs has product managers responsible for every project. I always have a point person to talk to and get weekly updates from. I used to be a programmer myself, so it was relatively important for me to stay close to the technical decisions.
They were flexible in this sense, and they were happy to accept it whenever I asked to be involved in technical discussions. Even when we had a long process of scoping out a project, the team never charged me for it.
It’s common practice to charge for this, and there were many times when Lucid Reality Labs had to scope a project that didn’t turn out to be accepted. It’s just the nature of selling.
Being able to outsource everything to do with development, including technical scoping and creating statements of work, is good even if just one out of seven projects is accepted by the client. Lucid Reality Labs was incredibly helpful on that side.
What did you find most impressive about them?
I’m most impressed with the quality of content. I’ve seen companies with people that could do many things. They didn’t have specialists; they just had generalists, so the quality of individual tasks wasn’t extreme.
With Lucid Reality Labs, if they need to do a character or environment design project, it’ll be very high quality. I gave them a project to model a camping site in the middle of a forest, and they did a beautiful job.
Beyond the technical aspects of software development, there’s also the visual artistry of it. A lot of their team members came in from the gaming industry, and that adds a lot to it. The visual fidelity of their products is very high. I often feel I’m working with an art studio, not a software company.
Are there any areas they could improve?
There are always things to improve. Lucid Reality Labs was a much smaller company in 2016, when I started working with them. I don’t know how big they are today, and I don’t want to frame this as an area of development, but one of the things that changed was that their process became more standardized.
One of the fun things about working with them when we first started was my relationship with Alex. It was fun to work together. Right now, I’m mostly working with product managers and sometimes with Eugene. That’s not really a point of improvement. I'm impressed with their delivery and cost.
Do you have any advice for future clients of theirs?
I would recommend working with Lucid Reality Labs on the technical level, and trust them at the artistic level. I’ve found that they have a lot of great ideas, and, if they’re given enough rope, they’ll do great work.
I’ve recommended them to a friend that develops VR meeting spaces, and they designed all the environments and avatars for those. My friend had a clear idea of what he wanted, and, when he let Lucid Reality Labs run with their own ideas, they came back with much better suggestions and designs.
RATINGS
-
Quality
5.0Service & Deliverables
-
Schedule
4.5On time / deadlines
-
Cost
5.0Value / within estimates
-
Willing to Refer
5.0NPS