What do you do when the technology you need doesn't exist yet?
I'm co-founder and CEO of HavenXR, an Australian immersive entertainment studio. We make cinematic VR experiences, and because nothing on the market did what our stories needed, we ended up designing the motion hardware too.
The problem.
Most location-based VR is an arcade. You put on a headset, you shoot things, you take the headset off. It's fun, and it is nothing like the thing we wanted to build.
We were interested in the cinema version. Narrative you sit inside, with physical effects doing the work a film score does, where the story is the point rather than the score at the end. Closer to a film than a game.
The trouble with that ambition is that nothing off the shelf was built for it. Free-roam arenas are designed for games and motion platforms are designed for rides. Neither is designed for a story that has to land emotionally in ten minutes.
Building a technology company is nothing like leading transformation inside an established one.
Everything you see, you should be able to feel.
A story only lands if the body believes it. So alongside the visuals we design the physical layer: wind, heat, cold, water, scent, vibration and movement, cued frame by frame to what is happening in front of you.
Cold air on your face as a storm builds. Heat as something ignites. The floor shifting under you a beat before you see why. Done well none of it registers as an effect. It just stops you questioning where you are.
The motion platform is part of that, and we did not invent it. We took an existing platform and adapted it until it did what our stories needed rather than what it was built for. That is a different and more honest claim than inventing hardware, and it is most of what R&D actually is.
What we're making.
The Keeper
Realm Rider
Walking on Water
“Tracy takes time to think broader than the initial problem in front of her, and leads with vision to take others on the journey ahead.”
“Getting to work with Tracy and get excited about the future has been such a joy, and I've loved seeing HavenXR through her eyes.”
“The broad vision for HavenXR grew from Tracy, and she has held strong on the direction and dream every day since.”
And a university on campus.
HavenXR has an industry partnership with the University of the Sunshine Coast, with our XR Lab sitting on the university campus. Students get access to virtual production and XR work that mostly doesn't exist in Queensland yet, and several of our team are UniSC graduates.
It's the part of the company I'm proudest of. Creating the jobs is more interesting to me than filling them.
Our operating partner NEXR Entertainment, based in Kuala Lumpur, handles attractions on the ground across Asia. Which is how an Australian VR studio ends up doing a launch in a Malaysian shopping centre.
Where we actually are.
Not open yet. We're targeting our first public opening in 2027.
I could write that more impressively, but one of the things running a startup teaches you is how much energy gets wasted on making early-stage work sound finished. We have four experiences in development, hardware we designed ourselves, a university partnership, an operating partner in Asia and no paying public yet. That's the honest position.
What it's taught me.
- Constraints are the brief. Our best decisions came from adapting what already existed rather than waiting for the perfect thing to arrive.
- Everything takes longer than the deck says. Including this. Especially hardware.
- R&D is a culture, not a budget line. You can tell within a week whether an organisation actually tolerates not knowing the answer.
- It has made me a better executive. I am far less patient with innovation theatre than I used to be, having seen what the real version costs.
Gold Coast 2018
Digital transformation with a deadline that could not move.
NextDigital and AI across 77 councils
Same job, a thousand more stakeholders, no single definition of done.