According to a confirmation by the Financial Times, Apple has recently acquired the UK-based motion capture firm iKinema, which develops “full body” motion capture software for games and movies. While the terms of the deal remain unspecified, Apple’s merely confirmed the deal and stated, “Apple buys smaller companies from time to time, and we generally don’t discuss our purpose or plans.”
iKinema gets its name from inverse kinematic technology, a process where physical movement is captured and interpreted by using alternative data. iKinema’s animation technology has been used primarily for games in virtual reality (VR) where users’ real-time movements are translated into the movements of 3D animations.
In their 2019 showreel, iKinema showed off a number of innovations, including its most recent installment of Orion, a software that’s used for capturing users’ movements with VR headsets, controllers, and HTC Vive Trackers.
While Apple likes to keep its cards close to its chest, it’s suspected that iKinema’s technology will be implemented in some form with Apple’s virtual and augmented reality (AR) developments, like the StarBoard AR framework found in iOS 13 and Apple’s AR developer platforms. iKinema has had past working relationships with other notable companies like Google and Microsoft. iKinema has also been used in the film industry, most notably for Thor: Ragnarok and Bladerunner: 2049.
