Business Plan - Asteroid

Asteroid is a game engine for programmers. Unlike other game engines aimed for use in game
development, which prioritize managing assets like 3D models and animation, Asteroid focuses
more on high performance graphics, scripting capabilities and realistic simulation. It will be most
useful in the fields of AR, VR, autonomous vehicles and robotics.

Product

Asteroid relies heavily on open source. High performance graphics software already exists, but
has not been wrapped into a form that is usable by most programmers.

Features:
Realistic graphics and physics: Asteroid relies is built on the Panda3D graphics engine
and the bullet physics engine
Simulation in the cloud: environments built in Asteroid can be uploaded and run on high
performance GPUs as a cloud service
[To be built] Multiplatform, but for the new platforms of Oculus, Hololens, etc
[To be built] Desktop editing app and in-VR editor for creating environments
[To be built] 3D model library: asset store for common and remixable 3D models

Market Landscape

Game engines are usually used in the entertainment industry, for creating video games, VR
experiences and film. Most video game studios still use in-house game engines, though there
are a number of 3rd party game engine software companies. The market leader is Unity, which
is valued at $2.8 billion dollars. The only other competitors are companies like Unreal, whose
main focus is on creating games rather than engines.

Game engines are expected to find a number of new uses because of the emerging
technologies of VR, AR and AI. A new type of game engine will likely be needed to create VR
and AR apps and experiences, one that incorporates realistic simulation of the entire world
environment. For autonomous cars and robotics, game engines will be important in creating
simulations to train agents on specific situations to a high level of accuracy.

Business model

There are several potential revenue models:

SaaS business model for the cloud service for running simulations built with Asteroid
Royalty-based business model for VR/AR apps created with Asteroid
Marketplace model for 3D models bought on the Asteroid store
Short-term goals

In the next 18 months, the goals are to:

Get some initial customers - likely self-driving car startups to begin with
Build the desktop editing app
Gain adoption amongst AR/VR app developers
Build out the 3D model library
Build out the in-VR editor.

Likely this will require raising at least $500k in the next few months, and hiring 2 or 3 engineers.
This will probably mean a computer graphics programmers with a background in the video
game industry, an iOS or Mac app developer with some expertise in design and a programmer
with a background in AI or machine learning.