Interview With Ilan Ofek – Founder And CEO Of Visual Factory

Formerly the CTO of ST Electronics (Training and Simulation Systems), Ilan Ofek founded Visual Factory back in late 2007 to help companies deploy virtual communities in 3D. Today, Visual Factory specializes in virtual museums and exhibitions and has a team of about 11. We speak to Ilan to find out more about Visual Factory.

What is Visual Factory?

Visual Factory’s technologies and products aim to redefine 3D community immersive tools and representation of unique smart avatars by setting the standards for 3D assets deployment, interoperability and delivering content that engages people anywhere, at any time. The company is positioned as an “enabler” and works with market leaders in the selected domains by bringing them to the next level, being Web 2.0 and Web 3.0 players.

Walking around in an Egyptian Virtual Museum

What is your competitive advantage?

Visual Factory develops its own base platform, MagicStitch™. It is a new and innovative technology that allows fast deployment of virtual communities in complete 3D. This is a game-like technology that allows professionals and non-professionals to create, deploy and monetize virtual worlds.

The company specializes in the domains of Virtual Museums and Virtual Exhibitions.

Tell us more about your products.

MagicStitch™ is a complete 3D immersive social network platform. It supports multi-platform, variety of data formats, location based services, interactions and payment services.

Why is 3D visualization needed?

The world is moving from Web 2.0 to Web 3.0. Web 2.0 components such as websites, wikis, portals, RSS and social networks are already mature. The news in Web 3.0 are interactivity, personalization, semantic databases and SaaS, and the development of “Feelings”, and the way to do it is in a 3D immersive environment.

An avatar waves to her online friends.

Why should companies jump onto the 3D bandwagon, if they haven’t done so?

3D is just one element of Visual Factory’s offering. Companies operating various types of social networks should consider to move to become a 3D environment, which is realistic, natural, and the users can better experience and express themselves.

As for Visual Factory, the Founders have extensive experience in the Defence industry, with more than 30 years of experience in advanced graphics and image understanding, and creating something like MagicStitch™, which is light, multi-platform and compatible with a wide variety of data formats is a given.

What would you say to convince someone to experience a 3D simulation/world for the first time?

When using MagicStitch™ , the convincing part is its intuitiveness; there is no learning curve; its easy as a game. Allows for realistic representation, information sharing and personalization. It is fun!

From left: Shamim, Ilan and Gerald.

Who makes up your team?

Ilan Ofek, Founder and CEO
The Founder and CEO of Visual Factory, a local interactive digital media (IDM) start-up company specialized in 3D immersive technologies. An entrepreneur focused on the virtual space immersive technologies. Ilan’s last appointment was as Chief Technology Officer (CTO) of ST Electronics (Training and Simulation Systems). A veteran of the industry, Ilan’s extensive working experience spans international borders dating back to his starting days as a guided weapons expert, through simulation infrastructures for avionics and game based simulation until his current portfolio in the intuitive creation of 3D worlds and data mining. Expert in virtual world creation (Avatars and Computer Generated Forces) and is consistently in deep study of advanced physics-based modelling, artificial intelligence, Data and text mining, and image processing technology

Shamim Akhtar, CTO
Shamim is the CTO of Visual Factory. Shamim is an expert in computer graphics and has worked on design and development of game engines and renderers. He has a high level of proficiency in real time rendering, shader technologies, programming and animation using OpenGL and DirectX APIs with a strong foundation of 3-D maths, numerical and geometric algorithms. He had been responsible for delivering a number of projects & products across domains of gaming and defence industries, products requiring high quality visuals and displays. He has published a number of research papers related to engineering optimizations in Journals & Conferences

Gerald Lui, Business Manager
Unique combination of project management, entrepreneurial, business and relationship development experience with both leading engineering and banks in the financial services industry – Focused & responsible for increasing revenues, portfolios and profits through expertise in business development, relationship building and exceptional service follow up. Strategic thinker, marketing and results-oriented individual combined with qualifications in staff development, coaching and management skills to drive and deliver performance results. In his rich portfolio, Gerald performed at the leading financial institutes such as UOB, DBS and Credit Suisse. His last role was in a large technology company as Project Manager focusing on business development, growth and profitability.

Where do you see Visual Factory in one year?

Visual Factory will be positioned as the market enabler focusing on the following domains/products:
a. Virtual Museum and Collections (V3M)
b. Virtual Exhibition (V3E)
c. Software as a Service (SAAS) for online full solution, operated by Visual Factory

Visual Factory will be a nickname for 3D immersive products, well-supported by social networking features and easy as a game tools for non-professionals to create and publish content.

Audio and video streaming.

If you had to pick, Marketing or Technology?

As enablers, Visual Factory’s development roadmap will go side by side with the social connections market development. Today, the company’s architecture is already at the Web 2.0 level, which is dynamic, allows user participation and provides web services APIs. The current ongoing development is already looking toward Web 3.0 applying SAAS, full social networking, and a fully immersive collaborative environment.

Top 3 qualities an entrepreneur must have?

1. Patience and Perseverance
Rome was not built in a single day. Businesses do not succeed overnight!

2. People skills
The ability to win people over

3. Supportive spouse
She is really the hero here, to take care of the house, the kids, and to agree to provide the bread and butter, as you are not going to bring salary for a year or more.

Thanks, Ilan!

Related posts:

1. Build Your Own Virtual Museum Competition