Aussie VR company XReality Group books US customers

An Aussie start-up is skyrocketing as it crisscrosses America selling virtual reality to US police officers.

Aussie start-up XReality Group is on a tear as it rolls around Australia and the US selling virtual reality training systems to police and military customers.

The $30m company has acquired 20 new customers in the past three months, with its total contract value skyrocketing 514 per cent to $4.1m.

“The US sales team continued its momentum with sales through April, May and June winning 17 new customers including state police departments, county sheriffs, police academies and private training organisations,” the company stated in its latest quarterly report.

The company also booked an Australian state government as a new customer, selling it “multiple systems” for $809,600.

The ASX-listed micro-cap company sells VR systems to elevate training simulations.

XReality is travelling America to sell its VR training systems to the US law enforcement market. Picture: Supplied

Its Operator XR system allows police to train in an unlimited number of high-risk scenarios, from plane hostage rescues and building clearances to active shooter emergencies.

“Reality-based training – it’s quite complex and very difficult to recreate real-life scenarios, especially something like an active shooter event because you need a lot of role players,” XReality chief of products and technology Kim Hopwood told NewsWire in February.

“But in VR, you can recreate those scenarios really easily and add in as many role players as you like.”

The Los Angeles Police Department is testing out the system in a three-month trial.

The company also reported it was in the final stages of negotiating a $5m contract with the US Department of Defence for a research and development project.

Sydney-based XReality Group was founded in 2011 by ex-Australian Special Forces operators and police officers. Picture: Supplied

The Sydney-based company counts Western Australian Police as a major customer, but its focus is on the US market, with a team of five crisscrossing America to show off Operator XR to prospective customers.

“The US is our focus, just because of the scale, not only in the population, but the way that the agencies are designed over there,” Mr Hopwood said.

“There are 18,000 police agencies in the US because they are organised by city and county as well as at state and federal levels.”

A sheriff’s office in Colorado has taken up the system and Mr Hopwood said a school district in Clark County Nevada, which houses Las Vegas, used the company’s tech to train students in crime scene analysis.

“We can place forensic evidence on the ground, or the walls, be it blood, tyre tracks, DNA evidence, shell casings, so the students can do that themselves or the teacher can design the scenarios themselves and then the students can go around and learn in this interactive environment,” he said.