Orbify.eu, a two-year-old Norwegian startup, wants people to see the world in a new way – through a warped lens that bends rendered map scenes into the dream sequence perspective seen in Christopher Nolan's movie Inception. The geospatial biz, co-founded by Karsten Huitfeldt, is developing image processing software that folds a 3D map model onto a curved surface. The technique, showcased in Inception, combines a near-field street-level perspective that ramps into an overhead view at distance. Orbify says it has a patent pending for the technology in the EU (PCT/EP2026/058725). The patent application hasn't been published, so it's unclear what the company claims should be protected and whether past implementations would be deemed prior art by patent examiners. Huitfeldt worked as an architect and project manager at Snøhetta until 2025. He co-founded Orbify to explore ways to improve navigational interfaces. The startup, not to be confused with another Oslo-based company with the same name, Orbify.ai, has some initial funding from Innovation Norway and Norges forskningsråd. "We're somewhere between a working prototype and a commercial product, and we're pursuing two things in parallel," Huitfeldt told The Register in an email. "One: standard practice for us has been to get IP filing in place early, so we've filed a patent as an 'Image Processing System,' currently in its second examination round with the EU patent office; the application covers the specific bending algorithm, shader and camera setup that produce the effect, and its use in a moving navigation context with overlaid route information," he said. In terms of validation, Huitfeldt said the core technology is working and publicly demonstrable. At the moment, Orbify is testing whether the interface actually improves navigation. Orbify last week released an interactive demo of its curved map UI that runs in a web browser using the PlayCanvas Engine, an open source JavaScript engine that takes advantage of WebGL2 and WebGPU. It presents Gaussian splatting in a spatial interface. Dramamine is not required but may prove helpful for those prone to visually induced motion sickness. Second, Huitfeldt said, Orbify has developed a research protocol for a controlled study that compares Orbify's approach to a conventional perspective with an aerial display. "No participant study has been run yet, so we're not claiming superiority ahead of the evidence," he said. "Commercially, our goal is to offer Orbify primarily as a software/SDK layer that works with existing 3D mapping and navigation systems, rather than building a new mapping ecosystem from scratch." The software layer remains a work in progress. The current demo relies on web technologies and prior prototypes have been done in Unreal Engine and Unity with Google's Photorealistic 3D Tiles via Cesium. The aim is for something platform-agnostic that could work on the web, mobile, or in automotive systems. Huitfeldt said Orbify aims to allow people to understand what's around them and how that fits into a bigger picture. "Standard UX best practice involves providing the user with a seamless, unified, and continuous design language built around optimizing their experience," he explained. "There have been big leaps in automotive design but not a whole lot has happened with the navigation design itself." Current navigation interfaces involve different views and maps and different perspectives, each of which has certain uses. But the result is that users have to manage different views and interfaces. "Orbify tries to remove that tradeoff by continuously combining both in one view, with perspective close to the user, bending progressively toward an aerial/top view farther out," Huitfeldt said. "The hypothesis is that this reduces the mental work of relating what's ahead to the map above and removes the need for 3-4 different fragmented systems. We think there's real design headroom in using 3D geometry this way, while giving the whole navigation system the same look and feel for the user. "Conversations with engine and rendering partners have been encouraging, but the research is what will tell us whether that benefit outweighs the obvious cost of introducing the Orbify effect of bending/geometric distortion." ®
