Feature · checked 29 September 2026
The 360 video host that turned to underwater cameras.
A 2015 public beta for interactive 360-degree video whose founder built underwater VR cameras under the VRTUL name, renamed the company Blue Ring Imaging and sold it to the underwater robot maker VideoRay in 2023.
VRTÜL appeared in Stompstart's directory in November 2015 as a public beta with a one-line pitch: "Hosting service for 360 degree interactive videos." The full listing, saved in August 2019, described "a platform for viewing 360 and VR videos" from Cardiff by the Sea, California. Its makers offered free development work to embed links, images and videos into objects inside each 360-degree scene, so viewers could explore on their own terms. "The tools needed to tell 'choose-your-own-path' 360˚ stories on a mass scale doesn't exist in today's market," the listing said, adding that production companies "still need to build custom apps in order to tell compelling stories."
In October 2016 a VR/AR Association podcast page introduced Casey Sapp of Vrtul.io, with the same Twitter and Facebook accounts the listing gave. The page noted that he had obtained "permission to go to North Korea and record video," and that he would speak on a panel about pricing professional 360 productions at a San Diego VR summit that December.
A year later the company was building cameras for use underwater. In October 2017 VRTUL released the VRTUL 2, which the company billed, in an announcement carried by Ocean News & Technology, as "the only underwater VR camera for professionals with unified camera controls" and a live monitoring display, shooting native 3D stereoscopic video at 4K and 60 frames a second. "We have visited almost every continent this year and over 15 countries in the last 6 months with our VRTUL cameras," Sapp said.
In December 2019 a release from San Diego introduced the third-generation VRTUL 3, which could capture up to 27K resolution for 360-degree panoramic displays and 15K for domes, planetariums and headsets. By then the name stood for Virtual Reality Technology Underwater Limited. The company said Sapp's underwater 360 and VR systems had been used in productions with the BBC, Discovery and National Geographic, and it claimed a string of firsts, among them the first 360 3D underwater camera system and the first underwater 360 live broadcast, for Good Morning America.
By July 2022 Sapp was chief executive of Blue Ring Imaging, based at the Maritime and Defense Technology Hub in St. Petersburg, Florida. "BRI first operated under the name VRTUL," the St Pete Catalyst reported. The company built augmented and virtual reality interfaces for remotely operated vehicles, submersibles and ships, with custom 360-degree 3D cameras for each vehicle and mission. The paper said it worked with the Navy's Explosive Ordnance Disposal department and the Air Force's Guardian Angel division, and Sapp said it was working with Lockheed Martin on a project involving large subsurface vehicles.
On 4 October 2023, VideoRay, a Pennsylvania maker of underwater robots whose Defender vehicle the US Navy had picked for mine detection and disposal, announced that it had acquired Blue Ring Imaging. The release named Blue Ring's OctoView mixed reality software and OctoCAM multi-view 360-degree camera. The St Pete Catalyst reported that November that Sapp could not disclose the terms, and that he had become VideoRay's vice president of strategy and emerging technology, overseeing a new VideoRay Labs division in St. Petersburg. The paper traced his route from a first company in Hollywood to San Diego, and then to St. Petersburg during the pandemic as one of the hub's first tenants.
The sources do not say what became of the 360 hosting platform. The vrtul.io address now redirects to a betting-odds site, and vrtul.co no longer leads to a working site.