An introduction into emerging Technologies: VR

I've been very fortunate over the last 8 odd years to be involved with some amazing projects both locally and abroad which has been as a result of organisations looking to enable, differentiate or innovate leveraging emerging technologies. When we look at the realm of emerging tech across elements such as AI, IoT, SMART as well as VR/AR, it's actually less about the technology itself and more rather what it can do for you or the use case you are looking to applying it to.

Let’s take VR (Virtual Reality) for instance:

It's completely immersive, you put the headset on and you are transported into a 360-degree world and no longer where you were when you put the HMD (Head Mounted Display) on. When we look at this from a consumer perspective this could be something like Netflix where the main TV at home is already being used and the HMD becomes a second screen in the house, perhaps while you are commuting to and from work or perhaps on a plane and when we look at portable and immersive for mobile/portable gaming then its quite relevant but the up-take from a consumer perspective it would be safe to say has been slower than expected, why? In my opinion the hype has been (and kind of is) still there but its far different an interface than you would find on an iPhone or an Android device (which some iOS users struggle with when moving across) so the adoption from a consumer perspective has been slow.  

When we look at things from a Commercial or Education perspective things really start to get interesting and contextual. There are so many elements to delivering an experience in VR from an outcome delivery standpoint it’s not funny. If you are looking to implement VR though, its critically important that you take the time to fully determine or understand the outcome you are looking for, from mission critical deliverables as well as the nice to haves but this can be all baked into and ongoing plan! What's really required though is that you start of off SIMPLE, what I mean by this is that you can be a multi-billion-dollar organisation with a budget that would be more than enough, or you could be a high school student looking to share your excursion to the Zoo. The capabilities of what you can do with some basic elements (and I have been able to see first-hand) can deliver some amazing outcomes

If we are looking to look at the current broad scope of end-to-end layers of VR it consists of the Hardware, management, software/app/platforms, 3rd party Hardware/accessories, services and finally training and enablement. It can actually go broader than this with things such as "heat-mapping" where analytics are baked into the experience so if for example you are doing training and enablement and compliance was a critical factor and here with training for Emergency Services for example where you would want to ensure that they were paying attention to the elements needed to perform a 3-step pick up of an elderly patient who had taken a really bad fall and you can't put your arms under theirs as they have fragile veins and arteries, you can actually track where they are looking, how long for and whether or not they have reclined their chair and are just watching for the sake of letting it run to tick a box for example. 

How much data do you think you could have collected if this was a 2D panel at the front of the training room with 30 people watching it or have a live demo run?  

The three elements of VR experience: Consume, Interact and Create 

Going back to my mention of starting off "Simple" its super important that a simple start has a plan to lead to greater things and in this case experiences. Right now, on YouTube 360 from a content consumption perspective for example you can learn 1st aid and CPR in 360 VR (no joke!) this is in no way accreditation with any kind of certification but more along the lines of "self-teaching" and hey, who doesn't want to learn more? Take that to the next step, you can get interactive with that content either let’s say in a "choose your own adventure" type scenario where you can have prompts come up: "apply regular pressure in bursts of 1/1000" or provide "mouth-to-mouth" and from there you can click on the appropriate prompt. You can go one step further here and have the experience created in Unity or Unreal where you would use controllers and provide the motion and then lean forward to the mouth to suggest a breath of air, move back slightly and tilt head to side to notion a new inhale and turn back and lower your head again to suggest a breath before you start applying repetitive pressure to the chest. Finally, if you are not happy with the video content (perhaps its recorded in 360 but you want to focus on the important focus area and or you want it in stereoscopic 180 for that depth of field feel) you can create your own video or create/have your environment created in Unity etc. 

As you can see in the example above we started off simple from a consumption stand-point with content that was already available, after we became familiar with the UI and the immersive environment we progressed through all the elements of VR. 

But what about AR (Augmented Reality):

I will cover off AR in its own separate article but to touch briefly on this, where VR is immersive and you are in a virtual world when you put the HMD on when you apply a set of AR Glasses you can still see the current world but there is an "overlay" where augmented entities (text, PiP video, 3D objects and more) are overlayed on the physical world you are seeing. An example of 2 environments but different use cases are: If you happen to be studying remotely as a mechanic and you want to work through modules with regards to steps to replacing an engine in VR you can have a virtual workshop, tools and all and you can use controllers to virtually change the vehicle engine with assistance on labelling of tools and perhaps a 42 step process guide on how to do this as a 1st year apprentice etc. When it’s time to come and do your assessment in person at the local TAFE/College they have a workshop there and a vehicle but as this is your 1st time with a physical environment you put on the AR glasses and an overlay of labelling of the physical tools pop up and that 42 step process is still there however it is REAL, you feel the weight of the tools for example but thanks to the VR previously you have a feel for the environment and now with AR you're interacting physically with support and aid.

The demand for these types of technologies is very much there, the challenge I know organisations are having is that they "don't know what they don't know" and they need to be shown the way this technology can transform elements in their businesses such as: learning and development, compliance training, OHS, differentiation against their competitors, efficiencies, induction and on-boarding, remote heavy vehicle operation and much, much more. 

I hope the above has been informative for you, I would greatly appreciate any feedback and very much look forward to sharing more with you. 

If you would like any further information, please don't hesitate to reach out directly.