VIRTUAL REALITY - HYPE OR AGENT OF CHANGE?

I must admit, the idea of immersive new experiences delivered by virtual reality has enormous appeal to me. It seems that nearly weekly we are being tempted by otherworldly images to escape to the 4th dimension and there’s many a moment I’m prepared to leap into that fantasy world. Increasingly though, we hear about the more serious transformative powers of virtual reality in business, education, law, retail, tourism, design, medicine, entertainment and myriad other domains. An understanding of the potential of this type of intelligent technology, which in breaking the barrier between the virtual and the physical worlds, opens up enormous opportunities, is important to strategic design. It warrants a closer look, as we try to seperate the hype from the reality.    

Whose reality is it? Virtual Reality, Artificial Reality, Mixed Reality

Virtual Reality (VR) is often used as a blanket term to include Artificial Reality (AR) and Mixed Reality (MR). Whilst they are all (currently) headset-type experiences, there are differences in the experience delivered:

Virtual Reality

A completely immersive experience – no sense of the real world. Created by computer graphics or real images produced by a computer. A perfectly rendered object is indistinguishable from the real deal.

Augmented Reality

Adds elements to the world in which you exist currently. A combination of real life objects and computer-generated images. A feeling of being in the real world but with images/objects superimposed e.g. floating text

Mixed Reality

As the name denotes – tries to combine actual & virtual worlds so that they appear to be one and the same e.g. two people (say an architect and structural engineer) can be in a shared virtual world where they can engage together on a proposed building on a real site.

Developing immersive experiences is the goal of the VR industry today. Whilst we originally associated the technology with gaming and the phenomenally successful AR game, Pokémon Go, the technology, whilst still in its infancy, is exciting so many industries, such as tourism, events, architecture, design, education, psychology, medicine, training, entertainment, shopping, home improvement, automotive industry and commerce. It’s not surprising that it is seen as one of the most exciting emerging technologies.

Key Drivers & Obstacles:

 The key drivers for VR are content, hardware, the underlying technology and consumer awareness.

As it currently stands, there is still a fragmentation in the virtual technologies, but head-mounted displays (HMDs) such as Oculus Rift, Samsung Gear VR, HTC Vive and Google Cardboard are bringing VR closer to the mainstream. That said, VR units, tethered to a computer via HDMI cable in order to deliver high-resolution experiences, are often seen as clunky units, uncomfortable to wear and physically limiting. On the other hand, at the other end, Smartphone + Google Cardboard, whilst low-cost and accessible, is generally not seen as a high-quality experience. Google’s newer Daydream View for Android ramps up the quality. Microsoft has developed its HoloLens - an untethered, holographic headset that is particularly useful for business collaboration or artists collaborating together.      

In 2004 Facebook purchased Oculus Rift. Zuckerberg said:

“This is just the start. After games, we're going to make Oculus a platform for many other experiences. Imagine enjoying a court side seat at a game, studying in a classroom of students and teachers all over the world or consulting with a doctor face-to-face – just by putting on goggles in your home.”

Overall, penetration of headsets, among the general public is still low. However, given the considerable future potential of using immersive experience to sell, teach, heal and create, VR development by companies, particularly focused on AR and MR, is on a fast-paced trajectory. According to Digi-Capital, the ability to use AR wearables while out and about, make them of greater appeal to a broader range of consumers. AR will quickly add a just-in-time overlay to our physical world e.g. by aiming your smartphone camera on a crowded street to find stores that offer the products you are looking for. Conventional-looking glasses will provide wearers with a range of information. Tech labs are working at a fast pace to open up the opportunities and make them more widely accessible.

VR DIRECTIONS IN KEY INDUSTRY SECTORS:

Shopping –eCommerce:

Image credit: Austin Inno

eCommerce or vCommerce, is one of the highest potential sectors for the use of VR as a selling and communication tool. eCommerce retailers are jumping on board, using the technology to deliver products directly into the hands of their consumers. Fashion label Tommy Hilfiger launched its designer’s Fall 2016 collection as a VR experience with shoppers donning Gear VR headsets. (Balenciaga and Minkoff have done similarly). From 2016 IKEA has let users design their own kitchens with HTC Vive. Recently, retail giant Amazon has commenced advertising to add VR skill sets to its management team indicating where they might be heading 

Image credit: Ikea 

In the automotive sector, Audi’s Next-gen showrooms [virtual showrooming], are being powered by Rift and Vive. Lexus is also offering the chance to drive the Lexus NX and RC F in VR. Many retailers are jumping on board. Last year Ebay & Myer teamed up – using shopticals [headwear] for the world’s first virtual reality department store. M & S substituted their traditional showroom in favour of a VR experience – using a friendly avatar “Amy” to help you make your choices.

According to Myer, as an immersive experience, VR engages with customers on an emotional level that other marketing strategies can’t achieve – facilitating more of a storytelling approach with the customer the principal character.

Image credit: Audi

Education and training:

Education is another very exciting field for use of VR. Here are some uses:

Aiding language acquisition through everyday ‘real’ immersive situations. Coffee in Rome anyone?

The study of major events in history will become more understandable when students ‘are there on the ground’ in that moment in history.

VR is a way of opening up a world of interactive technology to students making STEM that much more interesting.

The opportunities in this sphere appear endless. That said, an over-reliance by institutions should be cautioned, as education is inherently relational and seeing it as a cheaper way to deliver education is doomed to failure. Real experiences, such as a visit to Microsoft or the Kennedy Space Centre, listening to a scientist first hand or visiting the sites of past conflicts, are simply unbeatable, particularly for young learners though clearly, they are not in everyone's reach.

As an illustration of the possibilities in this sector, the University of Maryland's Augmentarium established in 2014 is worthy of note. This is a virtual and augmented reality laboratory that brings together a unique assembly of projection, augmented reality visors, human vision and human interaction technologies to facilitate visual augmentation of human intelligence – eventually looking to deliver these experiences in medicine, commerce, science, engineering and education. Education delivery is certainly on an interesting trajectory to change.

Travel, tourism & hospitality:

Travel and tourism...... could there be a better fit for the use of VR? This industry is about dreaming, inspiration, fantasy and customer experience. Whilst Online Travel Agents (OTAs) have been chipping away at the business base of traditional agents for a few years, VR offers these agents a great opportunity to draw clients back into the traditional agency store, by using VR technology there to inspire and more accurately convey the planned trip experience. In the short-term, the store can use the technology as a differentiator. However, this advantage may be very short term as OTAs such as Expedia explore the emerging technology so that clients might, for example, explore their hotel room, cabin or the destination itself, whilst online.

A number of agency retail networks and more broadly travel players are jumping on board. Thomas Cook is one of the first, using Samsung’s Gear VR in some of their UK stores (eight stores and an additional seventeen by 2019), to offer travellers the opportunity to “visit” key destinations. Flight Centre & Virgin Holidays are doing likewise.

VR is a hot topic in the travel & tourism sector. It is invariably on the future trends in technology conference agendas, as industry players seek to understand how to seize the opportunities and design the new customer experiences enabled by the technology. Sabre, a key world travel technology company and Global Distribution System (GDS), is beavering away on the technology in its Sabre Labs. It identified three uses for VR in its 2017 Emerging Technology in Travel Report relating to travel agencies:

“ An inspirational shopping tool for clients, a product training tool for agents and an opportunity to advertise alongside VR content that is directly or indirectly related to travel”.

Amadeus, another leading travel technology company, suggests VR could soon change the way travellers shop for and buy trips. Its subsidiary Navitaire has recently unveiled “the world’s first virtual reality travel search and booking experience”

“the innovation allows travellers to ‘visit’ a destination, search for flights, walk into a plane to select their seat, look at rental cars and pay for the trip – all without leaving virtual reality".

Hotels are also getting in on the act - not least of all as a way of pulling back some control to their properties. In 2015 Marriott and Shangri-La Hotels announced VR services – lending the guests headsets to explore travel experiences from their hotel rooms. Best Western Hotels and Resorts are also leveraging the technology.

Image credit: Marriott Hotel & Resorts

Architecture and design:

Using Oculus Rift or Vive VR has the power to change the way architects both design and communicate. Architects can use VR at various stages in the design process, but VR is particularly useful in allowing architects and clients to understand projects – otherwise sometimes a thorny experience. Europe already leads the way with the use of VR for architectural visualization.

Management training:

Trying to sharpen employee skills through real life experience can be fraught with danger for brands. Using ‘virtual life’ real-world scenarios takes away the risk. In that way, staff can practice dealing with holiday rush crowds or by handling risky situations e.g. an aggressive individual. Walmart has such a staff training program underway. 

For skilled trades, such as welding or carpentry, using VR can enable trainees to repeat specific exercises over and over without wasting expensive materials. Importantly, the decisions they made can be reviewed as a learning experience by others. This type of process would be of value in so many domains e.g. police, ambulance training etc.

Medicine:

Image credit: Medicalfutureist.com

VR offers enormous potential to the clinical and healthcare sector, not only to surgeons practicing technical or high-risk procedures, but also in the training of young doctors. In fact, VR is already transforming lives in this sector. In a recent blog by Medical Futurist, Dr. Bertalan Mesko, Ph.D., he mentions 5 ways medical VR was changing health:

1) Watching operations as if you wielded the scalpel

2) Relaxing chronic patients with Medical VR

3) Making children feel like they’re at home when in hospital

4) Helping physicians experience life as an elderly person

5) Speeding up recovery after a stroke

Mental health treatment is also an evolving area with strong potential. e.g. with exposure therapy to treat anxiety, such as fear of heights, thunderstorms, flying and even public speaking! VR is also being used to help treat those with post-traumatic stress disorder PTSD and autism. It has been found that for people who have high-functioning autism, completing VR-delivered interview training significantly improves their chances of securing a job.

Law:

VR will turn up in the most unlikely of places. VR could let jurors explore crime scenes, as they actually appeared, using virtual reality headsets. The virtual courtroom will be able to transport the jury to a crime or accident scene and take depositions from witnesses etc. VR and other intelligent technologies are set to revolutionize the practice of law. Whilst the opportunities are significant in delivering a higher performing, more agile sector, being traditionally conservative and slow moving within rigid legal frameworks, change is unlikely to be rapid.

THE FUTURE

Immersive experiences in the above sectors seduce with creative possibilities. The use of VR will be truly transportive; it's where creativity and technology merge. VR simply allows us to see the world differently and has already taken off in entertainment and cultural spaces e.g. visits to museums (the new British Museum Virtual Reality Tour of the Museum with Oculus and at the Smithsonian), galleries (Tour of Dulwich Picture Gallery U.K) and enjoying popular entertainment (Six Flags Magic Mountain Roller Coaster Ride that also includes headsets) and the opening of virtual reality arcades (VRcades) in China (5000 planned by HTC) and IMAX VR in LA and so the list goes on......

Image Credit: The British Museum

Certainly, the future for VR looks exciting in terms of its possibilities, but the take-up will not happen overnight. Currently, there is insufficient content and content is costly to develop. Fragmentation and change in hardware are reducing the appeal of headset purchase in the mainstream. Facebook’s Oculus recently shut down 200 of its 500 demo sites that were located within Best Buy stores - ostensibly due to low interest. Clearly, the road to establishing itself as a mainstream device at the moment is a little bumpy. Nonetheless, as shown in the sectors mentioned above, the potential for VR and AR is compelling as an enabling technology to a new dimension, providing us with a new way of seeing the world, products, services and experiences. While the virtual reality market was worth around $1.9 billion in 2016, Digi-Capital estimates the combined AR & VR market will sit at around $121 billion by 2021 with AR being the principal catalyst. Investment is gearing up. Companies will shortly be tooling up. 

“There’s always a richer, more immersive medium to experience the world and after video, the next logical step is fully immersive virtual reality.” Mark Zuckerberg  way back in 2014. “

For now ....... watch this (virtual) space.

Thank you for reading this post. You can follow my other posts here at LinkedIn where I write about digital transformation and SMEs, demographic change, future trends, travel tech., business trends and a host of issues shaping our real and virtual worlds. You can also follow Creative Planet Media on Twitter where I tweet on all these good things daily.

Suzanne Cavanagh is the Director of Creative Planet Media and is a Melbourne based tourism and social marketer, whose mission it is to help travel, tourism and professional business practices manage transformation in the digital marketplace. She keeps a keen eye on trends that are shaping the future. You can follow her here on LinkedIn.