What is AR and VR and why does it matter for #HigherEd?

Last October, Mata shipped the Meta Quest 3, the new VR/AR headset that offers incredible VR and the possibility of AR.

In the summer, Apple unveiled a teaser for the Apple Vision Pro, coming this year. Maybe even in a few weeks.

Apple Vision Pro video

Apple also launched a website that tells the story of the Vision Pro in a way that #HigherEd could emulate. This is a story by swipe and hype, not a story told by a click for more. At $3,499 the Apple Vision Pro is way more than the $599 of the Meta Quest 3, which also promises AR/VR experience.

The Meta Quest 3

The goal of Meta was to ship the device, and let the experiences come afterward. This was the plan for the first iPhone, ship the device and let the experiences of buying groceries, getting airplanes, doing banking, dating, etc come next. As the proud owner of a new Meta Quest 3, I can tell you that the hardware shipped before the experiences. (This is also true for the AR Glasses from Meta -- which my daughter owns.)

That said, I want to talk about the experiences of AR/VR.

VR needs to block out the world.

For virtual reality to ‘work’ it needs to block out the world. The Meta Quest line of headsets, once called Oculus, work because they block out the world. The Meta Quest 2 asks to draw a guardian, a circle whereby the headset blocks out the world. If the person wearing the headset walked out of that guardian, then the world would be replaced with a grainy view of the real world. This is called Passthrough, and if you watch the Apple video, you can see that Passthrough is gorgeous on the Apple device.

On the new Meta Quest 3, the Passthrough is good. I had to finish the onboarding on my phone, and I didn’t have to take off my headset to see my phone in HD. Remember, I am seeing a video of my phone, a livestream of the world, not the world. The headset has to block out the world to work.

AR brings in the world.

Alternate reality is not blocking out the world. These are the AR Meta Ray Ban Sunglasses. As I said, my daughter has a pair, and she can listen to music, go live on Instagram, and take photos with her phone. Using Meta's assistant, she can also send texts and take calls.

AR is adding digital to the world around you. One can see a time where a student comes on campus with AR Glasses and sees images planted around campus that add to the tour.

On the Meta Quest 3, there is a demo called First Encounters. It first maps the space of the room one is standing in and asks to confirm furniture and windows.?

Next, the roof breaks and a spaceship comes into the room and lands on the floor, or couch, or bed. It leaves a burn mark on the place it lands.

?Then a bunch of small cute creatures begin attacking the room, breaking the walls to reveal that the room is actually on an alien planet. You get two guns, and you have to shoot the furry little aliens as they invade the room. I played it in a bedroom and the things hid under the bed, which was very cool. It is a confusing game, but also a moment when I went wow. This is cool. My kids also loved it.

This is VR and AR, where the game alters my bedroom and turns it into a battle ground against cute furry aliens. This AR is made better because the headset blocks out all of the world. This game would not work on AR glasses, unless the glasses figured out how to block out the world.

What does this mean for Higher Ed?

As I said, one could wear a headset or glasses on a tour of campus. The Passthrough is good enough that wearing a VR headset would mean you can see around campus. I’m not saying people WILL wear a headset on a guided tour, but people could.

And the AR added to a tour could make the tour very memorable. To be clear, many tours are memorable, but if your school is part of a tour day that involves other schools, then this could be a memorable experience. We’re obviously a long way from that, and it is still unclear if anyone will wear a headset outside of the confines of their home, but if the content is interesting enough, and offers a wow factor, then people will do it.

The second is part of that last sentence. The headset is not a corn field in Iowa, just building it does not mean people will come. There needs to be things on the headset that make the experience cool. There are not those things on the Meta Quest 3, yet.

Since Apple has already built the device, and has shipped it to developers, then one can reasonably assume that the things that make a VR/AR headset cool are being developed. At Meta Connect last September, Meta said more interesting things are coming. Having worn the headset for a few days now, I can tell you that it is better, but the stuff on it is still not interesting enough. I think it would be cool to call someone and watch a game together, but that doesn’t appear to be there yet.?

We’ll see what happens. 5 years ago there wasn’t a VR headset. Last year, there was only really one. This year there will be more headsets and more things developed. This post could look wildly wrong because no one really knows how people will use these things.

Meta and Apple both hint that people can use them for work. We all agree people will use them for gameplay. After that, all bets are on the table.

What do you think? ?

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