Immersion Film Festival and conference took place at the beginning of march a the Nehru Centre in Mumbai, and has been hailed as a massive success.

Immersion Film Festival and conference took place at the beginning of march a the Nehru Centre in Mumbai
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I spoke to its organizer Eddie Avil, who explained that he put together this first edition of the event mainly as a grassroots effort, overcoming great resistance. After its conclusion, however, he says that both attendees and media are calling this the “Flagship Event for AR/VR in India” and he’s already fielding enquiries for Big brands wanting to partner for the second edition which takes place in 2020.

Immersion is being hailed as the Flagship Event for AR/VR in India
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“My humble desire in building Immersion was and continues to be to nudge India’s AR/VR Industry forward, building a community and driving adoption both for enterprise and consumers,” he says.

The event gathered 45 Speakers from India and around the Globe with Panel Discussions on varied topics such as healthcare, Education, Training, simulation, Industries, Advertising, e-commerce, Travel, Entertainment and Gaming. There were also many demos available for the attending public to try at the Experience Zone, but Avil is ambitious about expanding this for next year’s festival.

My humble desire in building Immersion was and continues to be to nudge India’s AR/VR Industry forward
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“We will have capsules where we will bring Investors & Startups together, themed around education, Bollywood, plus we want to engage directly with Government and trade organisations. He reveals he’s also in advanced discussions with various embassies from countries such as the UK,Canada,Australia,Ireland Israel about mutual exchange programs.

We will have capsules where we will bring Investors & Startups together, themed around education, Bollywood, plus we want to engage directly with Government and trade organisations
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For companies looking to get into Immersive technologies our VR Consultancy service offers comprehensive support in strategic deployment of Virtual, Augmented and Mixed Reality

Alice Bonasio is a VR and Digital Transformation Consultant and Tech Trends’ Editor in Chief. She also regularly writes for Fast Company, Ars Technica, Quartz, Wired and others. You can follow @alicebonasio on Twitter, connect with her on LinkedIn or subscribe to her Inside VR/AR Newletter for all the latest curated immersive news.  

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From 3D printing to Artificial Intelligence, Lush shows how even old-school companies can embrace technology.

Over the past twenty years, Lush has sold countless tons their strong-smelling handmade cosmetics ranging from colourful bath bombs to soap which is sold by weight, cut from giant slabs in their shops. For environmental reasons, they are very much against using packaging unless strictly necessary, so prices and product information is usually written by hand in chalkboard style signs, and everything is left “naked” on display (hence the strong smell of the mingling essential oils that you get every time you walk past one of their shops, of which there are about 1000 worldwide).

Which is why it wasn’t really surprising that the most high-tech thing you could spot in a Lush shop for many years was a set of scales much like you’d find in a street market.

Sure, they had a website where you could mail order, but to be honest for many years it was rather a cumbersome affair and I always found it easier (and nicer) to just go to my nearest shop. Which I supposed was the whole idea. Instead, their main vehicle for updating the loyal customer base on product news was an old-fashioned newspaper which was printed and distributed in the shops every month. The Lush Times.

Lush has pivoted to embrace digital technology over the past few years
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But that has all pivoted a few years ago, and Lush’s transformation into modernity has been driven largely by Jack Constantine, the son of Lush Founders Mark and Mo who is currently the company’s Chief Digital Officer – and inventor. The family still owns most of the business and are very much a part of its day-to-day running (his sister Claire and brother Simon also work at Lush).

“Lush Digital is my baby. It’s been something I’ve been working on for the past 5 years and as the digital landscape evolved it became clear we needed to set up a new arm of the business,” Constantine explains.

Jack trained as a graphic designer and then as “online became a thing” moved on to digital marketing, while still getting his hands dirty with inventing new bath bombs in the Lush factory in Dorset, England. He quickly understood that for digital marketing to succeed they needed to overhaul the company’s existing website. But although these days Lush does have a perfectly adequate e-commerce setup, Constantine tells me they will soon be overhauling their online structure in a much more fundamental way. His vision for the new website is rather ambitious:

“It’s not just a website – it’s a cloud based, mobile first global technology infrastructure for the whole Lush business.  All built in-house, using open source software, and aligning to our own ethical policies,” he says.

Even Lush's till system will be entirely run on open source software
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Even the till system that all their shops use will run on open source software, which Lush believes will not only save on running costs, but also make its customer-facing operations much more customizable and efficient. And to do that, they are busy recruiting in-house tech talent for the team.

But although Poole – where Lush’s UK Headquarters and factory are still based – is one of the top 10 digital tech hubs in the country, recruiting in-house tech talent hasn’t always been easy. “It’s been challenging getting the digital community to understand that Lush  – a cosmetics company – is serious about digital and is building a software & media house, and over time our reputation has developed to where it is today.”

And where it is today involves dabbling with a lot of different tech. At the showcase I spotted 3D printers sculpting intricate bath melts, and a machine that laser-etched soap bars, as well as a fully-fledged media studio, and a setup that captured biometric feedback such as brainwaves to turn it into a relaxing “spa experience” installation.

Now that it has decided to embrace technology, the company seems determined to dabble in them all, and Constantine is particularly excited about the possibilities that Machine Learning and Augmented Reality bring. “Lush is such a tactile brand, and our products are so hands on that having tools that bridge the real world and the digital world is going to enhance everything,” he says.

Lush is keen to incorporate its trademark playfulness into their tech too
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But while it is clear that Lush is keen to incorporate some of its trademark playfulness into its technology, some of the applications I demoed had a much more practical bend. The “Lush Lens” app, for example, used image recognition technology to give users real-time information on their products. They are also looking at how best to incorporate Google Machine Learning APIs to build a “Lush Personal Assistant” functionality into that offering. Which is all really useful, considering that most people are rather unfamiliar with how you go about using things like hair oil, massage bars, solid bubble bath, shower jelly, or a “toothie tab”.

What Lush shows is that in the digital age every business is at least in part a technology business. And the more you embrace that and integrate tech into your company’s DNA, the easier that journey of modernization will be, and perhaps you can even manage to have some fun along the way.

This article was originally published on The Next Web

From 3D printing to Artificial Intelligence, old-school companies can go digital too https://t.co/5mxi5ksnp6

— TNW Contributors (@TNWcontributors) September 8, 2017

To find out how to leverage VR/AR/MR in your enterprise, Tech Trends offers bespoke Virtual Reality Consultancy support

Alice Bonasio is a VR Consultant and Tech Trends’ Editor in Chief. She also regularly writes for Fast Company, Ars Technica, Quartz, Wired and others. Connect with her on LinkedIn and follow @alicebonasio and @techtrends_tech on Twitter.

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Can a treadmill solve the problem of VR motion sickness? We take a look at the ROVR, which promises to remedy the queasy feeling we get when our body movement doesn’t match what we’re seeing, known as “Simulator Sickness”.

For a relatively early prototype, Wizdish’s client list is certainly impressive. They have sold to over 100 brands in 20 countries including Nissan, Wells Fargo, and The British Army
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Suppose you’re playing a game like Fallout 4 in VR. In the real world you’re sitting down, but in the virtual one you’re running away from an oversized cockroach, desperately trying to stay alive. Bethesda is working on their own iteration of their iconic series, but not all first-person shooters are being remade with VR in mind.

Simulation Sickness is real, and you will throw up
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Sitting while playing but running in the virtual world creates a massive disconnect between what you see and what you actually feel. Because the two don’t match, the gaming experience is disturbed. That same disconnect is what causes two thirds of us to experience some form of VR-related nausea, according to Dr. Charles King, Co-founder of Wizdish.

“Simulation Sickness is real, and you will throw up…which could of course be a severe impediment to the rise of the VR market,” Dr. King told the audience at Virgin Media’s Techstars demo day in London. His Oxford-based company recently graduated from the prestigious accelerator and is now gearing up for a crowdfunding campaign to finance the development of a consumer version of their product.

That product is called the ROVR which consists of both a platform and shoes that allow you to “walk” freely in virtual environments, supported by an enclosing frame that stops you from bumping into things or falling over. Although there were a few near misses in my demo — it feels quite slippery.

For a relatively early prototype, Wizdish’s client list is certainly impressive. They have sold to over 100 brands in 20 countries including Nissan, Wells Fargo, and The British Army. But although they have clearly been successful in their B2B strategy, and claim that over 30,000 people have already used the product, their sights are now set on a much more ambitious target.

“In 2013 there were less than 1,000 head-mounted VR displays sold worldwide, so it made sense for us to work with companies that had their own development capacity,” says Dr. King. “This year, however, there will be 12 million HMDs sold. By Christmas 2017 — when we’ll be ready to launch the next version of the ROVR for the consumer market  — there will be 500 million headsets out there, and projections for 2020 are in the region of 2 billion.”

A big part of the reason why people are so keen to try immersive VR is precisely because of the intensity of those experiences, but there are big questions around whether our bodies can actually handle the potential side effects. Some experts have actually gone so far as to argue for the banning of VR headsets, at least until we know more about the long-term effects of prolonged exposure.

“Walking is the best and most immersive way of experiencing both the real world and the virtual world; because you’re moving in sync with what you’re seeing, it solves the simulation sickness problem,” says Dr. King.

Walking is the best and most immersive way of experiencing both the real world and the virtual world
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“Cyber sickness seems to be caused by a disparity between what the brain expects or anticipates and what the sensory system is telling the body,” explains Wizdish Co-founder Julian Williams. “Some of this is caused by latency and can be due to the quality of the sensors, or indeed a lack of sensors. Positional tracking detects where your head is in space and if it’s absent (as with the Oculus DK1, Gear VR, or Google Cardboard) just moving your head around can induce nausea. These are less of a problem on the ROVR as it rewards good balance, posture, and core stability by keeping your center of gravity in one place.”

Our sensitivity to forward motion is usually less pronounced if you gaze at the horizon
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Another major cause for the problem is disparity between your visual and vestibular senses, which can be described as the ‘inner ear problem’. It’s what makes you feel sick when you spin quickly on the spot.

“If your vision rotates when you head doesn’t, or by a different amount, most people feel ill very quickly. This is why traditional gamepads can cause significant problems when you use the joysticks for navigation,” explains Williams.

Our sensitivity to forward motion is usually less pronounced if you gaze at the horizon — a trick I remember well from my constant battles against carsickness as a child. But it does vary a lot from person to person. As hinted above, I’m quite prone to nausea, whereas others might have a much higher tolerance to what sends me reaching for the sick bag. Interestingly, Oculus also found in their own research that there isn’t much consistency regarding which games cause nausea, as different people can react differently to different games.

“The most important fact about walking for us is that you don’t think about it,” says Williams. “You probably don’t remember walking to where you are now. We found that as long as you move your legs to traverse after a while you push that to the back of your mind and only concentrate on where you’re going — not how you move. This is the simple psychological trick that makes the ROVR so effective. When you first get on just the action of moving your feet around feels fun too. We have made sure that the ROVR does what it does extremely well. It may take a few people a little while longer to acclimate to it, as we all have different levels of physical confidence. We found that some experience of skating usually helps, but almost everyone can use the ROVR sufficiently very quickly.”

If you’re familiar with the VR ecosystem, chances are you’re aware of other treadmills on the market. The Virtuix Omni, for example, is probably the most well-known of the bunch. When I asked Williams how the ROVR compares to other treadmills, such as the aforementioned Virtuix Omni, he explained their product is much smaller, lighter, and easier to use.

“You don’t need to wear a harness or any special clothing, plus you can just put the kick-on overshoes over your normal trainers or similar footwear, which makes for a much better user experience,” says Williams. “We also have the patent for using a low friction dish design, which we haven’t licensed to anyone, and we’re first to market, already shipping to over 20 countries.”

Williams says that many people reported not feeling cyber sickness for the first time when using the ROVR. They believe that their solution, combined with mobile VR positional tracking, could largely solve the nausea problems in walking games, and they’re hopeful Google will include it in its Daydream spec.

“What we won’t do is add functionality that’s a compromise, such as leaning in order to walk, or kludges to allow for things like strafing,” says Williams. “We find that people prefer to understand and use the device within its limits rather than finding that it can’t do other things especially well. Taking strafing as an example, you might let people swing one leg to indicate this intention, but unless your body moves sideways to match the vision you can still induce nausea.”

Many people reported not feeling cyber sickness for the first time when using the ROVR
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They’re now taking the feedback from their B2B clients into the next phase of development for the ROVR 2, which will be a small, lightweight and collapsible version of their current prototype, although at this early stage they can’t yet say how much that will cost. But considering how much people are already spending on VR, the price of a vomit-free ride seems well worth a few extra bucks.

This article originally appeared on UploadVR

The @wizdish wants to offer another #VR treadmill solution for motion sickness https://t.co/knmCq2Y7LC via @alicebonasio

— Upload (@UploadVR) August 31, 2016

For companies looking to get into Immersive technologies such as VR/AR/MR/XR our Virtual Reality Consultancy services offer guidance and support on how best to incorporate these into your brand strategy.

Alice Bonasio is a VR Consultant and Tech Trends’ Editor in Chief. She also regularly writes for Fast Company, Ars Technica, Quartz, Wired and others. Connect with her on LinkedIn and follow @alicebonasio on Twitter.

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Teachers are increasingly embracing technology in the classroom, and one platform is helping them do this.

“When you hear that the average textbook in an under-funded school in the US dates back to 1989 and still refers to the USSR, it really drives home the importance of teacher-created resources in the classroom,” Says Tom Glover, Communications Director at TES Global.

Founded in 1910, TES can hardly lay claim to being the new kids on the education block, but they are nevertheless taking the lead in some important innovations in that space. They are home to the world’s largest online community of teachers, with 8 million registered users, who collectively downloaded over 200 million classroom resources in 2015.

The average textbook in an under-funded school in the US dates back to 1989 and still refers to the USSR
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This represents a significant shift, showing how teachers are embracing technology, specially when it comes to sourcing their lesson materials. TES conducted a survey amongst 3,000 teachers in 2015 found that 69% felt that those sort of community-curated resources were more relevant and useful than textbooks.

Teachers are embracing technology, specially when it comes to sourcing their lesson materials
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Global engagement and demand for shared classroom resources is soaring, with the platform currently attracting around a million downloads per day. TES are now launching new services such as a blended teacher training service in the UK which also supports recruitment.

Global engagement and demand for shared classroom resources is soaring
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The plan is to continue growing globally, specially in markets such as the US and Australia, where they already have about 75% of teachers signed up to the platform. As big as they are, however, Glover stresses that there is a lot of room left to grow, as there are around 70 million teachers worldwide that could benefit from access to such platforms.

there are around 70 million teachers worldwide that could benefit from access to platforms such as TES
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Embracing digital technology is therefore crucial in remaining relevant to teachers, and he marvels at how much the landscape has changed since his own time as a student:

 

“The technology I remember most clearly from my school days in the UK was the BBC Micro computer. It was built by Acorn for the BBC and was adopted by most schools in the UK during the 1980s which completely changed Acorn’s fortunes. Educational games like Granny’s Garden stick in the memory, and also Elite which had quite a cult following.”

Education applications for virtual reality will have an extremely positive impact on classroom engagement
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“I think the education applications for virtual reality are hugely exciting and will have an extremely positive impact on engagement of students in the classroom all over the world, creating real and exciting learning experiences. The costs of something like Google Expeditions (A Virtual Reality education initiative running off Google Cardboard) shows that this doesn’t have to be reserved for the rich. Fundamentally though, I think that education in the future and the technology we use, should be teacher-led. They are the real experts in education and we should be led by them.”

Alice Bonasio is a VR Consultant and Tech Trends’ Editor in Chief. She also regularly writes for Fast Company, Ars Technica, Quartz, Wired and others. Connect with her on LinkedIn and follow @alicebonasio on Twitter.

The post Building a Global Teaching Community appeared first on Tech Trends.