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.  

The post Emerging Tech in Emerging Markets appeared first on Tech Trends.

As Location-Based and cinematic VR continues to expand in a number of directions, with new cutting-edge arcades popping up all over the place, we’re also seeing some of the more established players in the immersive entertainment space collaborating as they figure out how best to scale and monetize this sector.

Such is the case with the just-announced news that mk2 (a leading VR experience provider in Europe) is teaming up with Secret Location.

We’re seeing established players in the immersive entertainment space collaborating as they figure out how to scale and monetize the sector
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Secret Location was founded in Toronto in 2009 as a services company, but has since pivoted into content production. In 2015 its Sleepy Hollow production was one of the first VR experiences to win an Emmy, which it did for “User Experience and Visual Design”. In 2016 the company was acquired by Entertainment One (eOne) which has a movie library valued at over $1.7 billion, and under that umbrella continued to explore the intersection between tech and traditional storytelling.

mk2 has a strong background in managing traditional cinema venues, operating over 26 theaters in Europe
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The partnership is specifically targeted at location-based venues and will integrate Secret Location’s Vusr technology with mk2’s recently launched VR Pods. Vusr is their internally developed cloud-based content management system that streamlines the various challenging logistics involved in delivering immersive experiences.

mk2's VR Pods - plug-and-play solution for professionals – were first unveiled at this year at South by Southwest, and around 100 have been sold across the world since March
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mk2 has a strong background in managing traditional cinema venues, producing over 100 award-winning movies and operating over 26 theaters in Europe. Their VR Pods – plug-and-play solution for professionals – were first unveiled at this year at South by Southwest, and around 100 have been sold across the world since March. Partners so far include public institutions including the National Public Library of France and the Film Fund in Luxembourg, leaders in the movie theater industry such as Nordisk in Scandinavia as well in Brazil (Arvore) and Asia.

In the New Year, mk2 plans to invest on increasing its footprint in the location-based VR market
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Vusr Venue lets Location Based Entertainment VR providers manage their content and experiences through a centralized dashboard. The advantage of that is that by streamlining the process and being able to quickly respond to changing consumer needs during a play session, the provider can improve the overall quality of the experience. Operators are able to manage live sessions, view station-operating statuses, download and install new software, troubleshoot hardware, components and software.

Elisha Karmitz, mk2’s CEO, believes Vusr Venue will give their operators simpler and much more efficient methods for managing the complex back-end components of VR LBEs and will help make mk2’s VR Pods easier to use at scale. “mk2 has long been searching for an easy-to-use content management tool to power our VR Pods. Secret Location’s Vusr Venue is providing exactly what our global customers need, and more,” he added.

The VR Pods come loaded with over 50 curated VR experiences provided by mk2, and with the integration with Secret Location’s Vusr Venue, it now hopes to develop a worldwide VR distribution network, collaborating with prominent studios such as Atlas V, Chris Milk’s WITHIN, SuperHot Team and Felix & Paul to showcase their latest content on their continuously refreshed catalogue.

In the New Year, mk2 plans to invest on increasing its footprint in the location-based VR market, not only by opening new LBE VR venues, but also by investing heavily in content production and distribution, as well as opening a communication agency dedicated to VR.

This article was originally published on VRScout

Mk2 Partners With Secret Location For Worldwide VR Distribution Network via @alicebonasio https://t.co/njIxqpTPNc pic.twitter.com/fL4yhBcvFg

— VRScout (@VRScout) December 20, 2018

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 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 Betting on Location-Based VR appeared first on Tech Trends.

Entertainment industry heavyweights partner up to bring Renaissance plot to room-scale VR.

Michael Conelly is a prolific visual effects designer. Throughout his two decades working as Digital Effects Supervisor at Rhythm and Hues Studios, Conelly and the studio worked on everything from the Coca Cola Polar Bears and Babe the talking Pig, to The Golden Compass, Harry Potter, and Pi, among other projects. Conelly’s last film, Snow White and the Huntsman, was nominated for an Oscar for best visual effects.

Now, Connely has turned his attention to the immersive storytelling space, having founded Blackthorn Media in 2013. Their first two VR projects The Abbot’s Book and Dragonflight featured at the Sundance and Tribeca film festivals, so not a bad start, but it turns out his long-term ambitions are much bigger.

“Blackthorn is a small core of some of the most talented folks I’ve ever worked with. We founded the company to work on narrative storytelling in room-scale VR—to really push on the highest end of what is possible in the medium,” he says.

The Abbot’s Book and Dragonflight featured at the Sundance and Tribeca film festivals
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The latest experience which he created, directed and produced, is called Caliban Below a small piece of the larger story contained in The Abbot’s Book – which he published several years ago. It takes place in the northern mountains of Renaissance Italy, and tells the story of four generations of a broken family and how they respond to the corrupting power of a strange book that is dug up from a labyrinth of catacombs beneath their home.

“Deep down, The Abbot’s Book and Caliban Below are telling a story about a family’s struggle to undo its failures. It is full of spectacle and pretty wild realms of imagination, but the beating heart of the story is about the harm that comes when love is overpowered by avarice and desperation.”

An expanded version of Caliban Below including a re-release of the original novella, story extensions, as well as enhanced sound design is set to be released this Fall, but the currently available experience was specifically designed to accommodate people totally new to the medium, as well as veteran VR journeyers.

“There are really not a lot of folks out there doing narrative in 6DOF room-scale storytelling. I find the medium utterly compelling from a story standpoint. Our main goal is to let our visitors experience and participate in a narrative.”

There are really not a lot of folks out there doing narrative in 6DOF room-scale storytelling
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The trick to accomplishing that, he believes, is to find the right balance of agency, plot, and pacing so that people can feel immersed in the story without being either overwhelmed or bored.

“My wish is to leave you with a satisfying sort of lucid dream, but also with a bunch of questions about what the larger world is. I love this notion of a-la-carte storytelling—there is exactly as much there as you wish to experience and you can go at your own pace, finish quickly if you like or dwell in the details. Some folks finish Caliban Below in 10 minutes and others in 60—and everyone comes out understanding the core story. I do hope the recipe we’ve cooked up here starts to zero in on a future model for VR, which is appealing to movie and TV lovers, as well as gamers. If it succeeds, it will be because people really feel the characters and the world in ways more immediate and enveloping than they have with other media. That is the promise of VR and it is why we have stuck around to tell these stories when much of the world has gone off to chase the AR trend.”

The project also managed to entice another entertainment industry veteran. Paula Fairfield worked on sound design for many noteworthy productions such as mother! and Game of Thrones, and had previously worked with Connely on Snow White and the Huntsman and collaborated with him on Dragonflight (which of course made perfect sense given her GoT experience).

“I do highly detailed work in my linear projects and VR is the perfect platform to unleash the dimensionality of this kind of work. But, the (spatial sound) technology is clunky and a bit of an afterthought to the graphics at present. However, that makes for a very interesting playground. And I’m well into it now! It is super exciting to place a sound in a VR space and walk around it.  As crazy as that seems, it’s like magic and crack to me. I now dream of 48 hour days.”

The trick is to find the right balance of agency, plot, and pacing so that people feel immersed in the story without being overwhelmed or bored
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If VR is going to match the larger arc of movies, I hope The Abbot’s Book comes to be something like the Citizen Kane of the medium
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This has been a labour of love done on a shoestring, and Conelly’s hope is that it will turn enough heads to enable the larger project to get made.

“It is a very ambitious chunk of work—there is a lot of story to tell, and if we’re going to tell it, we want to tell it right. Caliban Below is just a tiny glimmer of what is to come. If VR is going to match the larger arc of movies, I hope The Abbot’s Book comes to be something like the Citizen Kane of the medium. It makes me ache inside knowing how much is possible, but not having the resources to get it all out there for people to experience—not just yet anyway…hopefully soon!”

This article was originally published on VRScout

Creating Immersive À La Carte Storytelling With VR via @alicebonasio https://t.co/Et5Rkj858q pic.twitter.com/O52exvqZRc

— VRScout (@VRScout) September 11, 2018

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 and Digital Transformation 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 Experiencing Epic Storytelling in VR appeared first on Tech Trends.

A new game lets you dive deep into the infamous ship’s history.

The golden rule for creating compelling VR content is that you should allow people to experience something that would be either impossible or too dangerous, expensive and/or difficult to do in real life. And by offering up the double-whammy of traveling back to 1912 to watch the RMS Titanic sinking into the cold dark waters of the Atlantic, then letting you explore the wreck which now lies 12,500 feet below the surface, Titanic VR certainly ticks those boxes in spades.

We used motion capture, face-scanning technology and professional voice actors to immerse users in the story
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The game took over 8,800 working hours to create and boasts the largest animated virtual cast of characters ever based on real people inside a single VR experience
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The game was produced by Immersive VR Education (IVRE) a VR/AR developing studio based in Ireland which previously released the award-winning Apollo 11 VR moon landing experience 2016 and more recently completed a VR experience commissioned by the BBC commemorating the 100^th anniversary of the RAF 1943: Berlin Blitz

We wanted to create an accurate portrayal of events, so it is not only educational, but also emotional and very engaging
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Immersive VR Education was founded by husband-wife team – David (CEO) and Sandra (COO) Whelan in 2014, where they proceeded to create a virtual learning platform called ENGAGE for universities and corporate educators. Since then, they have grown their team from 4 people to 34 and worked with clients such as the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland, the BBC and Oxford University.

“We wanted to create an accurate portrayal of events, so it is not only educational, but also emotional and very engaging,” says David Whelan, CEO of VR Education. “To achieve that we used motion capture, face-scanning technology and professional voice actors to immerse users in the story and to enable them to relate to the people involved.”

The story of the unsinkable ship and its 1,503 doomed passengers and crew is told from a first-person perspective of one of the survivors, and the animation sequences – which show people being loaded onto the lifeboats and then the ship itself sinking from the POV of one of the lifeboats, were created using eye-witness accounts.

The story of the unsinkable ship and its 1,503 doomed passengers and crew is told from a first-person perspective of one of the survivors
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This is an unusually long VR experience, featuring six hours of gameplay
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This is an unusually long VR experience, featuring six hours of educational gameplay. The project has been in the works for two years now, and is the culmination of a long process that involved raising almost $70,000 through a Kickstarter campaign last year. Overall, the game took over 8,800 working hours to create and boasts the largest animated virtual cast of characters ever based on real people inside a single VR experience

“We wanted to create an authentic experience for users around a topic and setting in history that has long captivated people’s imagination. While the technology is advanced, what we are really doing is bringing learning back to basics,” adds David Whelan. “As children we learn to navigate the world through immersive experiences – think of learning a language or learning to cycle, or as we grow older going travelling and backpacking – the sights and sounds that often go unnoticed by our attention, are all taken in peripherally and form a whole context for our physical and mental learning. Learning through VR/AR is similar, in that it’s an absorbing, sensory experience. Aside from being great fun, this project is a fantastic way to illustrate the effectiveness and potential of VR/AR technology for educational purposes.”

The second part of the experience then gets you to explore the wreck using a submersible and ROV to solve various quests if you choose “mission mode.” These include rescuing a lost ROV, creating a photo mosaic, placing research equipment, or cleaning and preserving recovered artefacts. Otherwise you can just look around the ship in all its detail at leisure.

The golden rule for creating compelling VR content is that you should allow people to experience something that would be either impossible or too dangerous, expensive and/or difficult to do in real life
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Titanic VR is currently available for Oculus Rift, HTC Vive and Windows Mixed Reality as well as on a desktop PC version
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There is a lot of attention to detail in evidence here, and this comes through as a labour of love, down to the fact that the team made sure to include a poignant tribute to Lead Environment Artist Tony Meredith who recently passed away:

“Tony was a much loved and now much missed member of the team, whose final creative and powerful artistry on Titanic VR will continue to serve as testament to a truly gifted master of VR art production.”

While such experiences are effective showcases for the potential of VR Education, they are only the start of the company’s much more ambitious plans to “revolutionise education globally” (Their parent company VR Education Holdings plc was recently floated on the London Stock Exchange and is now a publicly listed company on the AIM market ) as Chief Operating Officer Sandra Whelan explains:

“We are dedicated to advancing how educational and enterprise training content is shared and consumed on a world-wide basis”.

Titanic VR is currently available for Oculus Rift, HTC Vive and Windows Mixed Reality as well as on a desktop PC version. There are also plans to release it on PlayStationVR next month.

There is a lot of attention to detail in evidence here, and this comes through as a labour of love
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While such experiences are effective showcases for the potential of VR Education, they are only the start of the company’s much more ambitious plans to revolutionise education globally
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This article was originally published on VRScout

Exploring The RMS Titanic In VR via @alicebonasio https://t.co/MGRYxg4dyd pic.twitter.com/A1TPrvmJNk

— VRScout (@VRScout) August 23, 2018

For companies looking to leverage Immersive technologies such as VR/AR/MR/XR Tech Trends offers a comprehensive range of Virtual Reality Consultancy Services.

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. Connect with her on LinkedIn and follow @alicebonasio on Twitter.

The post Exploring the Titanic in Virtual Reality appeared first on Tech Trends.

How a speech therapy app is helping children to overcome their impediments, and have fun in the process.

Speech Blubs uses technology to trigger sound and word production in toddlers, late talkers, children with Apraxia, Autism, Down Syndrome, ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder) and SPD (Sensory Processing Disorder) progressively encouraging children to generate new sounds.

One in Four children will need professional help at some stage of their speech development
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One in four children need professional help at some stage of their speech development, and that number is increasing at an average rate of 10% each year, says Mitja Mavsar, Co-founder of Slovenian startup BlubBlub.

During a “pitch the media” workshop at the Pioneers conference in Vienna last May Mavsar explained to a panel of journalists – including myself – how he himself struggled with a speech impediment all the way through his childhood, which is what inspired him to found the company in 2016:

The Founder of @weareblubblub struggled with a speech impediment himself as a child
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“Therapists simply can’t keep up with this growing number of patients. In some countries, parents and their children have to wait up to 24 months for their first appointment. That’s two years, think about what that means in terms of a child’s delayed development!”

The app is based on the video modeling learning methodology and includes an assessment tool where the parent can easily test their child to see what stage they best fit in. The Snapchat-style app uses play to boost the children’s speaking skills, but the content is curated by speech therapists so the clinical outcomes are clear.

“Inspiring a child to overcome their speech disabilities begins with teaching them how to mimic the sounds of animals, machines and other objects. Using facial recognition and augmented reality technology, the child becomes what he/she is practicing, so they can role-play and have fun.”

One interesting feature of the app is that it uses videos of real kids to demonstrate the exercises. This sort of visual feedback is crucial for children when learning, specially where speech is concerned, as they’re not only listening to sounds but observing the shapes that facial muscles, lips, teeth and tongue take while producing those sounds. It also makes them feel like they are engaging in play with another child, something that Mavsar feels is somewhat missing in a world where children spend so much time interacting with their devices. It’s a sort of “if you can’t beat them, join them” approach.

Speech Blubs uses technology to trigger sound and word production and progressively encouraging children to generate new sounds
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One interesting feature of the @weareblubblub app is that it uses videos of real kids to demonstrate the exercises
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In order to smile, chew, swallow and speak properly, children need to develop all sorts of motor skills using their tongue, lips and cheeks, so the app has a “mouth gym” where practice exercises are designed to increase oral muscle awareness, coordination, strength, range of motion and endurance.

They operate a subscription model where parents pay a fee to access content, but therapists can use the Speech Blubs app in clinics and schools for free. Currently 10,000+ therapists take advantage of that, while over 100,000 individual users have been helped by their services.

Currently over 10,000 therapists are using the app
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BlubBlub’s success isn’t an anomaly though, as technology often takes on enabling or therapeutic roles in all manner of contexts. Virtual platforms such as Second Life have proven to be fantastic tools for enabling users with all manner of disabilities to interact with others, and technologies like Virtual Reality have been successfully used in the treatment of phobias.

BlubBlub’s success isn't an anomaly though, as technology often takes on enabling or therapeutic roles in all manner of contexts
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There is a growing focus amongst tech giants such as Microsoft of the need to make product design more inclusive
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There is also a growing focus amongst tech giants such as Microsoft of the need to make product design more inclusive. There is, after all, a market of around a billion people who are currently marginalized from this process, and from a business perspective (even if one is not necessarily bothered about the moral implications) that just doesn’t make any sense. And as Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella himself has pointed out, by making products which are more accessible, all users stand to benefit, not just those with a particular impediment or disability.

This article originally appeared on the Forbes website

How Tech As Therapy Can Be Big Businesshttps://t.co/8V8B8PtOuQ

— Forbes Tech News (@ForbesTech) June 22, 2018

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 and Digital Transformation 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 Therapeutic Tech Helping Kids Find Their Voice appeared first on Tech Trends.

Immersive technologies bring new opportunities to engage, teach and entertain children, but what are the safeguards we must put in place?

The overall sense that emerges from the research is that immersive technologies such as VR could become valuable learning tools
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As more children start using virtual reality, it will be critical for parents and teachers to understand the effect it can have. This is what a new report Virtual Reality 101: What You Need to Know About Kids and VR is hoping to contribute towards. Produced in collaboration with independent nonprofit organisation Common Sense Media, it is a resource to better understand how this new technology can be applied to everyday life and learning.

“Because VR is in its infancy, we have a unique opportunity to stay on top of this technological wave before it overwhelms us,” says report Co-author Jim Steyer, Founder of Common Sense Media.

Compared to other media, VR is a powerful way to deliver information
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Report Co-author Jeremy Bailenson – a communication professor at Stanford University and founder of Stanford’s Virtual Human Interaction Lab – explains that research about the effects of the medium on children is only just emerging: “Compared to other media, VR is an extremely powerful way to deliver information. VR responds to your body. If you want to get closer to an object you can actually walk; if you want to touch something you can reach out and get haptic feedback. It’s perceptually surrounding, so no matter where you turn there is content.”

The report also includes the results of a survey of 3,613 parents about their attitudes toward virtual reality.

“Until this survey, it was unclear how, and even how many, kids were using virtual reality,” Bailenson says. “Now we have an initial picture of its adoption and use.”

The overall sense that emerges from the research is that immersive technologies such as VR could indeed become valuable learning tools, and 62 percent of parents surveyed for the report agree that VR can offer educational experiences for their children.

But parents and educators still need to take some precautions, Bailenson says. In the survey, 11 percent of parents reported their 8- to 17-year-olds experienced dizziness, 10 percent experienced a headache, and 13 percent bumped into something. He therefore cautions that parents need to supervise their children when they use VR and ensure they do so in moderation, limiting sessions to 10 or 20 minutes and enforcing regular breaks.

As more children start using virtual reality, it will be critical for parents and teachers to understand the effect it can have
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“We found that kids can develop more trust in media characters in the virtual environment,” says Jakki Bailey, a graduate from Stanford’s PhD program in communication and now an assistant professor at the University of Texas at Austin.

In a 2009 study, Bailenson found that when elementary-aged school children saw themselves swimming with orca whales in a virtual environment, many later recalled the experience as real. Building off that research, a 2017 study Bailenson conducted with Bailey showed that media characters in virtual reality may be more influential over young children than characters on TV or computers.

62 percent of parents surveyed for the report agree that VR can offer educational experiences for their children
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In partnership with the Sesame Workshop, Bailenson and Bailey set up an interactive and immersive VR environment where children aged between four and six played games with the popular Sesame Street character Grover. Their observations showed that when children were engaged with the VR version of Grover versus a version on a two-dimensional screen, they were more likely to treat him as a friend.

As immersive technologies become pervasive and seamlessly intersect with the physical world, educators need to proactively understand and prepare for this change rather than reactively adapt to it
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Building on their previously published research on Immersive Virtual Reality and the Developing Child and Considering virtual reality in children’s lives, Bailey notes that this influence can be a positive force in teaching, as children are more likely to turn to that source for information and learning.

Speaking – appropriately through a Virtual Reality platform, AltspaceVR – at the recent Global Education and Skills Forum in Dubai, Bailey advocated for teachers and parents to be mindful of the greater psychological impact these virtual environments have, particularly in young children. The very element which makes Immersive Technology such a powerful learning tool – the sense of psychological presence it affords the user – could also be potentially damaging.

The very element which makes Immersive Technology such a powerful learning tool – the sense of psychological presence it affords the user – could also be potentially damaging
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Speaking at the Global Education and Skills Forum in Dubai, Bailey advocated for teachers and parents to be mindful of the greater psychological impact these virtual environments have
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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 LinkedInand follow @alicebonasio on Twitter.

The post Report: Kids and VR appeared first on Tech Trends.

Go ahead and call me weird, but of all the Mixed Reality demos I did at this year’s Build, the one I found most fun had me repairing an electric panel.

To understand the deep sense of satisfaction I experienced when the pretend machinery setup at the Seattle Sheraton hummed to life, you first have to understand how utterly useless I am at any sort of DIY, so even though I’d been guided through the procedure step-by-step, I felt a real sense of accomplishment at the end, even if it was all make-believe.

What is different about this is that apart from being more polished and integrating more collaborative features in one place via Microsoft Teams it also plugs into the company’s strategic focus on AI
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I was trying out the Microsoft Remote Assist feature, a HoloLens app (although the functionality also works on PCs. Phones and tablets) designed to help Firstline workers collaborate remotely with hands-free video calling, image sharing, and a full complement of Mixed Reality annotations. That type of use case is not new in itself, as HoloLens works with Skype out of the box which of course enables you to video call someone have them “see through your eyes” and offer advice on what you should do. In fact, German manufacturing giant Thyssenkrupp has been using that functionality to improve the efficiency of their elevator repair crews for well over a year now.

What is different about this is that apart from being more polished and integrating more collaborative features in one place via Microsoft Teams it also plugs into the company’s strategic focus on AI. The idea is that as more enterprise customers use the service the system will be able to learn from the data and optimize the experience (for example, recommending the best expert to contact depending on the type of problem encountered and real-time availability, taking into account what time zones each user is in, etc.)

The other advantage for enterprise customers looking to use the service is that Microsoft promises to provide all this with advanced identity and security measures
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The remote expert I had on video call not only told me what to do based on what I was seeing via the HoloLens, but was also able to look up and pin a schematic map to the wall next to me
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The other advantage for enterprise customers looking to use the service is that Microsoft promises to provide all this with advanced identity and security measures, which in settings where it might be a concern to share plans and reference materials relating to industrial processes.

A similar demo I tried in Seattle was from 3D app developer Taqtile, which generates step-by-step instructions supported by images, videos, text and holograms, all integrated into real-world physical actions. So here I had no input from a person, but (in spite of being that person who follows the LEGO instructions to the letter and ends up with a wonky masterpiece every time) but still managed to navigate the process so that at the end – lo and behold – the light switched on! It’s all about those simple pleasures.

Taqtile’s interface makes it easy for anybody to create such a list of instructions, which can then be used in a variety of scenarios from training to verification and compliance.

In the United States Air Force, for example, jet engine mechanics are not allowed to use operational airplanes for training. Some bases have training engines available, but these don’t necessarily match the aircrafts they would be called upon to repair, and many are restricted to learning from manuals and other supporting documentation, with their first hands-on experience being when they’re actually performing those tasks on planes that are in service.

This training allows students to practice alongside a physical training engine or a virtual 3D holographic one, which means they are physically performing and rehearsing those actions and building muscle memory
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This step-by-step training, however, allows those same students to practice alongside a physical training engine or a virtual 3D holographic one, which means they are physically performing and rehearsing those actions, building muscle memory and improving their confidence and knowledge retention.

Mixed reality applications such as these can help address a cross-industry challenge of productivity growth plateau
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Those materials can also be used by fully trained technicians to walk through a job and tick each step off the list. A mechanic in the field can select an appropriate job from the work order system, and will be provided with step-by-step instructions (overlaid on the physical equipment) on how to complete the job, which they can check off as they complete each task. The instructions include media such as video, audio, and images, and can link to external information as well as 3D models of the equipment’s “digital twin” and sub-parts.

While I enjoy a good VR rollercoaster or a spell of realistic zombie-blasting as much as the next gal, I do think these are the sort of practical, functional experiences that will sustain the growth of immersive technology
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For example, rather than having to rifle through a binder to find the appropriate Material Safety Data Sheet, the mechanic can access it directly from the relevant step in the tutorial. The inspector function allows a supervisor or compliance technician to review the mechanic’s work. The inspector can bring up the job completed by the technician, and can walk through step-by-step to ensure that everything was executed properly.

Mixed reality applications such as these can really help address a cross-industry challenge, a so-called plateau in productivity growth which results from a decline in number of skilled workers and increase in demand for maintenance and inspection expertise.

Taqtile’s interface makes it easy for anybody to create such a list of instructions, which can then be used in a variety of scenarios from training to verification and compliance.
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So while I enjoy a good VR rollercoaster or a spell of realistic zombie-blasting as much as the next gal, I do think these are the sort of practical, functional experiences that will sustain the growth of immersive technology while consumers wrap their heads around how it fits into their day-to-day lives. These applications give companies an immediate and often dramatic return on their investment, and – if my own experience is anything to go on – they can also be rather fun.

Microsoft Introduces HoloLens Mixed Reality To The Job Site via @alicebonasio https://t.co/XPDbk7Uqg9 pic.twitter.com/1jsHLVehy9

— VRScout (@VRScout) May 10, 2018

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.

The post Mixed Reality Lending a Helping Hand appeared first on Tech Trends.

Virtual, Augmented and Mixed Reality technologies will bring opportunities for merchants as consumer adoption grows.

There is high consumer interest to use VR for making purchase decisions while shopping online or in-store.
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While E-commerce and digital marketing have proven to be effective platforms, Virtual Reality (VR) is the next innovative technology that will improve and impact the retail and marketing sectors, with market-foresight advisory firm ABI Research forecasting that VR in retail and marketing sectors is expected to generate US$1.8 billion in 2022.

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Retail and marketing companies have realized that virtual reality technology can be an effective tool to further assist consumers with the purchase process and provide them with the ability to visualize and personalize the products more realistically,” says Khin Sandi Lynn, Industry Analyst at ABI Research.

Automotive companies and travel agencies are already using VR as a marketing tool, with applications such as virtual test drives and 360-degree tours becoming more widespread. E-commerce is another sector with a good potential for VR deployment. Chinese E-commerce company Alibaba has deployed its Buy+ mobile VR platform for better product visualizing. Alibaba integrates its Alipay payment platform to assist consumers making payment while browsing products using Buy+ VR.

“There is high consumer interest in using VR for making purchase decisions while shopping online or in-store. The availability of low-cost VR headsets is another driver of consumer VR use cases for purchasing products,” notes Lynn.

Walmart’s recent acquisition of VR software company Spatialand is another indicator of VR deployment as a retail solution in the future, as is their use of HoloLens for helping better manage their warehouse logistics. Consumers’ awareness together with investment by retailers and brands will drive the VR retail and marketing market.

VR can be used for market research to understand consumer behavior
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Walmart’s recent acquisition of VR software company Spatialand is another indicator of VR deployment as a retail solution in the future
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Furniture and home improvement stores have been early adopters of VR in the retail segment. VR is an effective platform for customers to view furniture, pick different parts, customize products, and/or visualize an item before making a purchase decision, and has been adopted both in-store and online to provide a better shopping experience to consumers.

IKEA and Lowe’s have successfully deployed Immersive Technologies in their stores
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Swedish furniture company IKEA and North American home improvement company Lowe’s are two examples that have successfully deployed it, as are Augment – a French company that Tech Trends met last year in Orlando, Florida, which builds syndicated catalogs of AR-ready products from the world’s major brands like Microsoft, Panasonic, Electrolux, and make it available to all retailers through an AR SDK, supporting ARKit / ARCore.

“The number one issue we’re hearing from retailers launching AR for eCommerce (Amazon, Build.com, Overstock, Wayfair…) is the management of 3D products,” explains the company’s Co-Founder and COO Mickaël Jordan. “It’s expensive, time consuming, and each retailer is basically building its own catalogue of similar AR-ready models of appliances, electronics and furniture. It’s nonsense,” he says.

Some of the key findings in ABI Research’s VR in Retail and Marketing report include:

• VR software and service revenue in retail and marketing will grow at CAGR 102% to generate $1.8 billion 2022.
• E-commerce and digital marketing has shifted the way brand and retailers market the products. VR is the next innovation in retail and marketing sector. The realistic feel provided by VR provides many benefits to retail and marketing; enhanced shopping experience, efficient marketing tool, more effective store management system etc.
• VR can also be used for market research to better understand consumer behavior.
• Furniture stores such as IKEA have deployed VR for product browsing, selection and customization. Lowe’s has another interesting VR deployment which allows shoppers to learn how to install their products.
• E-commerce and other sectors such as travel agencies are also starting to use VR to visualize products or try tours, hotels or flight experience before purchasing product or services.
• VR assists consumers in making purchase decisions, helping retail and marketing companies to achieve greater footfall and decrease returns rates.
• There is great interest from both retailers and consumers to use VR in purchasing process. However, deployment cost can be a challenge for smaller retailers and VR might not be the right platform for older generation consumers who are not yet familiar with the technology.

If you would like to find out how to leverage VR/AR/MR in your enterprise, Tech Trends offers 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 on Twitter.

The post Report: VR in Retail and Marketing to Generate US$1.8 billion in 2022 appeared first on Tech Trends.

Google harnesses the power of photos and street view to deliver simplified VR development for teachers and students.

The benefits of using immersive technologies as teaching tools have been widely documented and extensively discussed, specially in recent years with the rapid development of Virtual, Augmented, and Mixed reality hardware and applications.

The benefits of using immersive technologies as teaching tools have been widely documented and extensively discussed
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Yet the biggest obstacle that often keeps teachers from adopting these technologies in the classroom is not necessarily cost – there are, after all, many entry-level budget ways of experiencing Virtual Reality which use fairly pervasive and accessible mobile technology such as the Google Cardboard – but the lack of relevant content with which educators and learners alike can identify beyond the level of an amusing novelty.

Many educators and academics do believe that this technology will eventually become as commonplace as computers and mobile phones are today:

Speaking at the Global Education and Skills Forum in March, Jakki Bailey – a researcher from The University of Texas at Austin who focuses on the psychological and social experiences of Virtual Reality – said that as the technology becomes more affordable, it will seamlessly intersect with the physical world. Whereas now we tend to refer to the physical and digital worlds as separate entities, we are inexorably moving towards a blending of the two. This is the new reality that educators need to prepare themselves to proactively use it rather than reactively adapt to it.

Technology companies are also recognizing the need to better enable the creation of content that will empower teachers to leverage the benefits of the technology in a coherent pedagogical context. At its annual I/O Developer Conference in Mountain View, California Google announced the launch of Tour Creator, a new tool that easily allows anyone to create interactive content in Virtual Reality.

Much as the Internet facilitated broader access to knowledge, Immersive technologies could enable broader access to experience
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Educators and academics believe that Immersive technology will become as commonplace as computers and mobile phones today
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This follows from the company’s introduction three years ago of Google’s initial foray in educational VR – Google Expeditions – which first introduced the idea of taking students on virtual reality field trips using basic equipment such as Google Cardboard. Since 2015, Google Expeditions has brought students to places like the Burj Khalifa, Antarctica, and Machu Picchu with virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR).

Tour Creator builds upon this success – over three million students used the service so far – by allowing people to create and customize their own experiential content. As Jen Zurawski, an educator with Wisconsin’s West De Pere School District, puts it: “With Expeditions, our students had access to a wide range of tours outside our geographical area, but we wanted to create tours here in our own community.”

Using simplified web-based interfaces, Tour Creator is meant to be an accessible tool for everyone, regardless of their experience or technical background. Users simply search across Google Street View for their desired locations – or upload their own 360-degree photos – and easily stitch that content together to form “scenes” to which they can add various interactive elements such as buttons that activate additional information at certain points within the scene, and embed the whole experience onto the school’s website, for instance.

“Being able to work with Tour Creator has been an awesome experience,” says Jennifer Newton, a school media coordinator in Georgia. “It has allowed our students from a small town in Georgia to tell our story to the world.”

“As the technology progresses it will become more affordable and more integrated into our everyday lives. Just as most people here are carrying some sort of smartphone, the next step will be some sort of augmented reality device, so that will filter down into classrooms as well,” adds Dr Dimitri Amiras, a consultant at Imperial College who has been working on clinical and training applications of Microsoft’s HoloLens Mixed Reality technology who also participated in the discussion at GESF examining the future of immersive technologies in learning environments.

Much in the same way as the widespread adoption of the Internet facilitated broader access to knowledge, Immersive technologies could enable broader and more egalitarian access to experience. However, this potential can only be realized once both content and hardware becomes universally accessible, and initiatives such as these by Google help teachers advance towards that goal

“The technology gets out of the way and enables students to focus on crafting fantastic visual stories,” explains Charlie Reisinger, a Pennsylvania educator. And that, in fact, is the ultimate goal of any transformative technology. For as Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella put it in his keynote at Microsoft Build in Seattle this week (quoting the father of ubiquitous computing Mark Weiser) “The most profound technologies are those that disappear. They weave themselves into the fabric of our daily lives.”

This article was originally published on IDG Connect

Empowering educators to create immersive learning experiences, by @alicebonasio from @CIOonline https://t.co/HRC0SuUFOv

— IDG Contributor Network (@IDGCN) May 11, 2018

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.

The post Creating Immersive Learning Experiences appeared first on Tech Trends.

Latest forecast by analyst firm CCS Insight paints an optimistic picture of Immersive Tech adoption.

The report published today by global analyst company CCS Insight shows the worldwide market for virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) head-worn devices growing by an average of 50 percent annually over the next five years. In 2022, a total of 121 million units will be sold, with a value of $9.9 billion.

Gaming remains the primary reason for sales of VR devices and this is unlikely to change over the next few years
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The firm’s research indicates that VR headsets have been the main source of growth in unit sales to date, and although this trend is expected to continue – particularly with smartphone-powered mobile headsets – there is also an expectations that the next generation of HMDs will ignite a new wave of consumer interest.

“We expect stand-alone headsets like the Oculus Go and HTC Vive Focus to ignite a new wave of growth that will help broaden the appeal of virtual reality, particularly with businesses and in education,” says George Jijiashvili, CCS Insight’s senior analyst for wearables.

Gaming remains the primary reason for sales of VR devices and this is unlikely to change over the next few years. The research shows that nearly 70 percent of customers who own a dedicated VR headset such as an Oculus Rift, HTC Vive or Sony PlayStation VR have bought games for it, and more than half of smartphone VR owners bought games for their device.

“There’s a growing array of exciting new content being developed. We saw in our latest consumer survey that virtual tourism, remote participation in events such as music concerts, and virtual social interactions are all emerging as further uses for virtual reality. Watching video is also proving popular, particularly on mobile headsets”.

AR smart glasses also show much promise for market growth according to Jijiashvili, as the report notes that in spite of businesses recognizing the potential of the technology, they have so far limited their adoption to purchasing a few units (just 24,000 AR smart glasses were purchased by business in 2017). However, CCS Insight predicts that over the next few years businesses will move from limited trials to wider deployment, with sales reaching a milestone of 1 million units in 2022.

“Given augmented reality is one of the hottest new technology areas in smartphones, it’s not surprising that interest is mounting in augmented reality glasses. Billions of dollars are being invested in this technology and we’ve seen significant improvements in the size, weight and design of smart glasses over the past 12 months. The potential of this technology is clear, but so far most companies are evaluating a few units to see how the technology fits into their operations”.

The firm also notes that consumer smart glasses adoption will probably move at a separate pace and in different directions than more enterprise-centric products. It predicts that under the right conditions, we could be looking at consumer smart glasses sales around the 4.5 million mark by 2022.

“We’re encouraged by the technology developments in smart glasses for consumers. Products such as Intel’s Vaunt glasses are a clear signal of the direction these devices are moving in, with a design little different from a pair of standard prescription glasses. It only takes a big company like Apple to jump into the market and we could be looking at market of millions of smart glasses in no time at all,” Jijiashvili concludes.

According to CCS insight, the forecast presents three scenarios (core, low and high) that plot the effects of different market developments, and is part of a broader suite of research into VR and AR devices, including an extensive database of over 100 devices in this area.

Stand-alone headsets like the Oculus Go and HTC Vive Focus will help broaden the appeal of virtual reality, particularly in business and education
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Key Insights from the report include:

• 22 million virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) headsets and glasses will be sold in 2018, with fivefold growth to 121 million units in 2022
• Smartphone VR will account for the bulk of sales volume, but value lies in dedicated VR devices, which will account for 63 percent of the total market value of $9.9 billion in 2022
• AR smart glasses for consumers have encouraging potential, particularly if a large consumer electronics firm such as Apple decides to enter the market
• Enterprise adoption of VR and AR remains an important element, but it will take many years to deliver meaningful sales volume

In 2022, a total of 121 million units will be sold, with a value of $9.9 billion
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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 LinkedInand follow @alicebonasioon Twitter.

The post Report: VR and AR Device Market to hit $1.8 billion in 2018 appeared first on Tech Trends.