Accessibility and market penetration of XR technologies

During the recent years, dropping hardware prices, smaller form factor VR headsets and less complex technological setups (wireless, standalone, cloud based rendering instead of high-performance rendering stations) have turned the wheel for XR tech.

In addition hand-held AR gained momentum in professional environments and assistive technologies (e.g. maintenance support through remote experts). Based on these developments, revenues in the XR domain have started to advance and are setting out to create considerable interest and earnings in a number of businesses.

 

Online collaboration

Driven by social distancing as well as international travel limitations in the pandemic, we were all forced to bring our personal and work life connections to the online world.

On the other hand particular attention in these contexts was given to virtual reality based collaboration solutions, as they were used to host different types of events, from team meetings to conferences hosting thousands of people in co-presence in these virtual venues. Moreover, the virtual environments are customizable to better adapt the needs of the users in the virtual collaboration.

However, virtual collaboration is not only limited to VR technology. On a business level these approaches have massively reduced travel costs and lead to a drastic change in (positive) acceptability of these technologies.

 

XR for training, education and human assistance

Education and hands-on training is one of the initial application domains that profited most from the introduction of Extended Reality technologies.

These technologies have changed the way knowledge and skills are communicated and practiced. Furthermore, their scalability and the ability for self-led learning have driven a thriving uptake in corporate education, especially in the context of the pandemic, where decentralized and self-led education for employees was highly sought after.

This allows us to create assistive applications that are able to identify the problem on the spot and provide assistive information to the user on how to solve the problem through information augmentation.

An area of ample utilization and revenue generation have been assistive AR applications that are based on handheld devices (mobiles, tablets) due to their broad availability at low costs. Fertilized by the pandemic travel restrictions that rendered availability of e.g. maintenance experts in remote locations impossible, these solutions experienced a steep uptake in industrial settings and generated considerable revenues for providers.

 

Diversity and Inclusion

Another very important topic affected by immersive technology is diversity and inclusion. This is where immersive training comes to play an important role.Through the power of immersion, the employees going through the diversity & inclusion training have the chance to learn how to navigate high stakes situations in a safe space.The learner is put through simulated real-life scenarios which can be customized to address the specific key learnings the training aims to transmit. Once increasing the awareness of the impact their behavior and actions have, immersive training can then mitigate the risk of real life emotional damage in the workplace, but not only.

Some of the specific issues immersive trainings tackle in the field of diversity and inclusion are:

  • Empathy – Walking a mile in someone else’s shoes is perhaps one of the best offerings of immersive training in diversity & inclusion. It gives the opportunity to face first hand the challenges, experiences and thought process of someone else. In fact, based on this exact definition, one of the most successful VR experiences the PwC network offers, namely “In my shoes” was based on.
  • Unconscious Bias – Although it often happens without awareness, unconscious bias has an important role on how we take decisions and treat other social groups of people. With immersive training, the learner has the chance to understand when they are being affected by unconscious bias by first hand experiencing it. In this way they can better overcome bias and understand it not only intellectually but also connect with it on an emotional level.
  • Conflict Management – Another issue to tackle in the field of diversity and inclusion in navigation conflict situations at work.Through role-playing activities in immersive environments, employees can practice these tough situations and have the opportunity to choose their words carefully and mend a broken report.

 

Digital Twins

A digital twin is a digital representation of a physical object, process or service; digital twins can be also used to replicate entire cities.

The digital twin technology is becoming increasingly insightful and a powerful tool to use.
It has a wide range of applicants such as testing a certain prototype or designs, assessing how a product or process will work under different circumstances and monitoring lifecycles.

On that note, smart cities are not where the DT power ends. Considering all the developments in this field, a powerful combination is that of extended reality (and as a logical follow up metaverse) and digital twin technology.

 

Munich Digital Twin

As mentioned above, digital twin solutions find application in smart city creations as well. An example use case comes from the city of Munich in Germany, investing in the creation of the city’s digital twin funded by the Federal Ministry of Transport.

Their goal is to develop innovative use cases for urban development as well as citizen-oriented forms of participation. They see the digital model of the city as a complementary part of the real physical city, which enables them to simulate various situations, one of them being the city traffic. In this way they can derive key insights which help urban planning.

Moreover, using the Munich digital twin for “what if scenarios” seems like another plausible idea. The virtual simulations offer testing effects of measures before implementing them in real life.

 

Gaming and leisure activities

Extended Reality gaming is talked of heavily since the breakthrough of Pokémon Go (a handheld AR based game) in 2016 that generated a lifetime revenue of up to $ 6bn.

Gaming companies started to extensively expand XR technologies to their games and applications. Gaming has been a key driver for the adoption of XR technologies in private homes resulting in a steady rise of the sales number for VR headsets in private homes. These headsets have been rather targeted towards hardcore gamers due to their need of high-performance Desktop PCs.

Moreover, availability of low cost wireless headsets (e.g., Meta’s Oculus Quest series as well as Pico’s Neo Headset series) and related app stores with XR gaming content have led to the breakthrough of casual VR gaming for considerable audiences. In addition, leisure offerings such as remote 360 videos and VR exploration of touristic attractions are in the onset to create a novel market of online tourism business.

The proliferation of AR and VR gaming and leisure applications across platforms is set to drive the market and related revenues further in the near future with a forecasted $11.0 billion by 2026.

 

 Authors: Gersa Tome
Sebastian Egger (Mindconsole)