XR and Industry Direction

The virtual reality industry has been growing rapidly over the past several years. The article “VR Headset Sales for 2019 Are Already Impressive” written by Nathaniel Mott (2019) states “VR and AR headsets (sales) rose 27.2% year-over-year in Q1 2019” (Mott, 2019). This incline in virtual reality devices has led to new terminology that’s misunderstood in the industry. This article will go over Virtual, Augmented, and Mixed realities giving clear definitions for each. We will briefly discuss some of the research on the Psychological Effects of VR and overall positive effect of VR.  Many devices and technologies are coming on the market, this article will go over where the industry is currently and what to start looking forward to in our near future.

Definition

There are several definitions for Virtual Reality (VR), Augmented Reality (AR), Mixed Reality (MR), and a term XR which showed up in the industry.  Let’s first define these in terms in how this article will use them. 

A relevant definition for VR comes from The Oxford Dictionary “The computer-generated simulation of a three-dimensional image or environment that can be interacted with in a seemingly real or physical way by a person using special electronic equipment, such as a helmet with a screen inside or gloves fitted with sensors.” (Oxford Dictionaries).  VR is where a user immerses their self in a virtual world and they have a way to interact with that world.

The Oxford Dictionary also has a good direct definition of Augmented Reality as well. “A technology that superimposes a computer-generated image on a user's view of the real world, thus providing a composite view.” (Oxford Dictionaries) So augmented reality is combining the real world with that of a virtual world directly in the users view.  The user has a way to interact with the virtual elements in this real world. Such as touching holograms or a heart rate monitor in your glasses.

MR in terms of this article is the outside world having a view-port to looking into the virtual world and seeing real world elements.  Think of this as a third person view of VR/AR.  This extends though as most MR devices are capable of VR/AR as well.  Let’s define this also as  a device that can handle more than one of the realities.

XR is a term that many have started using in the industry. Since there is no clear definition such as the ones stated here in each of the perspective domains.  For this article we will use the term XR to mean all encompassing, its stands for all the computer integrated realities AR/VR/MR.

Psychological Effects of VR

A study written by Barberia, Oliva, Bourdin, and Slater (2018) focuses on the fully immersive qualities of VR to use death as an independent variable.  They created a world where they focused on the three primary illusions VR provides for immersion, place illusion, plausibility illusion and body ownership.  They built a world where participants would live out their lives and die at the end of the study.  This study focused on Terror Management Theory in terms of the fear of death.  This study showed us positive results in decreasing the fear of death in participants as well as overall positive life attitude changes. (Barberia, 2018)

Research has also shown that using VR to treat Stroke rehabilitation, PTSD, balance disorders, and pain alleviation for burn victims have a positive effect (Eswaran, 2018).  Meta-analysis of the efficacy of virtual reality exposure therapy for social anxiety written by Chesham, Malouff, and Schutte (2018) shows that although, we don’t see a huge difference between a standard treatment and a virtual treatment for social anxiety, we do see that they are effective as each other (Chesham, 2018). This means VR is a potentially a viable solution to psychological disorders.  VR is being adopted across many industries as a training solution.  The 4 Industries discussed in “How 4 Industries Are Using Virtual Reality To Train Employees” written by Michael Goeden (2017) are Healthcare, Retail, Space, and Hospitality.

While there are a lot of studies on the physiological effects on VR and applications for use. AR is capabilities extremely new in the industry with devices only showing up for business usage in the past couple years.  With the idea that AR brings the real world into the virtual one and vice versa will this be more or less immersive? 

What’s Available in XR

VR has many hardware options in the current market. The top as of the date this was written are Play Station VR, Oculus Quest, Nintendo Labo VR Kit, HTC Vive, Oculus Go, Oculus Rift S, HTC Vive Pro, and the Lenovo Mirage (Greenwald, 2019). With new VR solutions showing up on the marked every month.

AR devices consist of HoloLens 1 (current) and 2 (releasing this year) and Magic Leap (released last year) and several others.  These devices are primarily for business use with extremely high price tags.  The technology being created for these devices are consistently driving us forward.

What is a mixed reality device?  By our previous definition our phones, tablets or any device that can look into the AR/VR world and give a rendering of the person and/or environment in that reality without actually putting the viewer in the world, the third person view. A professional device is the ZED camera.  The ZED camera is a depth camera when used with green-screen and chroma key technologies can place the user in the VR experience for a composite view.  This view is a 3^rd person view of the real player in the VR world.  Consumer devices are cell phones. Phones with a depth camera on their front facing camera are showing up in the market. These devices are being utilized for Avatar-ing. The depth camera maps the face and allow the user to place meshes over them, think of “Snapchat Filters”.  Soon dual depth cameras will be standard for front and rear facing cameras on phones making them better mixed reality devices and potentially augmented reality devices. Phones are already basic VR devices.  The Daydream View is an example a device that connects to a phone to give a Virtual Reality experience.

XR and Cloud Services

The updates to Cloud Services integrations, better hand tracking, object persistence, camera spatial mapping, and many other new features are being fixed and integrated across the industry. As more and more devices become connected with cloud services, Eventually a standardized “VR Web” will show up on the market to stay.  This space would need to bring in Geo-spatial tracking from GPS and mesh data gathered in every location where the devices are being used.  Industry leaders are competing for this space right now.  Many of the XR Devices have the capability to scan the rooms for these meshes to upload to and use cloud services as connections. This mesh data can be consolidated to create a “VR Web”. The software/hardware utilizing these Technologies is different between many of the devices and no standard has hit the market completely.  This could be due to the rush of adopting these technologies into software solutions.  Unity has gone through several major changes over the last year to support Magic Leap and upcoming devices. This is a new space that companies are still trying to figure out how to leverage. Development studios potentially using these devices early on will spend extra development time keeping up and making the required changes to the code-base when new releases of these devices/software hit the market. The First to Market advantage is many times worth this risk.

The Future

We can see from the positive effects of XR that there is plenty of need for real world applications in military, gaming, simulation, medical, training, entertainment, research, advertising, and basic business. VR is quickly becoming adopted across many industries.  AR will eventually stabilize in the industry and these devices will start making their way into the consumers’ homes.  Eventually glasses that have some form of connection into the “VR Web” will be on the market.  These devices could be playing music while someone is on a run through a park and as they run, they see holographic animals and billboard advertising.  They could be playing an augmented version of Angry Birds while waiting in the Dr office or the Doctor has a game developed for his public 3D space.  At work and at home you may have a personal assistant, an AI that you can see and interact with when using augmented reality devices.  Whatever happens in the future it is full of technology! XR is finally here to stay.

References

Greenwald, W., & Greenwald, W. (2019, April 30). The Best VR Headsets for 2019. Retrieved August 7, 2019, from https://www.pcmag.com/article/342537/the-best-virtual-reality-vr-headsets

Chesham, R. K., Malouff, J. M., & Schutte, N. S. (2018). Meta-analysis of the efficacy of virtual reality exposure therapy for social anxiety. Behavior Change,35(3), 152-146.

Barberia, I., Oliva, R., Bourdin, P., & Slater, M. (2018). Virtual mortality and near-death experience after a prolonged exposure in a shared virtual reality may lead to positive life-attitude changes. PLoS ONE, 13(11), 1-31.

Eswaran, V. B., Veezhinathan, M., Balasubramanian, G., & A. T. (2018). Virtual Reality Therapy for Mental Stress Reduction. Journal of Clinical & Diagnostic Research, 12(10), 11-16.

Virtual reality | Definition of virtual reality in English by Oxford Dictionaries. (n.d.) Retrieved from http://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/virtual_reality

Augmented reality | Definition of virtual reality in English by Oxford Dictionaries. (n.d.) Retrieved from http://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/augmented_reality  

Mott, N. (2019, June 27). VR Headset Sales for 2019 Are Already Impressive. Retrieved August 13, 2019, from https://www.tomshardware.com/news/vr-ar-market-sales-research-idc,39755.html

Goeden, M. (2018, February 05). How 4 Industries Are Using Virtual Reality To Train Employees. Retrieved August 13, 2019, from https://elearningindustry.com/using-virtual-reality-to-train-employees-4-industries