XRDC speaker Q&A: Rosstin Murphy and the potential of VR enterprise training

As XRDC draws closer and closer (just next week!), we've seen a lot of growing enthusiasm among attendees and exhibitors for the potential of VR as a training tool in the enterprise business. At the show, STRIVR developers Rosstin Murphy and Ginny Willis are presenting a talk about their work in this new field, with key takeaways that will help you make great VR training apps too. 

We previously chatted with Willis about her work at STRIVR, now Murphy is chiming in to discuss what it's like putting a VR helmet on some of the most talented athletes in America. You can read our full Q&A with him below! 

Attend XRDC 2018 to learn about AR/VR/MR for games, entertainment, healthcare, enterprise training, education, automotive, and innovative use cases across industries.

Tell us about yourself and your work in VR/AR/MR
A couple years ago I was in-between projects at IBM. We had just finished working on an executive dashboard so data analysis was on my mind, and I had been following the VR hype and especially Theresa Duringer's work. I didn't have a developer license, but I was able to get around the rules and get my hands on an early Oculus Rift development kit. I started by making a simple force-node visualization in VR, and soon dove head-over-heels into doing data visualization in XR.

Those early days were really rocky. I paid for the original equipment out of my own pocket and made so many modifications to my office that I'm amazed I got away with it! But eventually we were able to form a team, gain the support of our managers, and we created some really fascinating prototypes! Later I joined STRIVR, because of the opportunity to move beyond prototyping software and into making real products for real companies.

Without spoiling it too much, tell us what you’ll be talking about at XRDC
Ginny Willis and I will be discussing examples of the client work we undertake at STRIVR. At STRIVR we've had the opportunity to build a huge variety of different experiences for different clients, and we've been able to learn so many interesting things.

Enterprise training VR is a really new field and there are so many aspects of it, but we think that STRIVR has been able to be successful because of how we've focused in on the most important, highest yield parts of it, rather than try to do everything at once. We hope to share that with everyone else in this space, so we can all grow, together, as an industry.

What excites you most about AR/VR/MR?
I love working with XR because of all of the unique interaction properties it has, including its limitations and challenge. We're making history.

Who would you like to meet at XRDC?
I'm looking forward to meeting my old colleagues at IBM and seeing what new advances they've made on Immersive Insights!

When working with athletes, who are obviously used to their familiar training regimens and have specific skillsets, what have you learned about making VR experiences tailored to their experiences?
One of the big differences we see between our enterprise work and our sports work is athlete's focus on timing. Athletes need to make decisions in a split-second, and they place the biggest demand on our software to be frame-perfect.

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