virtual reality

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Virtual Reality Enhances Ketamine Therapy Sessions With Immersive Experiences

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Recently, TRIPP PsyAssist completed its Phase 1 Feasibility Study to demonstrate its use as a pretreatment tool for patients undergoing ketamine therapy. This VR solution is an example of emerging technologies that facilitate the development of more accessible and transformative mental health care solutions.

Globally, more than 500 million people have anxiety and depression. That’s more than half of the total estimate of people living with some form of mental illness. However, only a third receive adequate mental health care. Solutions like TRIPP PsyAssist help mental health clinics provide the care their patients need.

Treating Mental Health Disorders With Ketamine Therapy

Many methods are available to treat depression, anxiety, and similar mental health conditions. Using psychedelics, like ketamine, is gaining ground as a fast-acting, non-invasive treatment option. Low doses of ketamine, a dissociative psychedelic drug, are administered intravenously in a clinical setting to patients for several minutes while the patient is observed. Patients typically go through several rounds of these treatments.

While ketamine therapy has numerous clinical studies proving its effectiveness, there remains a need to manage pre-treatment settings. Patients experience the same anxiety before their ketamine therapy sessions, and alleviating their distress will help usher in a more relaxed onboarding and treatment session. There’s also a need to integrate their experiences after the ketamine therapy treatment, both at the clinic and at home.

Using VR to Improve Ketamine Therapy Pre-Treatment Experience

TRIPP is a California-based company pioneering XR wellness technologies for consumers, enterprises, and clinics. Their research-based platform is available across VR, AR, and mobile to help facilitate a deeper self-connection and create collective well-being.

TRIPP PsyAssist for ketamine therapy 2

TRIPP is best known for its award-winning consumer platform that creates beautiful meditative VR spaces where users can spend time calming their minds and centering their being. Staying true to its mission of using technology to transform the mind, the company introduced TRIPP PsyAssist, its clinical offering aimed at helping medical institutions use XR to improve their practices.

“At TRIPP, we are dedicated to empowering individuals on their path to healing,” said TRIPP’s CEO and founder Nanea Reeves. They believe that virtual reality has the power to enhance therapeutic interventions, and their research encourages them to explore new frontiers in mental health treatment.

The main objective of Phase 1 of the TRIPP PsyAssist study was to assess whether guided, meditative imagery, which was provided through VR using the Pico Neo 3 Pro Eye headset, could be successfully implemented as a pre-treatment program in an actual clinical setting. The study also aimed to evaluate the level of acceptance of this approach.

The study participants were undergoing ketamine therapy for anxiety or depression at Kadima Neuropsychiatry Institute in San Diego. Kadima’s President, David Feifel, MD, PhD, was excited to partner with TRIPP and have this important feasibility study conducted among its patients.

“VR technology has great potential to enhance mental wellness, and TRIPP PsyAssist is at the forefront of translating that potential into reality,” Feifel said. “This study represents an important step in that direction.”

Improving Patient Experience with TRIPP PsyAssist

The results of the feasibility study were very promising. Eighty percent of the users wanted to use the system frequently, while all of them found the different functions well-integrated. Likewise, 100% of the users felt very confident in using the system.

TRIPP’s Clinical Director of Operations, Sunny Strasburg, LMFT, was delighted with the success of the preliminary results of the feasibility study.

TRIPP PsyAssist for ketamine therapy

“These findings inspire us to forge ahead in uncovering new frontiers within clinical settings where technology and psychedelic medicine converge,” she said. Strasburg and her team look forward to expanding their study to explore various TRIPP PsyAssist applications in clinical settings.

With Phase 1 of the study completed, TRIPP PsyAssist is set to discover new ways of integrating innovative VR technology into mainstream clinical practices.

Reeves and Strasburg are also attending the MAPS Psychedelic Science Conference, which is taking place this week, where they are showcasing their research and discussing the impact of emerging technologies on mental health treatment. A Kadima booth will also be present to give attendees a demonstration of the transformative potential of the TRIPP platform.

Final Thoughts

Significant advances in research have elevated our knowledge about mental health. However, it remains a critical global health concern as the number of disorders escalates, but the available resources remain sparse.

But there’s a light at the end of the tunnel. Initiatives like TRIPP PsyAssist prove that emerging technology can play a significant role in alleviating mental health problems. This gives us the confidence that the future is bright and that our challenges have a solution at hand.

Virtual Reality Enhances Ketamine Therapy Sessions With Immersive Experiences Read More »

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The Intersections of Artificial Intelligence and Extended Reality

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It seems like just yesterday it was the AR this, VR that, metaverse, metaverse, metaverse. Now all anyone can talk about is artificial intelligence. Is that a bad sign for XR? Some people seem to think so. However, people in the XR industry understand that it’s not a competition.

In fact, artificial intelligence has a huge role to play in building and experiencing XR content – and it’s been part of high-level metaverse discussions for a very long time. I’ve never claimed to be a metaverse expert and I’m not about to claim to be an AI expert, so I’ve been talking to the people building these technologies to learn more about how they help each other.

The Types of Artificial Intelligence in Extended Realities

For the sake of this article, there are three main different branches of artificial intelligence: computer vision, generative AI, and large language models. AI is more complicated than this, but this helps to get us started talking about how it relates to XR.

Computer Vision

In XR, computer vision helps apps recognize and understand elements in the environment. This places virtual elements in the environment and sometimes lets them react to that environment. Computer vision is also increasingly being used to streamline the creation of digital twins of physical items or locations.

Niantic is one of XR’s big world-builders using computer vision and scene understanding to realistically augment the world. 8th Wall, an acquisition that does its own projects but also serves as Niantic’s WebXR division, also uses some AI but is also compatible with other AI tools, as teams showcased in a recent Innovation Lab hackathon.

“During the sky effects challenge in March, we saw some really interesting integrations of sky effects with generative AI because that was the shiny object at the time,” Caitlin Lacey, Niantic’s Senior Director of Product Marketing told ARPost in a recent interview. “We saw project after project take that spin and we never really saw that coming.”

The winner used generative AI to create the environment that replaced the sky through a recent tool developed by 8th Wall. While some see artificial intelligence (that “shiny object”) as taking the wind out of immersive tech’s sails, Lacey sees this as an evolution rather than a distraction.

“I don’t think it’s one or the other. I think they complement each other,” said Lacey. “I like to call them the peanut butter and jelly of the internet.”

Generative AI

Generative AI takes a prompt and turns it into some form of media, whether an image, a short video, or even a 3D asset. Generative AI is often used in VR experiences to create “skyboxes” – the flat image over the virtual landscape where players have their actual interactions. However, as AI gets stronger, it is increasingly used to create virtual assets and environments themselves.

Artificial Intelligence and Professional Content Creation

Talespin makes immersive XR experiences for training soft skills in the workplace. The company has been using artificial intelligence internally for a while now and recently rolled out a whole AI-powered authoring tool for their clients and customers.

A release shared with ARPost calls the platform “an orchestrator of several AI technologies behind the scenes.” That includes developing generative AI tools for character and world building, but it also includes work with other kinds of artificial intelligence that we’ll explore further in the article, like LLMs.

“One of the problems we’ve all had in the XR community is that there’s a very small contingent of people who have the interest and the know-how and the time to create these experiences, so this massive opportunity is funneled into a very narrow pipeline,” Talespin CEO Kyle Jackson told ARPost. “Internally, we’ve seen a 95-97% reduction in time to create [with AI tools].”

Talespin isn’t introducing these tools to put themselves out of business. On the contrary, Jackson said that his team is able to be even more involved in helping companies workshop their experiences because his team is spending less time building the experiences themselves. Jackson further said this is only one example of a shift happening to more and more jobs.

“What should we be doing to make ourselves more valuable as these things shift? … It’s really about metacognition,” said Jackson. “Our place flipped from needing to know the answer to needing to know the question.”

Artificial Intelligence and Individual Creators

DEVAR launched MyWebAR in 2021 as a no-code authoring tool for WebAR experiences. In the spring of 2023, that platform became more powerful with a neural network for AR object creation.

In creating a 3D asset from a prompt, the network determines the necessary polygon count and replicates the texture. The resulting 3D asset can exist in AR experiences and serve as a marker itself for second-layer experiences.

“A designer today is someone who can not just draw, but describe. Today, it’s the same in XR,” DEVAR founder and CEO Anna Belova told ARPost. “Our goal is to make this available to everyone … you just need to open your imagination.”

Blurring the Lines

“From strictly the making a world aspect, AI takes on a lot of the work,” Mirrorscape CEO Grant Anderson told ARPost. “Making all of these models and environments takes a lot of time and money, so AI is a magic bullet.”

Mirroscape is looking to “bring your tabletop game to life with immersive 3D augmented reality.” Of course, much of the beauty of tabletop games come from the fact that players are creating their own worlds and characters as they go along. While the roleplaying element has been reproduced by other platforms, Mirrorscape is bringing in the individual creativity through AI.

“We’re all about user-created content, and I think in the end AI is really going to revolutionize that,” said Grant. “It’s going to blur the lines around what a game publisher is.”

Even for those who are professional builders but who might be independent or just starting out, artificial intelligence, whether to create assets or just for ideation, can help level the playing field. That was a theme of a recent Zapworks workshop “Can AI Unlock Your Creating Potential? Augmenting Reality With AI Tools.”

“AI is now giving individuals like me and all of you sort of superpowers to compete with collectives,” Zappar executive creative director Andre Assalino said during the workshop. “If I was a one-man band, if I was starting off with my own little design firm or whatever, if it’s just me freelancing, I now will be able to do so much more than I could five years ago.”

NeRFs

Neural Radiance Fields (NeRFs) weren’t included in the introduction because they can be seen as a combination of generative AI and computer vision. It starts out with a special kind of neural network called a multilayer perceptron (MLP). A “neural network” is any artificial intelligence that’s based off of the human brain, and an MLP is … well, look at it this way:

If you’ve ever taken an engineering course, or even a highschool shop class, you’ve been introduced to drafting. Technical drawings represent a 3D structure as a series of 2D images, each showing different angles of the 3D structure. Over time, you can get pretty good at visualizing the complete structure from these flat images. An MLP can do the same thing.

The difference is the output. When a human does this, the output is a thought – a spatial understanding of the object in your mind’s eye. When an MLP does this, the output is a NeRF – a 3D rendering generated from the 2D images.

Early on, this meant feeding countless images into the MLP. However, in the summer of 2022, Apple and the University of British Columbia developed a way to do it with one video. Their approach was specifically interested in generating 3D models of people from video clips for use in AR applications.

Whether a NeRF recreates a human or an object, it’s quickly becoming the fastest and easiest way to make digital twins. Of course, the only downside is that NeRF can only create digital models of things that already exist in the physical world.

Digital Twins and Simulation

Digital twins can be built with or without artificial intelligence. However, some use cases of digital twins are powered by AI. These include simulations like optimization and disaster readiness. For example, a digital twin of a real campus can be created, but then modified on a computer to maximize production or minimize risk in different simulated scenarios.

“You can do things like scan in areas of a refinery, but then create optimized versions of that refinery … and have different simulations of things happening,” MeetKai co-founder and executive chairwoman Weili Dai told ARPost in a recent interview.

A recent suite of authoring tools launched by the company (which started in AI before branching into XR solutions) includes AI-powered tools for creating virtual environments from the virtual world. These can be left as exact digital twins, or they can be edited to streamline the production of more fantastic virtual worlds by providing a foundation built in reality.

Large Language Models

Large Language Models take in language prompts and return language responses. This is on the list of AI interactions that runs largely under the hood so that, ideally, users don’t realize that they’re interacting with AI. For example, large language models could be the future of NPC interactions and “non-human agents” that help us navigate vast virtual worlds.

“In these virtual world environments, people are often more comfortable talking to virtual agents,” Inworld AI CEO Ilya Gelfenbeyn told ARPost in a recent interview. “In many cases, they are acting in some service roles and they are preferable [to human agents].”

Inworld AI makes brains that can animate Ready Player Me avatars in virtual worlds. Creators get to decide what the artificial intelligence knows – or what information it can access from the web – and what its personality is like as it walks and talks its way through the virtual landscape.

“You basically are teaching an actor how it is supposed to behave,” Inworld CPO Kylan Gibbs told ARPost.

Large language models are also used by developers to speed up back-end processes like generating code.

How XR Gives Back

So far, we’ve talked about ways in which artificial intelligence makes XR experiences better. However, the opposite is also true, with XR helping to strengthen AI for other uses and applications.

Evolving AI

We’ve already seen that some approaches to artificial intelligence are modeled after the human brain. We know that the human brain developed essentially through trial and error as it rose to meet the needs of our early ancestors. So, what if virtual brains had the same opportunity?

Martine Rothblatt PhD reports that very opportunity in the excellent book “Virtually Human: The Promise – and the Peril – of Digital Immortality”:

“[Academics] have even programmed elements of autonomy and empathy into computers. They even create artificial software worlds in which they attempt to mimic natural selection. In these artificial worlds, software structures compete for resources, undergo mutations, and evolve. Experimenters are hopeful that consciousness will evolve in their software as it did in biology, with vastly greater speed.”

Feeding AI

Like any emerging technology, people’s expectations of artificial intelligence can grow faster than AI’s actual capabilities. AI learns by having data entered into it. Lots of data.

For some applications, there is a lot of extant data for artificial intelligence to learn from. But, sometimes, the answers that people want from AI don’t exist yet as data from the physical world.

“One sort of major issue of training AI is the lack of data,” Treble Technologies CEO Finnur Pind told ARPost in a recent interview.

Treble Technologies works with creating realistic sound in virtual environments. To train an artificial intelligence to work with sound, it needs audio files. Historically, these were painstakingly sampled with different things causing different sounds in different environments.

Usually, during the early design phases, an architect or automotive designer will approach Treble to predict what audio will sound like in a future space. However, Treble can also use its software to generate specific sounds in specific environments to train artificial intelligence without all of the time and labor-intensive sampling. Pinur calls this “synthetic data generation.”

The AI-XR Relationship Is “and” Not “or”

Holding up artificial intelligence as the new technology on the block that somehow takes away from XR is an interesting narrative. However, experts are in agreement that these two emerging technologies reinforce each other – they don’t compete. XR helps AI grow in new and fantastic ways, while AI makes XR tools more powerful and more accessible. There’s room for both.

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Virbela Creates Virtual Cannes Lions Festival With PwC

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This year is the 70th annual Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity. The event takes place in the iconic town in the south of France but why should a festival of creativity not also take place in the virtual world? To extend opportunities for clients and customers to experience the event, PwC worked with Virbela to create a virtual option.

The virtual Cannes Lions Festival coincides with the in-person event from June 19-23, but I got a private advance tour of the custom Virbela campus, from two of the event’s creators, Virbela President and co-founder Alex Howland, and PwC Global Metaverse Leader Roberto Hernandez.

Welcome to the (Virtual) Cannes Lions

When you think of Cannes, you might not immediately think of a company like PwC. While the Cannes Film Festival attracts the most media headlines, the Lions is an event of a much broader scope as it recognizes creativity across everything from film and music to brands and marketing.

The Cannes Lions Festival is naturally associated with the city in which it takes place – which sits on the southern coast of France on the Mediterranean Sea between Marseille and Nice. Some events consist of the traditional sort of panels and presentations, but companies also present on the beach or on docked boats. Of course, not everyone can make that kind of trip.

Recreating Cannes

“What we are doing with this collaboration is giving people from around the world the opportunity to see what can be done with these kinds of immersive environments,” Hernandez said. “We also wanted to give people the opportunity to join remotely, but not just through a video call.”

Virbela and PwC Cannes Campus Outside

Hernandez acknowledged that remote events already exist around the Cannes Lions, but that they usually consist of someone giving reports day-by-day via a video. Virbela is able to get a lot closer to the real thing – boats and all.

“We wanted to give the campus that you know so well some French Riviera flare,” said Howland.

The intention was never to create an exact twin of the Cannes Lions venue, but to create a festive atmosphere in the familiar campus.

“It really takes you to a different place in a way that video conferencing doesn’t allow you to do,” said Hernandez. “I’m convinced, particularly when I talk to large-brand clients, that venues like these allow you to stretch the experience.”

Virbela With an Accent

That familiar Virbela campus (which got a sweeping redesign and beautiful graphics overhaul last year) is already an island complete with sand beaches, speed boats, volleyball nets, campfire sites, and tall pines. The bespoke world created for the Cannes Lions has more palm trees and yachts, making it a little more Mediterranean and a little less Pacific Northwest.

Virbela and PwC Cannes Yacht

Some of the buildings, particularly the ones more inland, are in the classic Virbela style. However, the main event buildings near the venue’s entrance have gotten a European facelift as well. Combined with flags, photo backdrops, and a red carpet (of course), the campus’ main stretch is decidedly more cosmopolitan.

“It was a match of very creative people from both sides (…) everyone approached this not as different teams working together, but as one team working on a dream experience,” said Hernandez. “We didn’t want this to be just inviting people to an auditorium to hear someone lecture.”

Hernandez, who was particularly excited about driving speedboats in Virbela, specifically mentioned assembling a team consisting of both experienced developers and younger developers who would be able to work together on an attractive, interactive, and engaging experience.

“PwC’s experience with these events and events like it has been very valuable,” said Howland.

Virbela in the Browser

As someone who has been covering Virbela and its events for a number of years, something about this experience excited me that might not register with some of the people joining the virtual Cannes Lions. I joined in a browser.

Jon in Virbela Cannes campus

Historically, Virbela has been app-based – even for limited-time events like iLRN or AfroTech World. WebXR experiences have been handled by a special branch of the company called Frame.

Frame comes with some smaller venues built in, but has been growing in its ability to create larger and more visually impactful virtual spaces. For someone who knows their way around the metaverse, connecting a Ready Player Me avatar is quick and easy. The platform also recently got an avatar upgrade, though the avatars still aren’t as customizable as Virbela’s.

To use the full modular Virbela campus and its more nuanced avatar generation engine, the team worked with NVIDIA to stream the world in-browser rather than require an app download. This also helped to make the experience more accessible for visitors.

“We have a number of clients with very strict firewalls and procedures,” said Hernandez. “For some of them, being able to download anything at all is a big challenge.”

Exploring the Virbela Riviera

While the actual event will obviously have a lot more energy when all of the attendees sign in, a number of attractions were already up and running for me to explore. One of the recurring ironies in immersive worlds is that events meant to replicate in-person events also provide experiences that no in-person party would allow. The virtual Cannes Lions are no different.

Virbela and PwC Cannes Theatre Inside

PwC didn’t just work with Virbela on this one activation and Virbela doesn’t just do events. Virbela offers virtual offices for global companies and distributed teams, including PwC. One exhibit in the Lions campus allows visitors to see the digital twins of PwC offices around the world.

Another experience allowed by the event streaming online works with a Frame integration to transport users into a series of more interactive virtual worlds. These show the effects that climate change could have on the cities around the world where PwC has offices. Visitors can also explore different climate scenarios and the results of potential intervention methods.

An Exclusive Event

Virbela is making the Cannes Lions more accessible than ever before. However, it’s still not open to everyone – select PwC clients and partners received email invitations.

“We never conceived this to be something attended by hundreds of thousands of people,” said Hernandez. “We want it to be special.”

The expected headcount? Around a thousand or so. It might sound like a lot for one virtual world, but Howland isn’t worried. Virbela has been tested at higher pressures than that.

“We regularly get over two thousand people in a campus,” said Howland. “One of the benefits of our new avatar system is that it’s a bit more performant, so we’ll be able to see that play out.”

Maybe One Day…

This is an ambitious project and it will be interesting to see whether it scales over time. While this extension of the Cannes Lions isn’t for everyone, we’ve already seen events like Fashion Week and Burning Man grow into immersive worlds and make them accessible to just about everyone. Maybe someday soon we will all be able to attend this event across the metaverse.

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“Affordable Haptic Glove” Crushes Indiegogo Campaign, Shipping This Autumn

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Haptic gloves allow users to interact much more intuitively and convincingly with virtual objects and virtual worlds. As such, they are viewed by many to be the next opportunity to increase the sense of immersion provided by XR technology.

Unfortunately, haptic gloves are still pretty cutting-edge technology. As such, currently available products on the market are largely limited to dev kits priced for researchers or enterprise users. However, one company, Bifrost, just passed its crowdfunding goal for its first product – the Pulse haptic glove – which could make haptics affordable to many more users.

Meet the Pulse Haptic Glove From Bifrost

“We designed Pulse with enthusiasts in mind every step of the way,” reads the product’s crowdfunding page. “After nearly five years of development, we’re proud to say that Pulse is the most accessible haptic glove on the market.”

The glove, which consists of motors resting over the knuckles that apply pressure by pulling caps worn on the fingertips, went on Indiegogo with a goal  of $20,000 but had raised more than three times that much by the time the backing window closed. And yes, those finger caps also have integrated trackers for precise controls within XR.

“Our glove offers precise finger tracking and realistic haptic feedback, creating a new level of immersion,” Bifrost founder Sam Baker said in an email to ARPost. “Pulse is a promising alternative to existing haptic devices that are out of reach for most consumers due to the steep price.”

Pulse haptic glove

The gloves are going for $300. Compare that to the $4,500 HaptX G1 launched last year. The glove appears to have a more “open” design than some competitors, but that may not be the final iteration. According to the crowdsourcing page, the product is still currently in the prototyping stage.

Fitting in the Market

There are a few companies out there making gloves for haptics and finger tracking. Other models are larger and more expensive, but that doesn’t mean that they aren’t worth thinking about. Even if they’re out of your price range, understanding other haptic gloves can help you wrap your head around what the team at Bifrost is doing.

Most of the heavy hitters have a similar basic mechanism as Pulse – most are a little smaller and all are more contained. But, keep in mind that we’re seeing a prototype from Bifrost. We should be thanking them for showing us such an unobstructed view of how haptics work – even if we hope that they make improvements before launch.

However, there are different kinds of haptic sensations that different kinds of products allow – sometimes in tandem. For example, tensile resistance isn’t the only sensation that your hands can feel – even if it is a really good start.

We drew a price comparison with HaptX, but those gloves aren’t 15 times more expensive for no reason. In addition to an arguably fairly standard grip simulation system, HaptX gloves have “hundreds of microfluidic actuators across your fingers and palms” that provide a far more immersive haptic experience – and require a massive piece of hardware called an “Airpack.”

SenseGlove offers a medium – a bulkier package than Pulse, but less ambitious haptics than HaptX. The closest thing on the market to Pulse in terms of form factor might be MANUS, though MANUS focuses on tracking rather than haptics and is priced in above HAPTX.

Would You Try Them On?

The bad news is that Pulse costs almost as much as a new entry-level headset. The good news is that that’s orders of magnitude less than the nearest competitor. While many price-conscious users will no doubt go without even these most affordable haptic gloves, Pulse will no doubt do what the manufacturers intends – open up the market to enthusiasts and “prosumers.”

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10 Top Use Cases of Blockchain in Virtual Reality

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While talking about blockchain technology, we should keep in mind that this is a new and still evolving industry. There are several use cases of blockchain in different industries, including virtual reality.

Here are the top use cases of blockchain in VR.

1. Decentralized Asset Ownership

Blockchain can be used to verify and track the ownership of virtual assets in VR, making it impossible for fraudulent transactions to occur, one example is DeFi (Decentralized Finance) in which there is no threat of fraud or theft as DeFi offers an emerging model for organizing and enabling cryptocurrency-based transactions without relying on intermediaries or traditional banks.

2. VR Advertising and Sponsorship

Blockchain and VR can work together to verify sponsorship and verify traffic, promoting transparency and trust between brands and consumers. Through blockchain, advertising and sponsorship in virtual reality can be made more secure and reliable.

By using blockchain-based smart contracts, brands and advertisers can ensure that their ads are displayed to their target audience in the virtual reality environment. This, in turn, can increase the relevance of the ads and improve the ROI for the advertisers.

Additionally, blockchain can also help to track and verify the traffic generated by the ads. By recording each interaction with the ad on the blockchain, advertisers can get a better understanding of the effectiveness of their VR advertising campaigns. This level of transparency can help to build trust between the brand and the consumer.

Blockchain can also be used to prevent fraudulent advertising practices. By using a decentralized system that relies on a consensus mechanism, blockchain ensures that the data is secure and tamper-proof. This can prevent scenarios where advertisers pay for fake traffic generated by bots or other illegitimate means.

In conclusion, the use of blockchain technology in virtual reality advertising and sponsorship can offer numerous benefits to both brands and consumers. By increasing transparency, security, and reliability, blockchain can help to build trust and improve the overall experience for everyone involved.

3. Secure VR Marketplaces

Decentralized marketplaces on the blockchain can be used to facilitate secure transactions of virtual goods and services, reducing fraud and ensuring safe transactions.

4. Virtual Reality Gaming

Blockchain-based incentives may be utilized to incentivize gamers to contribute to better gameplay, thus increasing engagement in VR gaming environments.

5. Rights Management

Another potential use case is the registration of copyright, publisher, and distribution rights to control the distribution and licensing of virtual reality content, ensuring the creators of content receive fair compensation.

6. Virtual Real Estate

With the increasing popularity of virtual worlds, blockchain technology can be utilized to enable the ownership and trading of virtual real estate. This allows for users to build and own property in virtual worlds and potentially earn revenue from it.

7. Virtual Currency

Virtual currencies used in VR environments can also benefit from blockchain technology. Blockchain can enable secure, transparent, and decentralized transactions for virtual reality commerce, as well as provide a more stable and reliable virtual currency system.

8. Identity Management

Blockchain technology can be used to manage and protect user identities in virtual environments, providing a more secure and trustworthy system for verification and authentication.

9. Cross-Platform Interoperability

Blockchain technology can enable interoperability between different VR platforms, allowing users to seamlessly interact with each other and access content across different platforms.

10. Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAOs)

Using blockchain technology, DAOs can be created in virtual reality environments to create decentralized decision-making and governance structures. This can enable community-driven development and decision-making in virtual worlds.

Conclusion

The use cases of blockchain in virtual reality demonstrate the potential for these two emerging technologies to work together and create innovative solutions for a variety of industries.

Blockchain technology can provide an additional layer of security and transparency to the virtual world, enabling safer transactions and the protection of users’ personal information.

Guest Post

About the Guest Author(s)

Amir Ashraf

Amir Ashraf

Amir is an expert editor and writer in the blockchain industry. After completing his studies, he started exploring different aspects of the blockchain industry and took the initiative to make things easy to understand by writing about different techniques that are used in blockchain and still working on different aspects as this is a developing field.

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Celebrating the 2023 Auggie Awards and XR Prize Challenge

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The Augmented World Expo has its own awards ceremony – the Auggie Awards. Watchers of the XR space submit nominations and vote for their favorites. A panel of distinguished judges then selects the winners from among the finalists. Or, at least, that’s how it works for the first 16 categories.

The Best in Show awards, the XR Startup to Watch, and a few other Auggie Awards are determined differently. This year also saw the award of the XR Prize Challenge that AWE founder and CEO Ori Inbar announced last year.

The 14th Annual Auggie Awards

“I’m super excited to be hosting the Auggie Awards ceremony for the 14th year,” said Inbar. “The Auggie Awards have been recognizing XR since 2010.”

Ori Inbar and Auggies

Inbar shared that there were a record 377 nominations this year, which public voting narrowed down to 89 finalists before 30 judges chose the 16 winners. Or, the 13 winners, as one organization left with a record-breaking three awards.

Auggie Awards 2023 judges

Best Art or Film

Developer, entrepreneur, and consultant Antony Vitillo, perhaps better known as “Skarred Ghost”, presented the first Auggie Award of the night for Best Art or Film.

“I totally love storytelling experiences and the emotions they give me,” said Vitillo.

The Auggie Award went to Delta Reality for The Museum of Digital Life. The massive multi-user art exhibit includes everything from 2D photographs to 3D objects and virtual worlds. Delta Reality was also nominated in the same category for The Metaverse Park and was up for Best Enterprise Solution and Best in Location-Based Entertainment.

The group won over Mutienliao, Oregon Shakespeare Festival, and Ferryman Collective. Unfortunately, no one from Delta Reality was present to accept the award.

Best Campaign

It was the “great pleasure” of University of South Australia Professor of Computer Human Interaction Mark Billinghurst to present the Auggie Award for Best Campaign. The award went to Zappar for Countdown: Bricks Farm. The interactive game for a New Zealand Supermarket included social lenses, games, and recipes.

Ori Inbar, Caspar Thykier, and Mark Billinghurst

“We talk about technology, but it’s all about the people,” Zappar CEO and co-founder Caspar Thykier said in accepting the award.

The experience beat out two experiences by CamOn XR and an experience by Viewtoo, as well as another Zappar experience that had also been nominated. Zappar was also up for Auggie Awards in the categories of Best Creator & Authoring Tool, Best Developer Tool, Best Headworn Device, Best in Location-Based Entertainment, and Best Societal Impact.

Best Collaboration Tool

Sony Electronics Head of XR Business Development Thaisa Yamamura was “honored to present” the Auggie Award for Best Collaboration Tool. She also presented the winner with a 15.6in Sony Spatial Reality Display.

The Auggie Award went to Pfizer for VR collaboration tools used in developing the COVID-19 vaccine, and was accepted by a representative of the company. Also nominated were Arthur, Morpheus, Holo-Light, and R3DT GmbH.

Best Consumer App

“We spend a lot of time talking about enterprise XR, and for good reason, but the consumer market is where things really scale,” XR analyst Mike Boland said in introducing the Best Consumer App category.

The Central Library of Düsseldorf App, by Exponential Dimensions, took home this award, despite facing stiff competition from the likes of Snap Inc. and Overlay LLC. The Auggie Award was accepted in person by a representative of the City of Düsseldorf.

Best Creator & Authoring Tool

“This is an exciting category because these are the tools we can all use to create amazing worlds for each other,” All These Worlds LLC founder Jackie Morie said in presenting the Auggie Award for Best Creator & Authoring Tool.

The Auggie Award went to Snap Inc for Lens Studio with fellow nominees Overlay LLC, Zappar, HoloPundits, ARSOFT, and DEEPFINE. The award was accepted in person by a representative who passed on praise to the “300,000 AR creators creating with us.”

Best Developer Tool

Another Snap representative, Head of Platform Developer Relations Tessa Kriesel, took the stage next to present the Auggie Award for Best Developer Tool. This category could have gone to anybody with finalists Blippar, Zappar, 8th Wall, Holo-Light, and Qualcomm, but echo3D took home the prize.

echo3D Auggie Awards 2023

Best Enterprise Solution

“XR Tech has the power to change the way we work but only when we have enterprises who do the development and work to bring those projects to us,” AWE Advisory Council member Shelley Peterson said in presenting the Auggie Award for Best Enterprise Solution.

Nominees in the packed category included Lowe’s Innovation Labs, Delta Reality, and HoloPundits, but Ajna Lense, an MR developer headset by Indian company Dimension NXG took the prize. The same headset was also a finalist in the Best Headword Device category.

Best Game or Toy

“This one has a special meaning to me as someone who has devoted his entire life to a toy,” skateboarder Rodney Mullen said in presenting the Auggie Award for Best Game or Toy.

Resolution Games was nominated for both Demeo and Spatial Ops, ILMxLAB was nominated for StarWars: Tales From the Galaxy’s Edge, and DB Creations was nominated for Table Trenches. However, the prize went home with the team of Innersloth, Schell Games, and Robot Teddy for Among Us VR. Or, it will be mailed home, as no one accepted the award in person.

Best Headworn Device

Science fiction author Daniel Suarez had the honor of presenting one of the evening’s most anticipated Auggie Awards – and perhaps the one with the stiffest competition.

Zappar’s Zapbox, DigiLens’ ARGO, Sony’s PlayStation VR 2, the Magic Leap 2, XREAL (previously Nreal) Air, and the Varjo XR 3 Focal Edition were all in the running, but the prize went to the HTC VIVE XR Elite.

best headworn device Auggie Awards AWE 2023

“We’re just so happy. This is something we’ve been working on for a long time,” HTC China President Alvin Graylin said in accepting the award. “We’re so excited to be recognized here.”

Best in Healthcare and Wellness

XR Association President Elizabeth Hyman called the field of healthcare and wellness “a great way to change the world” in presenting the Auggie Award for this category. Nominees included Groove Jones and Lucid Reality Labs but the award went home with ARSOFT for NextMED – a tool for medical visualization.

best healthcare and wellness Auggie Awards AWE 2023

“We’re here from Spain just to be with so many interesting companies and amazing people,” founder and CEO Santiago González said in accepting the award.

Best in Location-Based Entertainment

“So many people find their first XR experience through LBEs,” Hopscotch Interactive CEO Emily Olman said in presenting the Auggie. “This is an amazing category that brings so many people into XR for the first time every single day.”

Nominees included ONTOP and Delta Reality, but Thykier returned to the stage to accept the award for LEGO MYTHICA Magic Forrest – Zappar’s second Auggie of the night.

Ori Inbar, Caspar Thykier, and Emily Olman

“It’s everyone’s dream to work with a property like LEGO,” said Thykier. “There’s a wonderful team there and they’ll be happy that we’ve won this.”

Best Indie Creator

“Without our indie creators, there would not be an industry,” GatherVerse Summit founder Christopher Lafayette said in presenting the Auggie Award for Best Indie Creator. He also gave a “shoutout to our startups.”

In a field that included DB Creations and OnBoardXR, the prize went to Big Rock Creative, best known for bringing Burning Man into VR for the past three years. The producers, Doug Jacobson and Athena Demos gave brief speeches, but were accompanied onto the stage by a team of creators including the worldbuilding duo Cause and Christie.

Big Rock Creative

“We all start out as indie collaborators,” said Demos.

“I want to thank the whole team. We’re very excited to learn the language of storytelling in this new medium,” said Jacobs.

Best Interaction Product

“You guys are so lucky to have the XR devices and the ecosystem that you have out there,” Graylin said, returning to the stage to present the Auggie Award for Best Interaction Product. “These are good times.”

VIVE itself was nominated for their Self-Tracking Trackers, along with the likes of Leia Inc., SenseGlove, and Wisear. Graylin presented the award to TriLite for the Trixel 3, an impressively small projector for AR displays.

best interaction product Auggie Awards AWE 2023

“Thank you so much, AWE,” Head of Product Marketing and Business Development Susan Backhaus said in accepting the award. “This is a great recognition of our work.”

Best Snapdragon Spaces App

“We’ve been super impressed by the number and quality of applications we have seen,” Qualcomm’s Senior Director of XR Martin Herdina said in presenting the first Qualcomm-sponsored Auggie Award.

best snapdragon spaces Auggie Awards AWE 2023

The award went to Verizon for The Future of Training, an XR upskilling program. In this case, the Auggie also came with a $10,000 check from Qualcomm.

Best Societal Impact

Unity VP of Education and Social Impact Jessica Lindl said that “the world is a better place with more creatives in it,” as she prepared to award another of the evening’s most anticipated Auggies. The category had a number of repeat nominees including Lucid Reality Labs, with two experiences in this field, and Zappar for their Zapvision solution.

best societal impact Auggie Awards 2023

Thykier returned to the stage once again to accept the third Auggie Award of the night – beating the record that the company set last year. This time Thykier was accompanied by a number of Zappar representatives to accept the award that makes product information available to vision-impaired individuals through an enhanced QR code.

“We do a lot of exciting work at Zappar, but it’s amazing to do some important work,” said Thykier, who also gave special thanks to Unilever, the consumer packaged goods company that partnered with Zappar on the project. “This is the [Auggie] that is super important.”

Best Use of AI

“It came to the attention of the world recently that the singularity is underway,” AWE co-founder Tish Shute said in presenting the Auggie Award for Best Use of AI. “There is a cycle where AI feeds XR and XR feeds AI. This is going to cause an acceleration that is mind-boggling, to say the least.”

best use of AI - Auggie Awards AWE 2023

With competition like Move.ai and Avataar, it was a tough field. The Auggie was awarded to Maxar Technologies for SYNTH3D – a high-fidelity world-scale digital twin created with satellite data.

The Startup Pitch Competition

“We had an incredible group of startups pitch,” Boost VC Partner Maddie Callander said in presenting the Startup to Watch Auggie. “It’s always exciting to see the cutting edge.”

Atopia won from among the 14 finalists for “creating the metaverse of arts and culture.” The Auggie was accepted by co-founder Annabell Vacano.

Ori Inbar, Maddie Callander, and Annabell Vacano

“We couldn’t have done this without our small team back in Germany,” said Vacano.

Best In Show

WXR Fund Managing Partner Amy Lameyer presented the Best In Show award. This award is presented during the event wrap-up and considers expo floor interest. The award went to Sightful, one of the companies behind Spacetop – a laptop that uses AR glasses in lieu of a screen.

The award was accepted in-person by the company’s co-founders Tomer Kahan and Tamir Berliner. Berliner talked about the growth of AWE and of XR generally, including the massive presence of XR hardware at the recent Consumer Electronics Show. He also referenced Ori’s end-of-show announcement that AWE will move from Santa Clara to Long Beach.

“I do want to thank everyone here, but Ori, also to you. I met you, I think it was AWE 2014 in Tel Aviv, I think that there were about a hundred people there – not speakers, attendees,” said Berliner. “I think the move to LA is messaging everyone that CES should watch out because Consumer Electronics is becoming AWE.”

The AWEsome Award

The AWEsome Award is determined by a “complex algorithm” that includes “buzz,” participation, expo floor interest, and other factors. The Auggie was presented by XREAL founder Peng Jin.

The award went to EXIT SUIT but was not accepted in person. Ori commented that exhibitors are often packing up their booths while the event wrap-up is under way.

Visual Impact

A special award, the “Visual Impact Award” was presented by NTT Ltd. Group Vice President of Connected Industry Rika Nakazawa to the XR artist best known as Sutu. Sutu had created the art used for promoting AWE but also used as the backdrop on the main stage.

“I’m so happy that Ori asked me to create the art,” said Sutu. “It’s been a journey. I was at AWE in the early days and to see what it’s become and to be a part of that, it’s been a journey.”

The XR Prize Challenge

Last year, Inbar announced The XR Prize Challenge: “A global competition to harness the power of XR to fight climate change” with a $100,000 grand prize. 230 projects were submitted. 150 of those advanced to the next level. 90 of those submitted a minimum viable product. Those were narrowed down to 11 finalists. In the end, there were three runners-up and one winner.

The runners-up and grand prize winners were announced in the categories Optimize, Educate, Visualize, and Replace. All runners-up received an Nvidia graphics card.

Optimize

Niantic VP of Business Development Jenna Seiden presented the runner-up in the Optimize category, saying that “the technologies that we’re celebrating tonight make the world more magical.”

incitu

The award went to inCitu, a project that shows immersive models of familiar locations in potential futures – for example, as impacted by rising sea levels due to climate change. An earlier version of the experience had first been demod at a 2019 AWE event in Munich.

Educate

IEEE Standards Association President Yu Yuan presented the runner up in the education category saying, “education is very important to get more people working with us in XR.” The award went to Mangrove City – a VR experience that helps users understand the ecological significance of wetlands.

mangrove city AWE 2023

Visualize

University of Oregon Assistant Professor of Immersive Media Psychology Danny Pimentel presented the runner up in the “Visualize” category.

“It was moving to see so many organizations and creators around the world leverage these technologies in such thoughtful ways,” said Pimentel.

Qikiqtaruk

The award went to Qikiqtaruk: Experiencing the Arctic Under Threat. The project brought in multiple co-creators to make a virtual tour of a national park that serves as an immediate example of the impacts of climate change.

The Grand Prize

Tom Furness, founder of the Virtual World Society, presented the Grand Prize to Between Two Worlds. The AR app helps users learn about endangered species, their habitats, and why they are endangered.

Another Year, Gone

That wrapped another year of the Auggie Awards and of the Augmented World Expo. Of course, events are coming up in Europe and Asia, as well as regional meetups and events that visitors can join on the AWE.live app. Until next year, it’s time to make some Auggies-worthy news for next time.

Celebrating the 2023 Auggie Awards and XR Prize Challenge Read More »

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Apple’s rumoured mixed reality headset may be the miracle the European XR industry needs

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Apple’s rumoured mixed reality headset may be the miracle the European XR industry needs

Callum Booth

Story by

Callum Booth

Managing Editor

Callum is the Managing Editor of TNW. He covers the full spectrum of technology, looks after editorial newsletters, and makes the occasional Callum is the Managing Editor of TNW. He covers the full spectrum of technology, looks after editorial newsletters, and makes the occasional odd video.

Apple is a sector definer. While the company rarely creates entirely new products, its hardware ends up being the baseline other devices are measured by. You only need to look at how the iPod, iPhone, and iPad defined what people expect from MP3 players, phones, and tablets.

Now, Apple is hoping it can repeat this trick with an entirely new product: its rumoured VR/AR headset, expected to be announced on June 5th.

This is a huge moment for not only the company, but the European extended reality (XR) sector as a whole. While Apple has had some successes with products like the Apple Watch, it’s not released anything in recent years that has grabbed the world by the scruff of its neck in the way, say, the iPod did.

With its VR/AR headset, the Cupertino giant is on the brink of jumping into an entirely new industry, one that could either reinforce or destroy its reputation as a sector definer.

And for European XR companies? Apple’s hardware has the potential to do miraculous things. To find out exactly what and how, we spoke with several European companies — but before we get there, let’s spend some time analysing what’s actually happening with XR on the continent.

The state of extended reality in Europe

There are two sides you need to consider when looking at mixed reality in Europe: the consumer and the professional.

Let’s begin with the former. Various studies have found the European public are largely nonplussed about virtual reality and the metaverse — two of the current biggest elements of XR. This is something I’m certain many of us have experienced colloquially. It feels as though most people are generally unexcited by extended reality; hell, even those I know with headsets seem to stop using them quickly.

Where the consumer side of XR seems jaded, things are very different on the professional front. These sectors drive the majority of growth in the extended reality market, with the healthcare, industrial, and education sectors embracing the technology wholeheartedly and rapidly.

To put it another way, professional sectors have found uses for XR in Europe — while consumers are still waiting for a reason to adopt the technology. Despite this separation between the two markets, analysts are united in believing the continent’s XR market is about to get bigger. Much bigger.

According to Statista, the AR and VR market in Europe was worth $2.8 billion (€2.61 billion) in 2021. By 2025, this is expected to hit $20.9 billion (€19.4 billion), a 7.5x increase over four years.

This places consumer-focused European companies in the sector in a precarious situation. There’s potential to make a lot of money, but no guarantee that the public will actually embrace the technology.

An Apple-sized gamble

“The magnitude of the opportunity is enormous, but there’s a real risk that the technology could just not take off,” Leo Gebbie — Principal Analyst of Connected Devices at CCS Insight — tells TNW. “We’ve seen Meta pour billions of dollars into VR and the metaverse in recent years, but the technology has failed to inspire the masses.”

When I asked Gebbie why this is the case, he pointed to one major cause: “a lack of killer apps.”

The B2B XR market is growing because those tools have a clear use case, thinking training for surgeons or drivers. The thing is, that’s not the market Apple is after. It wants to put headsets into the homes of the public at large and, with no clear use cases for the public, Apple is taking a gargantuan risk.

The question, then, is what impact this dice roll will have on European companies already working in the sector?

More eyes means more money

There was one common response across all the companies TNW spoke with for this article: the release of Apple’s AR/VR headset will bring a lot of attention to the industry — and that will have financial implications for everyone.

“We expect it to have a substantial impact on the XR space,” Jerome Botbol — the Group Head of Immersive at Happy Finish, a creative production agency — says to TNW. When you consider Apple’s track record, especially when it comes to products that “command market share and drive adoption,” the headset could be “a major milestone for the industry.”

This is coming from a consumer perspective — precisely the market Apple’s headset will be targeting — as, generally, Happy Finish creates immersive experiences for the public on behalf of B2C clients. 

But will it have the same impact on the B2B sector? Or will things be different?

I put this question to Jakob Way, the CEO of Gleechi, a Stockholm-based development company making VR training software. So far, Gleechi has raised over $33 million (€30.78 million) in funding.

“The launch of Apple’s VR/AR headset holds tremendous potential for our industry,” Way says. “Apple has a history of disrupting markets, and their entry into the VR/AR space could have a transformative effect.”

Way continues, telling me that an Apple headset “could have a significant impact on the adoption and mainstream acceptance of [XR] technologies.”

Apple creating a consumer-focused VR/AR headset will pay dividends for the professional market too. In fact, it will be beneficial for the European industry as a whole, as it increases the knowledge and understanding of the technology across a wide spread of people.

Gebbie from CCS Insight confirms this though: “The VR industry would welcome an Apple entry into the market as it would immediately drive interest and investment from all quarters.”

In other words, Apple entering the XR market will deliver a lot more attention, which will turn on the money taps for European companies and startups in the sector, no matter whether they’re consumer or B2B focused.

An antidote for developer woes

While attracting more eyes to XR in general will be a boon for the European industry, another interesting advantage of Apple’s headset will be the reaction it’s likely to inspire from developers.

As Gebbie previously mentioned, one of the big issues impacting the progression of the consumer XR space in Europe is “a lack of killer apps.” One way this could be remedied is bringing more developers into the fold.

Max Kraynov — Group CEO of FunCorp, an app development company — tells TNW that Apple entering the market could alter the talent balance in the industry. “Another major player providing a platform to develop on” makes it “highly likely” that the industry will see “a spike in VR software development, and talent procuring/nurturing.”

This is something that Gebbie from CCS Insight also believes, saying that “developers who may have stayed away from VR so far due to the small size of the market are likely to show willingness to work with Apple given the potential for a headset from the company to sell in volume.”

The swell in interest that Apple entering the market will cause may motivate European developers who previously didn’t see the point in developing XR applications, or thought the sector was merely a flash-in-the-pan. But when the Cupertino giant gets involved, that’s a signal to professionals everywhere that there may be a shift afoot. 

User experience: A helpful baseline

Apple “has a habit of redefining expectations around a technology and turning new ideas into smash hit products,” Gebbie tells TNW.

As previously discussed, one of the things Apple is most famous for is taking pre-existing devices and giving people a reason to use them. Generally, it has achieved this by creative thinking, attention to user experience, and delightful form factors — a trio of points that the XR industry has historically struggled with.

“The problem we’ve had so far is that people put on a headset, and may have only experienced content that was created by enthusiasts, not professionals,” Matt Littler, CEO and founder, ARK Immersive, a VR production house, says. “There [is] no governance, cinematic language, or real stringent base to build an experience from, which leaves people not wanting to do it again.”

Apple excels at these factors. The company “creates compelling use cases that provide purposeful experiences,” Littler says. “Immersive optimisation is about to begin.”

These factors — and particularly the focus on user-centric design — are key in encouraging consumers to overcome their distrust of extended reality. 

Consider the advent of smartphones. At the beginning of the sector’s journey, there were a myriad of different designs and user experience languages. Yet, with the iPhone, Apple effectively defined the way handsets should operate — many of these elements being adopted by other manufacturers along the way. 

The hope for European XR developers and creators, then, is that Apple’s headset provides a baseline user experience and design language. This may then not only draw the public towards XR as a whole — as the benefits of using it will be clearer — but also provide structure for those making software and content in the space on the continent, something that will benefit B2B applications too.

Will it be all rainbows and stardust?

While we’ve seen that developers and creators of XR content in Europe are likely to benefit from Apple’s headset, one element we haven’t discussed are the businesses making competing hardware.

On first inspection, one would assume Apple’s entry would be negative, with the company usurping those companies’ user bases and gobbling up market share. But is this the case? We put this to Varjo, a Finnish company making advanced VR headsets. To date, it has received over $165.8 million (€154.58 million) in funding over ten rounds.

“Varjo is the only company currently offering high-fidelity video passthrough technology, similar to what Apple is rumoured to be using,” Timo Toikkanen, Varjo’s CEO says. This, he tells TNW, is a validation of his work — and a technology that will be “​​the winning approach [to XR headsets] for a very long time.”

Where Toikkanen is particularly positive though is in how Varjo’s target audience differs from that of Apple’s.

“Instead of trying to go after consumer applications that are untested and unproven, we’ve built a whole market around advanced professional use cases,” he says. “Today, already 25% of Fortune 100 companies are using our products.”

Once again, the separation between consumer and professional XR rears its head.

If B2B-centric XR companies like Varjo are unworried about any negative impact Apple’s headset might have on their own hardware, what about other companies making consumer-focused VR/AR devices?

“Apple would pose a direct threat to headset makers already in the market, such as Meta and Pico,” Gebbie from CCS Insight says. This could somewhat explain why the former company unveiled its Meta Quest 3 headset merely days before the rumoured announcement of Apple’s device. It’s trying to both remain relevant in the XR hardware discussion and ride the wave of publicity Apple is generating.

Despite this, Gebbie believes that the launch of Apple’s headset could actually benefit businesses like Meta, saying that “this negative [threat] would likely be offset by a swell in interest in VR overall, which would likely help all companies to sell more devices.” 

Final thoughts: One headset to rule them all

Whatever happens with the launch of Apple’s headset, it’ll be good for European XR companies —in the short term, at least.

The interest and investment that Apple’s legacy and reputation brings will drag the extended reality market into a previously unseen amount of light. Whether that’s getting more consumer eyes on the market, encouraging developers to get involved, or providing a baseline for XR design language, Apple’s entry will have a positive knock-on effect for any European company in the industry. 

At first. Because if Apple’s headset falls flat, the initial spike in attention will swiftly drop, and this failure will likely be seen as a sign that the whole consumer side of the XR industry is untenable. If Apple can’t make a VR/AR headset an attractive proposition for the public, who can?

Of course, there will remain a thriving B2B market for the technology, but this will hardly be unscathed by the potential failure of Apple’s headset. The more money and interest that flows into a product category, the better and more efficient it will become. The reason laptops and phones are so advanced isn’t because they’re good for business, it’s because everyone wants them — and the same goes for XR headsets.

Apple is on a precipice, one that will shape the fate of the whole European XR industry. But, as Littler from ARK Immersive puts it, “If anyone can simplify the process, improve UX and ultimately get your grandma in a VR headset, it’s Apple.”

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Strivr Enhances Immersive Learning With Generative AI, Equips VR Training Platform With Mental Health and Well-Being Experiences

AI, Education & Training, Enterprise, Enterprise VR, featured, learning, Software, strivr, training, virtual reality, VR platform / /

Strivr, a virtual reality training solutions startup, was founded as a VR training platform for professional sports leagues such as the NBA, NHL, and NFL. Today, Strivr has made its way to the job training scene with an innovative approach to employee training, leveraging generative AI (GenAI) to transform learning experiences.

More Companies Lean Toward Immersive Learning

Today’s business landscape is rapidly evolving. As such, Fortune 500 companies and other businesses in the corporate sector are starting to turn to more innovative employee training and development solutions. To serve the changing demands of top companies, Strivr has secured $16 million in funding back in 2018 to expand its VR training platform.

Research shows that learning through VR environments can significantly enhance knowledge retention, making it a groundbreaking development in employee training.

Unlike traditional training methods, a VR training platform immerses employees in lifelike scenarios, providing unparalleled engagement and experiential learning. However, this technology isn’t a new concept at all. Companies have been incorporating VR into their training solutions for several years, but we’ve only recently seen more industries adopting this technology rapidly.

The Impact of Generative AI on VR Training Platforms

Walmart, the largest retailer in the world, partnered with Strivr to bring VR to their training facilities. Employees can now practice in virtual sales floors repeatedly until they perfect their skills. In 2019, nearly 1.4 million Walmart associates have undergone VR training to prepare for the holiday rush, placing them in a simulated, chaotic Black Friday scenario.

As a result, associates reported a 30% increase in employee satisfaction, 70% higher test scores, and 10 to 15% higher knowledge retention rates. Because of the VR training’s success, Walmart expanded the VR training program to all their stores nationwide.

Derek Belch, founder and CEO at Strivr, states that the demand for the faster development of high-quality and scalable VR experiences that generate impactful results is “at an all-time high.”

VR training platofrm Strivr

As Strivr’s customers are among the most prominent companies globally, they are directly experiencing the impact of immersive learning on employee engagement, retention, and performance. “They want more, and we’re listening,” said Belch in a press release shared with ARPost.

So, to enhance its VR training platform, Strivr embraces generative AI to develop storylines, boost animation and asset creation, and optimize visual and content-driven features.

GenAI will also aid HR and L&D leaders in critical decision-making by deriving insights from immersive user data.

Strivr’s VR Training Platform Addresses Employee Mental Health

Strivr has partnered with Reulay and Healium in hosting its first in-headset mental health and well-being applications on the VR training platform. This will allow their customers to incorporate mental health “breaks” into their training curricula and address the rising levels of employee burnout, depression, and anxiety.

Belch has announced that Strivr also partnered with one of the world’s leading financial institutions to make meditation activities available in their workplace.

Meditation is indeed helpful for employees; the Journal of the American Medical Association recently published a study that showed that meditation can help reduce anxiety as effectively as drug therapies. Mindfulness practices, on the other hand, have been demonstrated to increase employee productivity, focus, and collaboration.

How VR Transforms Professional Training

With Strivr’s VR Training platform offering enhanced experiential learning and mental well-being, one might wonder how VR technology will influence employee training moving forward.

Belch describes Strivr’s VR training platform as a “beautifully free space” to practice. Employees can develop or improve their skills in a realistic scenario that simulates actual workplace challenges in a way that typical workshops and classrooms cannot. Moreover, training employees through VR platform cuts travel costs associated with conventional training facilities.

VR training platform Strivr

VR training platforms also contribute to a more inclusive and diverse workplace. Employees belonging to minority groups can rehearse and tailor their behaviors in simulated scenarios where a superior or customer is prejudiced toward them, for instance. When these situations are addressed during training, companies can protect their employees from these challenges and prepare them.

What’s Next for VR Training Platforms?

According to Belch, Strivr’s enhanced VR training platform is only the beginning of how VR will continue to impact the employee experience.

So far, VR training platforms have been improving employee onboarding, knowledge retention, and performance. They allow employees to practice and acquire critical skills in a safe, virtual environment, helping them gain more confidence and efficiency while training. Additionally, diversity and inclusion are promoted, thanks to VR’s ability to simulate scenarios where employees can tailor their behaviors during difficult situations.

And, of course, VR training has rightfully gained recognition for helping teach retail workers essential customer service skills. By interacting with virtual customers in a life-like environment, Walmart’s employees have significantly boosted their skills, and the mega-retailer has implemented an immersive training solution to all of its nearly 4,700 stores all over America.

In 2022, Accenture invested in Strivr and Talespin to revolutionize immersive learning and enterprise VR. This is a good sign of confidence in the industry and its massive potential for growth.

As we keep an eye on the latest scoop about VR technology, we can expect more groundbreaking developments in the industry and for VR platforms to increase their presence in the employee training realm.

Strivr Enhances Immersive Learning With Generative AI, Equips VR Training Platform With Mental Health and Well-Being Experiences Read More »

immersive-technology-for-the-american-workforce-act:-legislation-that-aims-to-provide-equitable-access-to-xr-tech

Immersive Technology for the American Workforce Act: Legislation That Aims to Provide Equitable Access to XR Tech

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The Immersive Technology for the American Workforce Act of 2023 was drafted by Rep. Lisa Blunt Rochester (D-DE) and Rep. Tim Walberg (R-MI) with the support of organizations like the XR Association (XRA), Talespin, Unity, Association for Career and Technical Education, Transfr, and HTC VIVE, among others.

“Emerging technologies, such as XR, can help meet people where they are and expand access to cutting-edge technology and training resources,” remarked XRA CEO Elizabeth Hyman in a press release shared with ARPost. “Rep. Lisa Blunt Rochester’s and Rep. Tim Walberg’s bill recognizes the importance of equitable access to skills training and workforce development programs and the key role immersive technology plays in delivering better outcomes.”

What Is the Immersive Technology for the American Workforce Act of 2023?

One advantage of incorporating immersive technologies for workforce training is that these are cost-effective and safer. They can also provide expanded training to underserved communities, as well as to workers with disabilities.

The Immersive Technology for the American Workforce Act aims to create a five-year program that provides support to various institutions, allowing them to utilize immersive technologies in their educational and training programs.

Furthermore, it aims to promote the development of inclusive technology while prioritizing underserved communities, such as rural areas and areas of substantial unemployment. It seeks to foster partnerships between private and public entities to address skills gaps, meet the needs of the workforce, and assist individuals who are facing barriers to employment.

“We’re excited to be able to work with Rep. Blunt Rochester, a member of Congress who cares deeply about ensuring underserved populations are able to tap into next-generation technology and skills training,” said XRA Senior Vice President of Public Policy Joan O’Hara.

There’s almost a quarter of Americans living in rural communities who are facing unique workforce challenges. Moreover, the US Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that, at the start of 2023, the country had 10.5 million unfilled jobs. The bill seeks to fill these gaps by enabling Americans from underserved communities and various backgrounds to have access to effective and high-quality training programs.

“XR technologies can dramatically change the way America’s workforce is recruited, trained, skilled, and upskilled. Scalable solutions are necessary to meet the diverse needs of today’s undiscovered talent to meet the needs of our complex workforce,” said Transfr CEO Bharanidharan Rajakumar.

How Will the Legislation Impact the Future of Work?

The Immersive Technology for the American Workforce Act follows the footsteps of “recent legislative successes”, such as the Access to Digital Therapeutics Act of 2023, which effectively extends “coverage for prescription digital therapeutics”. It aims to provide support, in the form of grants, to community colleges and career and technical education centers.

The grants will allow them to leverage XR technology for purposes such as workforce development and skills training. Furthermore, Immersive Technology for the American Workforce Act will enable such organizations and facilities to utilize XR technology to enhance their training, which, in turn, can help address the speed with which American companies meet workforce needs.

Immersive Technology for the American Workforce Act: Legislation That Aims to Provide Equitable Access to XR Tech Read More »

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A Very Interesting VR/AR Association Enterprise & Training Forum

AR/VR events, augmented reality, digital twin, Enterprise, enterprise XR, Events, featured, Immersive Technology, virtual reality, VR/AR Association / /

The VR/AR Association held a VR Enterprise and Training Forum yesterday, May 24. The one-day event hosted on the Hopin remote conference platform, brought together a number of industry experts to discuss the business applications of a number of XR techniques and topics including digital twins, virtual humans, and generative AI.

The VR/AR Association Gives Enterprise the Mic

The VR/AR Association hosted the event, though non-members were welcome to attend. In addition to keynotes, talks, and panel discussions, the event included opportunities for networking with other remote attendees.

“Our community is at the heart of what we do: we spark innovation and we start trends,” said VR/AR Association Enterprise Committee Co-Chair, Cindy Mallory, during a welcome session.

While there were some bonafide “technologists” in the panels, most speakers were people using the technology in industry themselves. While hearing from “the usual suspects” is nice, VR/AR Association fora are rare opportunities for industry professionals to hear from one another on how they approach problems and solutions in a rapidly changing workplace.

“I feel like there are no wrong answers,” VR/AR Association Training Committee Co-Chair,Bobby Carlton,said during the welcome session. “We’re all explorers asking where these tools fit in and how they apply.”

The Convergence

One of the reasons that the workplace is changing so rapidly has to do with not only the pace with which technologies are changing, but with the pace with which they are becoming reliant on one another. This is a trend that a number of commentators have labeled “the convergence.”

“When we talk about the convergence, we’re talking about XR but we’re also talking about computer vision and AI,” CGS Inc President of Enterprise Learning and XR, Doug Stephen, said in the keynote that opened the event, “How Integrated XR Is Creating a Connected Workplace and Driving Digital Transformation.”

CGS Australia Head, Adam Shah, was also a speaker. Together the pair discussed how using XR with advanced IT strategies, AI, and other emerging technologies creates opportunities as well as confusion for enterprise. Both commented that companies can only seize the opportunities provided by these emerging technologies through ongoing education.

“When you put all of these technologies together, it becomes harder for companies to get started on this journey,” said Shah. “Learning is the goal at the end of the day, so we ask ‘What learning outcomes do you want to achieve?’ and we work backwards from there.”

The convergence isn’t only changing how business is done, it’s changing who’s doing what. That was much of the topic of the panel discussion “What Problem Are You Trying to Solve For Your Customer? How Can Generative AI and XR Help Solve It? Faster, Cheaper, Better!”

“Things are becoming more dialectical between producers and consumers, or that line is melting where consumers can create whatever they want,” said Virtual World Society Executive Director Angelina Dayton. “We exist as both creators and as consumers … We see that more and more now.”

“The Journey” of Emerging Technology

The figure of “the journey” was also used by Overlay founder and CEO, Christopher Morace, in his keynote “Asset Vision – Using AI Models and VR to get more out of Digital Twins.” Morace stressed that we have to talk about the journey because a number of the benefits that the average user wants from these emerging technologies still aren’t practical or possible.

“The interesting thing about our space is that we see this amazing future and all of these visionaries want to start at the end,” said Morace. “How do we take people along on this journey to get to where we all want to be while still making the most out of the technology that we have today?”

Morace specifically cited ads by Meta showing software that barely exists running on hardware that’s still a few years away (though other XR companies have been guilty of this as well). The good news is that extremely practical XR technologies do exist today, including for enterprise – we just need to accept that they’re on mobile devices and tablets right now.

Digital Twins and Virtual Humans

We might first think of digital twins of places or objects – and that’s how Morace was speaking of them. However, there are also digital twins of people. Claire Hedgespeth, Head of Production and Marketing at Avatar Dimension, addressed its opportunities and obstacles in her talk, “Business of Virtual Humans.”

“The biggest obstacle for most people is the cost. … Right now, 2D videos are deemed sufficient for most outlets but I do feel that we’re missing an opportunity,” said Hedgespeth. “The potential for using virtual humans is only as limited as your imagination.”

The language of digital twins was also used on a global scale by AR Mavericks founder and CEO, William Wallace, in his talk “Augmented Reality and the Built World.” Wallace presented a combination of AR, advanced networks, and virtual positioning coming together to create an application layer he calls “The Tagisphere.”

“We can figure out where a person is so we can match them to the assets that are near them,” said Wallace. “It’s like a 3D model that you can access on your desktop, but we can bring it into the real world.”

It may sound a lot like the metaverse to some, but that word is out of fashion at the moment.

And the Destination Is … The Metaverse?

“We rarely use the M-word. We’re really not using it at all right now,” Qualcomm’s XR Senior Director, Martin Herdina, said in his talk “Spaces Enabling the Next Generation of Enterprise MR Experiences.”

Herdina put extra emphasis on computing advancements like cloud computing over the usual discussions of visual experience and form factor in his discussion of immersive technology. He also presented modern AR as a stepping stone to a largely MR future for enterprise.

“We see MR being a total game changer,” said Herdina. “Companies who have developed AR, who have tested those waters and built experience in that space, they will be first in line to succeed.”

VR/AR Association Co-Chair, Mark Gröb, expressed similar sentiments regarding “the M-word” in his VRARA Enterprise Committee Summary, which closed out the event.

“Enterprise VR had a reality check,” said Gröb. “The metaverse really was a false start. The hype redirected to AI-generated tools may or may not be a bad thing.”

Gröb further commented that people in the business of immersive technology specifically may be better able to get back to business with some of that outside attention drawn toward other things.

“Now we’re focusing on the more important thing, which was XR training,” said Gröb. “All of the business cases that we talked about today, it’s about consistent training.”

Business as Usual in the VR/AR Association

There has been a lot of discussion recently regarding “the death of the metaverse” – a topic which, arguably, hadn’t yet been born in the first place. Whether it was always just a gas and the extent to which that gas has been entirely replaced by AI is yet to be seen.

While there were people talking about “the enterprise metaverse” – particularly referring to things like remote collaboration solutions – the metaverse is arguably more of a social technology anyway. While enterprise does enterprise, someone else will build the metaverse (or whatever we end up calling it) – and they’ll probably come from within the VR/AR Association as well.

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A Week of VR Meditation With Mindway

featured, Mental Health, Review, Reviews, virtual reality, VR Apps, well-being / /

Mindfulness can exist in the virtual world. Mindway is a VR app that promotes mindfulness – both in virtual worlds of unearthly peace and through lessons that you can carry with you when you put the headset down. I gave the app a test run by incorporating it into my own stressful work week.

A Modular Subscription-Based App

A good first place to start an app review is talking about the specs, like the size of the app and how much it costs. That’s not really how Mindway works.

First, the app is free to download from the Quest App Lab, though a number of elements of the app require a monthly or annual subscription – or you can buy the whole package once and for all for $50.

Further, the initial app download is small but individual modules within the app come as independent downloads. That might make things complicated if you’re trying to decide whether you have space for the experience, but it also means that you can really effectively pick and choose which modules you want to keep on your device.

The app doesn’t currently have a comfort rating. That might be because the individual experiences are so different. Each module explains the position in which it works best. Some encourage you to be seated, while others that deal more with mindful movement require you to be standing. Still, none of the modules that I tried made me too uncomfortable.

The app is compatible with the whole Quest product line from the original Quest to the Quest Pro, but I used my Quest 2. Controllers are required to navigate menus and carry out simple interactions in some of the practices, but there aren’t any complex controls. The thumbsticks can be used for snap turns, but there’s no movement and head-tracking is sufficient.

Mindway’s Major Components

When you first enter Mindway, you find yourself in a calm virtual environment reminiscent of a Quest Home. In front of you are three main menu items: ASMR, Mindfulness, and Sleep.

Sleep, Mindfulness, ASMR - Mindway VR app

If you turn to your right, there’s also a room where you can join public or private sessions. This is used for scheduled group events, but you can also go in alone to sit by a calming VR campfire or use an invite code to share the space with friends.

If you aren’t familiar with mindfulness, it’s an approach to mind-body wellness that promotes active awareness of your physical state and thought-life in the present moment instead of dwelling on the past or being anxious about the future. A text explanation will never really do justice, so consider checking out the introductory journey in the app.

ASMR

I’ve become something of an ASMR aficionado over the years, and let me just say that I’m hoping for more from this selection in the future. The selection currently consists of soft-spoken stories and a marble-maze mini-game that plays with some audio effects. (Take out your Conquest VR if you’ve got one.)

ASMR - Mindway

While Sleep and Mindfulness sessions usually last between eight and 15 minutes, some of the ASMR sections go on until you exit the session, making them ideal if you want to use them as the base of longer meditations.

The marble game is fun and the soft-spoken stories are great, but I didn’t get big ASMR vibes. There’s a whole category of ASMR that uses visual cues but I haven’t really experimented with it because I usually listen to ASMR when I’m trying to sleep, so seeing more visually-based ASMR in this mindfulness VR app has a lot of potential.

Sleep

Speaking of sleep, you might have gotten curious at the idea of sleep modules in a VR app. I know I did. If you’re imagining drifting off with your headset on, that’s not what’s happening here.

These experiences might help make you a little drowsy, but what they’re really doing is stocking a mental toolbox with mindfulness tools that you can take with you to bed. This is actually one of my favorite recurring elements of Mindway as an app overall, so we’ll return to a larger discussion of this later.

Mindfulness

Mindfulness is the heart and soul of Mindway. As such, this is the most populated section with (in my opinion) the best content. This content is split into “Journeys”, “Practice”, and “Build Your Own”.

Mindfulness - Mindway

Practices are shorter sessions that you can do independently of one another, while each journey is a series of sessions on a related topic that build on one another. The Build Your Own section allows you to create a practice session by selecting a topic, a world, and a soundtrack. Whether part of a journey or an individual practice, sessions are between eight and 15 minutes.

Build Your Own - Mindway

On the other hand, if you are familiar with mindfulness as a practice, I hope that you won’t be too skeptical of a VR-based mindfulness application. Mindway uses VR very cleverly to facilitate common mindfulness exercises. You can even select the “Science” button in the home environment to learn about how Mindway develops their sessions.

During body scans, a sparkling mist gradually rises up around you. When focusing your attention on a fire, the fire begins to die down if you get distracted by the environment for too long. During breathing exercises, particles seem to flow into you when it’s time to inhale and flow out when it’s time to exhale. Reach high up to grab an apple from a tree during a stretch.

A Week of Mindfulness

I used Mindway for about a week during the course of writing this article. There were stretches where I used it every day, there were days that I didn’t use it at all, and there were days that I kept going back in for multiple sessions.

I discovered mindfulness in college and it was a big part of my life for a good couple of years but at some point, I really got away from it. The first thing that I noticed in Mindway was how deeply I’m still able to breathe. I can breathe pretty heavily in my headset when I’m boxing in VR, but that’s different from long, slow, deliberate breath – something I didn’t realize I missed.

I liked some sessions more than others, but there was nothing that I encountered in Mindway that I didn’t enjoy. My favorite content is the “Boost Your Energy” Journey. The three-part journey has practices for starting the day with focus without being overwhelmed, for regaining your energy as you go through your day, and for winding down when it’s time to relax.

Boost Your Energy Journey - Mindway

While I like knowing that I can pop on the headset for a reasonably short session whenever I want throughout my day, the narrations do often remind you that you can take things like breathing exercises and meditation models with you wherever you go. While the visualizations are nice and might be helpful for people newer to mindfulness, Mindway is very educational.

An Unanticipated Promotion

The child in my life doesn’t really understand what I do for a living, but she knows that sometimes we get to play with neat tech, like an AR narrative puzzle. Sometimes, I set up my headset for her to enjoy some supervised offline play. (I lock apps, so I know that she’s playing Bait!, not Peaky Blinders.)

The other day, she saw the new Mindway thumbnail in my apps library and asked about it. I told her that she could check it out if she wanted to, but I warned her that it wasn’t exactly a “game.”

It turns out that she loved it. She was able to navigate the simple menus by herself and tried out a number of experiences. Hearing the audio of the guided meditations through the Quest 2’s native off-ear speakers, I was able to watch – admittedly a little stunned – as the energetic eight-year-old sat through around a half-hour of various mindfulness exercises.

I’m not a doctor, and I’m never going to advocate that any VR headset become “an electronic babysitter”, but it seems to me a curious kid could do a lot worse things in VR than mindful breathing.

Peaceful Periods in VR

Hitting the mat in the third round, assassinating communist informants in the back of a bar, betraying your crewmates in space – VR experiences can be pretty intense. While those experiences can be a lot of fun, it’s nice to know that Mindway provides a corner of the immersive world where you can have a little peace and quiet before getting back to your day.

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The Expansion of Immersive Therapeutics in Healthcare

featured, Healthcare/Medicine, Immersive Technology, Mental Health, virtual reality / /

With better accessibility and affordability, immersive therapeutics is now transforming how patients receive optimal care. Particularly in mental health and physical therapy, it has been instrumental in optimizing treatment outcomes, and helping patients overcome anxiety, discomfort, and other challenges to their recovery.

For several years now, we’ve seen virtual reality at work in healthcare. VR is now widely used in virtual sessions for psychological therapy, training simulations for medical professionals, gamification of exercises for physical therapy, and healthcare marketing.

Today, developments in immersive technologies are widening the applications of immersive treatment options for various healthcare issues. One of these is immersive therapeutics for the treatment of intractable health conditions.

But what exactly is immersive therapeutics and how does it truly impact healthcare? Here, we dissect what this emerging treatment approach is and share feedback from tech experts and users alike.

What Is Immersive Therapeutics?

Immersive therapeutics is an evolving field of medicine that delivers treatment using advanced technologies such as virtual reality, augmented reality, and artificial intelligence. It alleviates patient suffering and enhances treatment by placing patients in highly immersive and sensory-rich environments.

Through immersive therapeutics, patients connect with virtual environments at a deep emotional level that can alter the brain’s perception of pain and divert their attention.

According to Gita Barry, President of Immersive Healthcare at Penumbra Inc., “By captivating the patients in a virtual environment, patients can engage with serene beachscapes or play cognition games to cope with the craving feeling and safeguard their path to recovery.”

Being highly effective in distracting patients from pain and cravings, immersive therapeutics has great potential for use in physical rehabilitation and addiction treatment.

“The more immersive an experience is, the more it can be engaging, positively distracting, entertaining, and effective from a therapeutic and clinical standpoint,” says Joel Breton, game designer and president of Immersive Healthcare Studios at REAL System by Penumbra. This is what makes immersive therapeutics effective in addressing challenges in therapeutic treatments.

Advancing Immersive Therapeutics for Better Healthcare

As immersive therapeutics continues to evolve, more companies are looking to increase the accessibility of these therapies, broadening their applications in new treatment options for various healthcare issues.

Some of the most promising clinical uses include treating stress, anxiety, fears, disorders, and phobias. Its applications for pain management, rehabilitation, wellness, and healthcare optimization are also expanding fast.

One company that is at the forefront of advancing the use of immersive therapeutics is Penumbra. Technologies like Penumbra’s REAL System are already showing real impact in the field of immersive therapeutics.

With platforms like the REAL i-Series for VR/mental health and the REAL y-series for VR/physical therapy, patients can access VR-based treatments and self-manage their conditions from the comfort of their own homes.

Penumbra REAL y-Series immersive therapeutics
Penumbra REAL y-Series

Of the 40 million US adults with substance abuse disorders, about 40 to 60% relapse at some point in their lives. While contact with drugs is the most obvious cause for relapse, stress cues linked to substance abuse are also common triggers.

This is where immersive therapeutics becomes most helpful. By helping counteract disruptive effects on the brain and behavior, immersive experiences help those in recovery regain control of their lives.

Real Impact of the REAL System

Barry believes that immersive experiences have the potential to impact millions of patients across a range of conditions. Developed using clinical evidence, Penumbra’s REAL System effectively supports the physical rehabilitation, cognitive, and wellness needs of patients in recovery.

The REAL i-Series, for instance, is currently in use at the Chemical Dependency unit of Hoag Health. The VR-based solution has been incorporated into group therapy sessions to create positive shared experiences and boost communal engagement.

Penumbra REAL i-Series immersive therapeutics
Penumbra REAL i-Series

The use of the system helps patients feel at ease and more open to participating in group therapy. Seeing the benefits of the i-Series, Hoag Health is now also using it to support staff well-being and retention.

As REAL System President, Breton explains that REAL’s VR experiences are designed to address physical therapy, occupational therapy, and speech-language rehab as well as general mental wellness. According to Breton, the sense of immersion VR provides distracts patients from pain and fatigue. By keeping them engaged and entertained, the patients are more likely to adhere to their treatment programs.

Transforming the Future of Health

Immersive therapeutics is undoubtedly transforming the future of healthcare by providing patients with a higher level and quality of care.

“With greater awareness of the benefits VR-based tools can provide in addiction treatment and broader healthcare, we anticipate that clinicians will identify both new applications and also new patient populations who can benefit from the immersive experience VR provides,” says Barry.

The goal of immersive therapeutics is to widen access to transformative care. Whether patients are in health facilities or at home, immersive solutions can help them overcome health challenges and ensure optimal recovery. Through the continued collaboration of tech experts and health practitioners, immersive therapeutics has the potential to transform the entire healthcare industry.

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