Nobel Memorial Prize winning economist George Stigler famously quipped, “A transition period is a period between two transition periods.”
We are now several months into the social distancing protocol of the COVID-19 global pandemic. Our offices, schools, social and leisure activities were quickly transferred to available digital platforms. People soon discovered that while working from home has many advantages, communicating over video conferencing apps is alienating and draining. VR wasn’t readily available as a solution to the social distancing requirements of the current COVID-19 epidemic for most people. But in this transition period, it is a good time to assess our needs in relation to connecting to people, and how we can better translate our real world activities to a digital experience. With enough investment and experimentation, virtual reality applications for enterprise training, remote work, education, health, social and leisure that are currently used by early adopters may become mainstream much faster than anticipated.
As we live through this transitional period, we are gradually acknowledging that aspects of our way of life may no longer be viable economically or logistically. While VR headsets have not enjoyed mass adoption yet, as Yuval Noah Harari recently noted in the Financial Times, the pandemic is accelerating change.
At 2019’s Oculus Connect developer’s conference, Facebook’s Chief Scientist, Michael Abrash’s presentation was focused on VR solutions for remote work collaborations. Facebook, like many other tech companies is allowing employees to work from home until 2021 — a great way to “eat their own dog food.” One key goal of a dedicated Facebook team is to build a headset that is comfortable enough to be worn all day. Apple also has an AR/VR headset in the works, and has acquired a number of AR/VR companies including a mixed reality headset company, Vrvana in 2017, and the recent $100 million acquisition of NextVR, a company that was a leader in the live event broadcast space with deals with the NFL, NBA, and WWE. Apple’s headset is not expected to be released until late 2021 or 2022 at the earliest.
Today, there are immersive tools available for remote working. Spatial, an AR/VR workspace, is a collaborative tool for remote work that has been used by companies including Mattel, Pfizer, and BNP Paribas. HTC is beta testing Vive Sync, a platform for companies to collaborate and hold events in virtual space. Spaces, a VR company that was primarily VR gaming arcades, quickly pivoted to an online VR workspace platform that allows users to join Zoom and other video conferencing apps from VR.
In many ways, virtual reality reminds me of the automobile. VR headsets are a vehicle that transports the wearer to a destination. An apt historical analogy is in 1908, Henry Ford began manufacturing the Model T, the first car designed to be affordable for the everyday consumer. Likewise, in 2019, Oculus released the wireless Quest headset at a consumer friendly price point, which allows users to enjoy many PC quality titles without an expensive computer. Although Facebook has not released the sales numbers on the headset, it sold out during the holidays, and has only been available intermittently during the pandemic. By the one year anniversary of the Quest release, content sales in the Oculus Store passed the $100 million mark, 20 content titles generated over $1 million, and 10 titles generated over $2 million in sales. It is easy to dismiss these figures as small numbers if measured beside AAA games or Hollywood film box office receipts. But, like early car makers, the VR industry is tasked with developing a new market demand, as well as the vehicle, building tools and destination (the content) at the same time. It took the automobile 15 years to reach a 20% adoption rate, but it played a major role in the expansion and development of the American way of life for the last 3 generations.
Those of us who are lucky enough to be part of the 56% of the US workforce who are able to work from home, are finding that reduced commute times, the ability to set our own hours, and work away from the social distractions of an office have enjoyed both productivity and lifestyle benefits. Twitter and Square announced permanent work from home options, and many other companies including Barclays, Nationwide, and Mondelez are devising hybrid models to allow more remote work. The shift towards remote work will allow companies to reduce their office space footprint and save money. After 90% of Morgan Stanley’s 80,000 employees began working from home due to the pandemic, CEO James Gorman was interviewed on Bloomberg Television, and stated that the firm could operate with “much less real estate.” While this has worrying economic repercussions for real estate investors, and the tax base, it stands to benefit the rest of us by potentially cutting expenses and providing unprecedented options for how we work and where we live.
This disruptive pause between our old normal, and what lies after the pandemic subsides, is a chance to use virtual reality tools to design a future that improves the quality of life, and transforms our access and concept of mobility. The automobile allowed people to live outside the city, within “commuting distances” of work. The rise of real estate values have pushed this viable commuting distance to an extreme. Besides the additional time wasted in traffic, long commute times are associated with an increase in stress, sleep problems, and other health complaints. If virtual co-presence is sufficiently evocative of real world interactions, and I would argue that current hardware and software developments are close, then the association between where we work and where we live can be rendered irrelevant. When VR is as convenient and available as the mobile web, we will have unparalleled economic, and social mobility.
Telemedicine, Education, and Enterprise
Companies developing VR tools for telemedicine, education, and enterprise applications are gaining traction to lower barriers to access to those fields, too. XRHealth, an FDA Registered telehealth platform with 500 clinicians on board, offers patients at-home “immersive, therapeutic applications which address a wide variety of neuro-cognitive, emotional and physical symptoms.” XRHealth launched in eight states and Washington D.C. in March, and secured $15.5 million in funding so far.
Tripp, an award winning health and wellness company that offers a VR decompression tool for both individuals and enterprises, and uses neuroscience backed research to help users “self-regulate” through immersive, meditative experiences where users can track their mood, focus, and performance over time.
When schools were moved online due to social distancing initiatives, many students reported the same feelings of discomfort and difficulty focusing, “Zoom fatigue.” Video conferencing displays result in a participant being simultaneously a subject and object on the screen, which is psychologically uncomfortable. Additionally, the sensation of “continuous partial attention”, coined by tech writer Linda Stone, is exhausting to the participant, who struggles to decipher the microexpressions of a group of faces while trying to convey interest in the subject matter, and give listening behavior cues.
According to a survey from Greenlight Insights, VR education held even more consumer appeal than gaming (63.9%vs. 61%). VR education applications feature a more concentrated focus on the subject matter, as well as interactive, first hand experiential learning. Imagine a field trip to ancient Rome? Rome Reborn is a transportational education platform that currently offers seven virtual reality learning experiences that combine history, archeology, architecture, and art history. Other popular applications include award winning science teacher, Wendy Martin’s VR Frog Dissection: Ribbit-ing Discoveries, which teaches frog anatomy in an interactive and cruelty free way, and Google Earth VR, which lets you drop a pin on almost anywhere on earth, and transports you there. It is one of the VR experiences I like to share with new users. RealityVirtual.co was founded by Simon Che De Boer, one of the world’s leading photogrammetrists. He leads a team of visual effects pioneers who are combining volumetric capture and artificial intelligence with the goal of “backing up the planet”. Their experience, The Homestead, which showcases their technology by transporting the viewer to a New Zealand location with stunning detail, is available for free on Steam, and an excellent example of the level of photorealism that is likely to become commonplace in the near future.
In the enterprise sector, STRIVR, an immersive training solution, recently raised a $30 million Series B to bring their total funding to $51 million. STRIVR was founded by Stanford graduate and former assistant football coach, Derek Belch, and Jeremy Bailenson, Professor and Founding Director of Stanford’s Virtual Human Interaction Lab. The company began in sports performance training, but quickly gained success with immersive VR training programs for companies including Walmart, JetBlue, Fidelity and Verizon.
VR is still early, and very few promising companies are profitable. This transition period is full of economic turmoil that has shuttered many VR companies with solid products, shrunk the pool of potential customers, and forced layoffs. But as psychologist Jim Stone said, “Impatience is triggered when we have a goal, and realize it is going to cost us more than we thought to reach it.”*
The AR/VR industry received $4.1 billion in investments in 2019. On the horizon are a new generation of headsets from all the major players, advancements in real time 3d delivery, a continued roll out of 5G, and improvements in streaming, like the just announced CloudXR from Nvidia. All of these technologies developing together promise an exciting future ahead.
This forced transition period, which has separated us from our everyday routines, has opened people’s minds to new possibilities and behaviors. The 20th century was radically transformed by our ability to quickly travel to places, and now it looks like the next shift will bring places to us through immersive technology. If you haven’t experienced telepresence, it is a more transformational sensory experience than words can describe. Culturally, we will move from “I see/hear you” to “I’m here with you”, and from watching, to participating. While I look forward to a new future, I’m paying attention to what isn’t working now. That’s where the opportunities lie.