As the XR field moves into the new year, it helps to look back at 2018 and examine what will help make the industry grow. I got a peek at progress during VRX San Francisco – and the future seemed to start with me firing a geriatric, virtual accountant named Barry.
He was called into my office, and I tiptoed around the elephant in the room, starting the conversation with small talk. Barry responded in kind, while I thought of the best way to let Barry go painlessly.
His many years my elder made him savvy to these sorts of conversations, however. Barry demanded to know what the true purpose of our meeting was. Ultimately, the only choice I had was to drop his severance on him. Barry’s stern demeanor surged to fury, berating my authority with cutting language. Though I put my foot down and terminated him, Barry left the argument from a position of strength. He won the game.
I slipped off the HMD while my stomach rose back up from the pit of failure, and the Talespin booth attendant told me I didn’t even get the experience’s worst storying ending.
A preview of the Virtual Human platform at VRX.
In my conversations at VRX in San Francisco this year, attendees and exhibitors all agree on one thing – for XR to grow and reach a wider audience, we need focus to shift toward accessibility and inclusivity. Instead of making cool, shiny new gadgets, XR as a whole must be practical, approachable, and inviting to newcomers. The good news is that evidence of this shift seems to be happening across meaningful product experiences, burgeoning communities, and tech development.
Amplifying Emotional Realities
Talespin’s Virtual Human platform, which housed the experience where I fired Barry, demonstrates a focus on the creative story that’s supplemented by technical expertise, not driven by it. By leveraging VR, vocal recognition, and machine learning, the Talespin team crafted an experience greater than the sum of its parts. The intent behind Virtual Human is to teach soft, interpersonal skills to a company’s personnel, giving them a safe space to practice stressful scenarios. Barry, the unruly, computer-generated co-worker, is planned to fill one of many roles with varying levels of seniority to fit a wide spectrum of circumstances, according to Kyle Jackson, CEO and co-founder of Talespin. “We felt if we could pass the bar on emotional realism,” Jackson explained, “if we could evoke the emotions that you would really feel in that situation, then we’ve convinced everybody that this is a technology that can be used for much broader applications.”Successful emotional realism in XR experiences makes them more relatable to more people, expanding their accessibility to those intimidated by the high-tech nature of the field. Transporting people to a whole new virtual world when they put on an HMD is all well and good, but amplifying a strong emotional core will give them reasons to keep returning to XR, according to Jackson.
This focus on making experiences more accessible via emotion and story seems to be working.
“Last year,” Jackson continued, “everybody was focused on tools or a first experience. [Now] we’re seeing demand for licensed solutions for the first time.”
Kyle Jackson, CEO of Talespin
Extending eXtended Realities
Aside from broader applications for various projects, XR has a demand for more than just tech and use-cases – it also seeks diversity and inclusion in the talent pool. “[We’re] working with underrepresented talent in particular because Silicon Valley has a huge demand for it,” said Christopher Lafayette, founder of The Armada, when explaining the purpose of his organization. “If we’re talking about extending reality, we need to bring [diverse culture] with us.”
Christopher Lafayette, Founder of The Armada
In addition to space and resources for development, The Armada provides its members with the chance to network. This opportunity, Lafayette notes, is especially beneficial for underrepresented groups in the tech industry. They’ve recently set up shop at the Corinthian Grand Ballroom in San Jose, California, allowing members access to other start-ups and companies in the Bay Area.
Increasing diversity in the industry takes more than just getting people from various backgrounds behind keyboards and into boardrooms solely for the sake of quotas, LaFayette said. It requires the stewardship necessary so diverse communities in tech are empowered to represent themselves as individuals with unique perspectives.
“Doesn’t matter the gender, doesn’t matter the person,” Lafayette said. “We need to remember that we want to hire the people that we want to buy our products. That’s going to make for a greater experience overall.”
The representation of talent in the XR industry has largely come from the United States, Europe, and Asia. While that is a hefty sum of peoples, that leaves a quarter of the all people (2 billion people, give or take) outside of the developer and consumer circles. Those circles, though, are still growing.
“I was last here as a kid. It’s been about 25 years,” said Tyrone Rubin, founder and CEO of SenseVirtual, an AR/VR solutions company based out of Cape Town, South Africa. “I was spending the month exploring opportunities in New York, and I Googled “VR conferences,” and [VRX] came up, and thought, ‘Wow, this is great.’ I just had to come [to San Francisco].”
Rubin started SenseVirtual in Cape Town, a tech hub of Africa’s burgeoning startup community that aided Rubin in sourcing developer talent. SenseVirtual has since expanded to Johannesburg, as more business takes place there. According to Rubin, their access to talent and international clients has aided them in becoming one of the leaders in South Africa’s VR/AR space.
“It’s been pretty surreal for me, coming from South Africa [to the United States],” Rubin explained. “I’ve been following this world geekily and business-wise from a small little country and seeing what’s being done. And now I’m here, with the people at the forefront this space.”
Tyrone Rubin, Founder and CEO of SenseVirtual
Before starting SenseVirtual, Rubin was a founding member of VRSA, the association of VR/AR developers in South Africa. According to Rubin, the group was inspired by developer communities that formed in San Francisco, New York, and Los Angeles to hone South Africa’s VR talent. Developers that networked because of VRSA lead to the formation of SenseVirtual. “Our uniqueness is talent. We’ve got the market share of South African talent working for us, who have also been attractive to international clients because of how weak our currency is,” Rubin explained. “We often pitch on international jobs, and there’s no real competition price-wise of what we can offer talent-wise, versus what they’d have to pay elsewhere.” Rubin reiterated how the growth of the XR industry in developing nations can provide opportunities to better the lives of others and expand their horizons. “It’s all very impressive coming from a different country where technology is a luxury instead of a necessity,” Rubin said. “We can actually get results from this technology in South Africa that can help us – where people have never been able to taste different cities or different things. And through VR, they can do that.”
Making Wearables Bearable
Amy Peck, Founder and CEO of EndeavorVR
To truly extend XR solutions to the masses through technology, seamless integration with everyday life is a must.
“Consumers don’t really have a fluency with the technology yet. We talk about wearables all the time, but nothing really is wearable,” said Amy Peck, founder and CEO of EndeavorVR. “Until they do, we’re going to have a challenge deploying at scale. Glasses like Focals – that’s ultimately what the form factor’s going to be.”
Focals Smart Glasses are designer eyewear meant to counter the tech-heavy focus behind AR glasses like the Hololens or Magic Leap. Their streetwise design is meant to make them geared towards consumers who want to integrate advanced tech into their lives while still looking fashionable.
Bose Frames, which had a presence on the showfloor, also aims to meet this need. Bose is pitching their smart glasses as a form of augmented reality, but instead of overlaying visual information, Bose Frames provides a layer of augmented aural information through directional speaker technology.
“When you think about the audio-only world, there’s a lot of use-cases for these devices that people already do…to hear audio, to hear music, to take calls,” said John Gordon, head of consumer electronics for Bose.
He feels shifting focus toward mainstream accessibility is “a very natural progression,” as opposed to purchasing an expensive, purpose-built device. Utility on a day-to-day basis will allow the industry to scale much quicker than it has been. Bose Frames, which had a presence on the showfloor, also aims to meet this need. Bose is pitching their smart glasses as a form of augmented reality, but instead of overlaying visual information, Bose Frames provides a layer of augmented aural information through directional speaker technology.
Bose Frames on the VRX showfloor
Creating Realities Inclusively
Cool tech for cool tech’s sake won’t drive a mass audience to the XR space. Remembering that at the center of every virtual experience and device is a real person will be key to success. The average consumer isn’t buying refresh rates, pixels, or degrees of freedom. They want meaningful experiences and easy-to-use devices that make their life better – nothing more, nothing less. And from the pulse at the conference, the XR industry seems to be getting it and prepping to mainstream new Realities. Even the next generation of developer tools embrace the concept of inclusion by stressing collaborative workflows, shared developer environments, and stress social VR solutions. Check out these companies for a glimpse into their roadmaps:For more specific thoughts from XR thought leaders and professionals, watch our full interview playlist below:
