Virtual Reality: AR you seeing this?

Michael_Bird · ‎07-12-2021

Who needs reality? VR has placed fantasy kingdoms, alien planets, and more just a headset away, and AR is allowing us to augment the physical world through our smartphones, giving us the power to make better decisions and even catch a Pokémon or two. But are VR and AR just a passing craze? Or are these other realities set to become inseparably intertwined with the way organisations interact with customers and partners?

Virtual reality is a concept that's been around for a long time but it only started to venture beyond the realms of science fiction in the late 1980s. By the start of the new millennium, films like Tron and The Matrix reimagined what VR could be, which paved the way for a tech explosion in the 2000s that brought us the modern, head-mounted, motion tracking, high-resolution displays we recognise today.

But VR isn't the only player anymore. Augmented reality is arguably the most accessible other reality, utilising ****the ever-increasing capabilities of smartphones. The boundaries of how we view and interact with the world are being pushed even further with developments in mixed reality.

In this episode, host Michael Bird speaks with HPE Chief Technologist Matt Armstrong-Barnes about how VR and AR are changing the way we interact with the world and where the technologies could potentially be used in the future. We hear about the advances in hardware and software that will further the democratisation of VR and AR with HPE Chief Technologist in HybridIT, Retail and MDI, Alex Haddock. Michael also discusses the emergence of MR and XR and how they're shaking up the entertainment industry with Dimension Studios' Director of Strategic Partnerships, Lauren Dyer. Plus, Leslie Shannon, Head of Ecosystem and Trend Scouting at Nokia, paints a picture of a VR and AR future powered by 5G infrastructure.

Bigger isn't always better

VR headsets have never been small. Even after decades of development across the industry, headsets such as the Oculus Rift and Valve Index are still bulky and need to be tethered to a high-end gaming PC. AR on the other hand has a much smaller footprint thanks to a lesser need for processing power and can be explored using smartphones or through compact glasses-style headsets like Microsoft's Hololens.

To make VR truly accessible and to integrate AR conveniently into people's lives, the technology behind them needs to shrink, which means turning away from the traditional GPU and CPU framework. HPE Chief Technologists Matt Armstrong-Barnes and Alex Haddock detail why graphical processing is so hard to shrink, and Alex discusses how a "Cambrian explosion of infrastructure" could be the key to the graphics processing problem.

Modernizing media

MR and XR are the latest acronyms to hit, quite literally, the stage. Productions such as The Mandalorian popularised the technique of virtual production, which renders graphics in real-time on LED screens, allowing actors to perform within their fictional worlds without green screens.

But virtual production isn't just the reserve of big-budget blockbusters. Lauren Dyer, Director of Strategic Partnerships at Dimension Studios reveals that MR and XR are becoming mainstream production techniques. She details how assets like virtual studios and even virtual humans are becoming easier to create and how their presence is elevating audience experience and creating new ways for brands to interact with their customers. Plus, discover why MR and XR production aren't just gimmicks and why they're here to stay.

The new reality?

VR and AR might make great platforms for gaming, but their uses extend way beyond entertainment. VR can allow for alternative social and corporate experiences, letting friends and colleagues gather even while thousands of miles apart, and AR can help humans to better understand the world around them by pulling in external data and overlaying it on what they see.

How far can these technologies go? Will we see *Kingsmen-*style conferences replace in-person meetings? Could technical workers enhance their skillset through the use of AI, swarm learning and AR? Could smaller and more powerful wearable headsets mark the creation of the "human-edge"?

Leslie Shannon, Head of Ecosystem and Trend Scouting at Nokia imagines what VR and AR devices powered by 5G technology could enable users to do, from creating a new way to interface with computers, to re-painting the world around us.

Key Takeaways:

We are at a tipping point with VR thanks to powerful graphics processors enabling smooth, high-resolution video in headsets. But before it can really be widely adopted, prices and sizes of the devices need to shrink.
Augmented reality is about more than casual gaming and as new hardware and infrastructure, such as 5G, comes into play its capabilities are only going to increase, augmenting the way organisations interact with their clients.
The real advances in AR, VR, and MR won't just come from hardware. AI, neuromorphic computing, and swarm learning are going to be the real drivers in making these other realities useful in industry and society.