making - dellin association with dell–has surveyed 500 ... currently working on a vr project, or...

A report in association with Produced by

MAKING

VRREAL

A 2018 REPORT ON THE

BUSINESS IMPACT OF VR

2 MAKING VR REAL A 2018 REPORT ON THE BUSINESS IMPACT OF VR 3

CONTENTS04 Funding, planning & skills

06 10 Lessons learnt working with EDF Energy

08 Cost & benefits

12 THE BIG QUESTION: Where do you see the future for VR in business?

14 Top tech

As we head towards 2019, little is known about the positive business impact that VR can have.To help reveal what the real-world implications of using VR within your business are, Qualtrics–in association with Dell–has surveyed 500 business decision makers (BDMs) around the world during April 2018, who were either currently working on a VR project, or who had already completed one. These are the people

THE SURVEYmaking VR real. And our aim was simple: we wanted to go beyond the buzz, and find out the financial benefits, pitfalls, and business considerations, when it comes to implementing virtual reality within your organisation. Topics raised by our respondents included funding, planning, training, education, return on investment, and technology barriers (to name a few).

To accompany our survey, we have also conducted a series of in-depth interviews with a broad cross-section of VR experts, from artists, to agencies, to clients, and startups.

We believe that–alongside our survey results of 500 people working with virtual reality–this insight delivers the most authoritative look at the global VR industry to date.

THE EXPERTSSix experts–covering the client, agency, startup, and developer sides of VR–share their insight and advice

CHRISTINE CATTANOGLOBAL HEAD OF VRFRAMESTORE

Based in New York, Cattano leads a team of highly creative minds, developing VR strategies at Framestore. With a growing roster of clients Cattano has led projects including the highly-awarded Game of Thrones ‘Ascend the Wall’ experience, Volvo Reality and Merrell ‘Trailscape’.

MEL SIMKISSGLOBAL RETAIL ENVIRONMENT MANAGERJAGUAR LAND ROVER

Simkiss works with global franchise operations and retail strategy teams at Jaguar Land Rover, to ensure that JLR retailers have the support that they need to get their showrooms up to speed, as well as monitoring JLR’s global footprint.

SAM WATTSDIRECTOR OF IMMERSIVE TECHMAKE REAL

Watts has 15+ years of experience in development, e-learning and the games industry. He is currently focused on immersive tech, and the benefits to learners and businesses. And on pXX of the report you can find a list of 10 lessons that Watts has learned during his VR dev.

PROF. GEORGEPAPAGIANNAKISCEO / CTOORAMAVR

ORamaVR hopes to take virtual reality into the medical training and education space, and enable surgeons to learn their trade without the need for human cadavers,. ORamaVR also reduces surgical errors, thanks to better knowledge retention.

GLEN SOUTHERNCREATIVE DIRECTORSOUTHERNGFX

Southern is a freelance visual effects artist and digital sculptor based in Cheshire, England. He splits his time between his studio there and Post production houses in Dublin and London. Southern’s team now use VR for modelling, which Southern claims to be an ‘utter delight’.

LLOYD DEANHEAD OF DIGITAL AND INNOVATIVE LEARNINGEDF ENERGY

As Head of Digital and Innovative Learning at EDF Energy, Campus, Lloyd Dean heads up a team tasked with identifying new technologies that can have a positive business impact within the company. EDF took control of the UK nuclear generator, British Energy, in 2009.

WHYNOW?

When a Kickstarter from Oculus VR secured $2.5m in pledges in 2012, the technology world was turned on its head, and VR became the hottest tech on the planet. (For many, though, this hype brought with it a sense of deja vu.)

VR was an overnight success, decades in the making, and as advances in technology finally caught up with the vision and imagination of early VR pioneers, new use cases and opportunities for virtual reality began to emerge.

In this report, we hope to paint a true picture of the varied business cases for VR, by undertaking the broadest piece of business-focussed VR research to date, whilst also shining a light on how VR is being used in the real-world today.

JACK DAVIESHEAD OF CONTENT AT QUALTRICS EMEA


FUNDING, PLANNING & SKILLSSome of the most important work on a virtual reality job has to take place before the project has actually begun.A VR project brings with it a number of challenges; some unique, but most shared, and revolving around the same issues, such as how to secure funding, how to get your colleagues on board with new technology, how to get people trained up, and how to find the right people to do the job!

In our survey, we found that 71% of our 500 respondents had chosen VR before scoping their project, which aligns with the 76% of respondents who said that they had chosen VR because of its ‘Wow!’ factor. Add this to the fact that 61% of respondents also believed there to be a skills gap in the VR industry, and what you have a recipe for mediocrity. In these circumstances, our experts raise concerns about VR’s reputation

WATTS: The main pitfall of VR for business is rushing in and creating an application without a clear use case or purpose, without clear outcomes and

objectives defined within the discovery and design stages to be able to measure the impact against post-deployment. This is the surest way to guarantee that the hardware and associated software experience will be under-utilised and deemed a failure, waste of budget and that the technology is irrelevant for future use.

Without a clear problem to solve, then there are no key factors to measure the impact and success ratings against. Don’t just use VR for the sake of using VR because it’s currently a trend. Sceptics are quick to claim VR is a fad or a gimmick and using it in this way is the best way to quantify their claims.

CATTANO: There are different challenges for different projects. I think one of the big challenges is purely that it’s new. Development requires

iteration and testing, sometimes throwing out things you thought were great and then starting from scratch, and developing new technical solves on the fly. Most companies are still figuring out (or not even thinking about yet!) how this technology can solve

We found that after completion, the perception of a skills gap on a project became more pronounced.

business problems for them in new ways. If they’re experimenting with it, we often see there isn’t yet the proper infrastructure and investments to really move the needle. I’m confident this will grow, especially with the AR boom.

DEAN: If you’re working in emerging technology, you can often have members of your team that aren’t in the same headspace. They might be

fixated with one kind of technology, and–being that comfort zone–those people can be harder to bring along with you. So we rolled out an initiative called ‘Freedom Friday’. The idea behind this was to block out time on a Friday, where we turned off external comms, and we able to research new learning technologies and share them internally.

SOUTHERN: Ensuring my entire team had the correct hardware was the first thing we did when we started planning our VR implementation. After

we had 5 VR capable machines and the relevant rigs it was really just a matter of time to get everyone comfortable in the VR modelling workspace. The core modelling technology in Medium is Voxels rather than subdivision modelling and that is a huge change in itself. The main different is that getting high resolution surface detail is still a challenge.

DEAN: What’s important is to have the right philosophy and strategy. Our team was attending conferences, networking, reading posts, swotting up

on new tech. We were doing all of these things, and as the tech matured, we then moved the work we were doing into a proof of concept. We found very discreet business problems, and worked on those. So when a real business issue arose, we could act.

SIMKISS: We’re coming to the end of our initial two-year VR project now. We ran it for two years, which means the retailers should get a decent amount

from the investment. Now we can press pause, get the feedback, and then write a new spec for what we’re going to do next with VR. It’s definitely

something we’re going to keep using, because retailers do see the benefit of it, but we also need to evaluate what’s changed over this two year period.

DEAN: The point we’re at now is critical for VR use within business, as we establish whether smaller companies–which don’t have the

resources of EDF Energy–are willing to include VR in their project scoping.

WATTS: The other main issue is the disparate gulf between US and EU funding and access to knowledge and finance outside of the Silicon Valley

cluster. Slowly local government schemes are getting on-board to assist startup companies and allow ideas

to flourish, enabling non-US companies to become heavy hitters, too.

DEAN: I also think there is a disconnect between the funding currently available for VR in the UK, and actually getting it into the hands of the

people that can use it. For example, if we want to engage with Innovate UK, they are not proactive. Also, anecdotally, what I’ve found is that for some of the bigger technologies, they aren't actually interested in investing unless it’s a large amount of money–they want big projects. But when I go back to how we implemented VR, we didn’t start with one massive, huge lump sum. It was small iterations. And I think that’s where the likes of Innovate UK are missing a trick, if I’m honest. It's a fundamental problem.

“WHAT’S IMPORTANT IS TO HAVE THE

RIGHT PHILOSOPHY AND STRATEGY.”

SOMEWHAT AGREE AGREE STRONGLY AGREEDuring project After project During project After project During project After project

Japan 21% 36% 15% 27% 10% 9%

France 29% 14% 18% 20% 5% 14%

Germany 23% 17% 21% 24% 11% 20%

UK 18% 13% 25% 11% 13% 26%

US 19% 17% 28% 31% 19% 27%

WAS THERE A SKILLS GAP ON YOUR VR PROJECT?

OF CLIENTS

WERE HAPPY

WITH THE

RESULTS70%

WORKING ON

A LIVE PROJECT

SAID THE

CLIENT WILL

BE HAPPY

81%

SAID THERE

WAS A

SKILLS GAP

ON THEIR VR

PROJECT

61%

CHOSE VR

TECH BEFORE

SCOPING

THEIR PROJECT

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WHAT PROBLEMS DID YOU ENCOUNTER IN YOUR VR PROJECT?

20%

15%

10%

5%

20%

15%

10%

5%

12% undertook user research

10% set target functionality

6% involved the legal team

6% agreed on why we were building the app

6% aligned the project against existing goals

3% secured external funding

8% invited external VR developers to pitch

9% sought advice from our development team

11% visited VR events (research)

6% purchased books / reports (research)

8% read up online (research)

3% employed the services of a consultant

10% defined goals

EDUCATION/TRAINING

RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

OTHER

GAMING

FILM/TV

LIVE EVENTSENGINEERING

DEFENCE

HEALTHCARE

AUTOMOTIVE

TOURISMFINANCEMEDIA/MARKETING

AEROSPACE

ARCHITECTURE

RETAIL

ART/DESIGN

VR INDUSTRY BREAKDOWN

HOW DID YOUR COMPANY PLAN THE VR EXPERIENCE?

Source: 'Making VR Real' survey of 500 business decision-makers (April, 2018)


Source: 'Making VR Real' survey of 500 business decision-makers (April, 2018)Source: 'Making VR Real' survey of 500 business decision-makers (April, 2018)

Source: 'Making VR Real' survey of 500 business decision-m

akers (April, 2018)


1START SMALLBegin with a small budget—that is more acceptable to those who have financial

sign-off—to create a prototype or proof of concept piece of content that has one or two clear business objectives, or learning outcome goals defined.

2COLLABORATION IS KEY Everyone likes to feel involved, and when they

are, you are likely to meet less resistance further down the development path. This is especially true when dealing with new technologies that people may not be aware or sure of, creating mental barriers to deployment and success.

3DETERMINE HOW TO SCALEA single deployment will only ever be treated as a test or a

prototype. Once a solution can scale effectively and within reasonable cost, then it will be considered a product and given the due respect and authority to grow within a company.

4ENGAGE AS MANY STAKEHOLDERS AS EARLY AS POSSIBLE

New projects and new technologies gather interest from all departments, even if they are not 100% related to the client key stakeholders associated with sign-off and review. By spending the time bringing more peripheral stakeholders onboard, new avenues of opportunity open up as minds begin to understand the possibilities and benefits, and barriers to adoption are broken down once any fears are removed and understanding is increased.

This is especially true if the client has internal departments who are technically and theoretically aligned to the product, such as a learning and development department, or innovation lab, or learning technology specialists.

By working with and involving them early on, it is possible to avoid any pushback through fear of impeding on their area of responsibility or taking away their control and purpose.

5BE PREPARED FOR THE UNEXPECTEDBoth the development and deployment of a VR project

can throw up interesting issues, and factors that can't be foreseen during design or initial scoping. Ensure that everyone involved is aware, and has a reasonable amount of acceptance that there will be learning along the way.

This is especially true if working on prototypes or proof of concepts that commence by utilising development kit hardware before the final, commercial units are available.

6KEEP IT SIMPLEIn terms of design, development, deployment, setup, operation and ease

of use, always bear in mind the unknown end-user, either the learner or the instructor / facilitator, and their technical abilities and knowledge. This makes the technology as invisible as possible and allows the learning content to shine through and serve its purpose.

7DETERMINE SUCCESS METRICS EARLYIt’s a lot easier to implement

tracking of user data and input at the design phase rather than trying to shoehorn it in at a later date. This also applies to any supported or required learning content standards, such as SCORM, in order to be able to integrate into a learning management system, either directly or through CSV output.

Many lessons were learned from deploying a range of immersive technologies for EDF Energy and other clients, and here Make Real’s

Sam Watts provides a run-down of advice for other businesses looking to work with VR.

70% OF BDMS SAID

THEY CHOSE VR

BEFORE SCOPING

THE PROJECT

8DESIGN FOR ALL LEVELS OF USERThe majority of people haven’t tried a full VR

system, though some may have briefly seen a 360º film on a Google Cardboard; but they will already have a pre-conceived perception of what the technology can (and can’t) do. You should ensure that there is a tutorial in place at the start of each experience, which covers the necessary elements to allow a user to fully interact with the learning content (which can also be skipped if so desired).

9USE BUSINESS HARDWAREMost VR hardware manufacturers offer business

editions of the headsets and systems. Whilst priced higher than the consumer units, push for their inclusion as part of the final deployment with the procurement team, to ensure longer term warranties and support options are available to the client to cover any future eventualities or faults.

10BE EXCITEDIf you are positive and excited about the technology and the

possibilities it offers, then the client will be too. If your business revolves around the wider adoption of the technology, play the long game and ensure that users come away with positive thoughts about the potential uses rather than promising unrealistic outcomes that lead to disappointment and disinterest in the short term.

10

40% OF PROJECTS

HAVE A BUDGET OF

LESS THAN $100K

52% OF THOSE

WORKING ON VR

PROJECTS STILL SEE

IT AS EMERGING TECH

35% OF BDMS SAID

COMMUNICATION

WAS A PROBLEM ON

THEIR VR PROJECT

LESSONS LEARNT WORKING WITH EDF ENERGY

48% SAY THE USABILITY OF VR PRODUCTS STILL

NEEDS IMPROVEMENT

60% DIDN’T UNDERTAKE USER

RESEARCH AS PART OF THEIR VR PROJECT

32% OF BDMS SAID THAT VR WAS TOO

COSTLY TO USE AGAIN

33% SET GOALS AND METRICS TARGETS BEFORE BEGINNING

THE PROJECT68% OF BDMS SAID THAT THEIR TEAM WAS HAPPY WITH THE RESULTS OF THEIR WORK

EDF Energy's Cannington Court Campus

Source: 'Making VR Real' survey


COST & BENEFITSJudging the cost and benefits of a VRproject are critical for sustained success.As our table opposite shows, the budgets for a VR project can be significant, and the potential benefits can often get overshadowed by these looming costs. In short, the risks are just too great.Here, though, our expert panel sheds some light on their experiences to date, showcasing hard commercial benefits, and highlighting where VR had a positive impact on how they operate.

SOUTHERN: VR has been hugely positive for us. We are now delivering workshops in VR sculpting in Europe and the UK. We have done several

client reviews inside VR. As you can invite a second user into the VR world we are able to art direct and review models and assets.

CATTANO: We’re a services based company, so of course profit is important, but I think everyone’s taking a longer term view. Learnings, tool

building and efficiency is also incredibly important to us. For our clients, we’ve just turned a corner where people are talking about profit, but there’s still a lot of VR being used for marketing/exposure/PR purposes. We’re also starting to see a lot of products being developed (for profit) outside of the entertainment industry - especially in healthcare.

WATTS: Feedback from EDF Energy suggests that over the suite of learning products deployed at Cannington Court for its one day course—

replacing the Powerpoint slide presentation format with VR-based training—training time for the main course content has been reduced by two hours on average. With the additional complementary, gamified learning VR experiences, the assessment scores have increased from 50% to 75% on average. Across 16,000 employee learners (approximately) this is a huge saving and benefit to the company across all departments.

SIMKISS: One of the questions we asked of retailers was whether they thought it was good value for money, and delivered a good return on

investment? We had 40% of people saying that it was good value for money, because we did our best to make it affordable. If you look at what we had for our first VR work, spending hundreds of thousands of pounds per vehicle, and then a £50k investment from a retailer, the £2.5k cost of our later system made it much more viable.

PAPAGIANNAKIS: We received seed capital funding from the PJ Tech Catalyst VC fund in Greece, and so far we are measuring qualitative outcomes

from interviews based on all our early adopter trials, permanent installations around the world, demonstrations, clients and partners. We are still only one year and a half in this journey, but we are extremely excited from the feedback so far and optimistic for the near future. For us VR surgical training will eventually take its place alongside VR flight simulators and become mandatory for training the next generation of physicians.

And we are also launching a ground- breaking clin-ical study that aims to establish for the first time the clear % gains via VR medical simulation in a) training time reduction b) success rates and c) training cost reduction with commodity VR hardware (as opposed to the expensive, anchored, custom robotic simula-tors that were scarcely used till now).

DEAN: One of the interesting things about this sector is commercialisation. We’ve had a lot of interest within the energy sector in the VR training that

JUST OVER 25% HAD A BUDGET OF $100-$250k

FOR VR ACTIVITY. $0-$5,000 $5,000-$10,000 $10,000-$20,000

$20,000-$50,000

$250,000-$1,000,000

$50,000-$100,000

More than $1,000,000

$100,000-$250,000

Don’t know

25%

20%

15%

10%

5%

25%

20%

15%

10%

5%

WHAT IS THE BUDGET FOR VR ACTIVITY?

STRONGLY DISAGREE DISAGREE SOMEWHAT

DISAGREENEITHER

AGREE NOR DISAGREE

SOMEWHAT AGREE AGREE STRONGLY

AGREE

We chose VR because it offered benefits that no other medium did 3% 3% 5% 11% 20% 31% 27%We chose VR because it showcases our innovative capabilities 3% 3% 6% 10% 19% 30% 29%We chose VR because it demonstrates leadership in our industry 2% 4% 4% 10% 21% 30% 29%

WHY ARE BUSINESS DECISION MAKERS CHOOSING VR?

ASSESSMENTSCORES HAVE

INCREASED FROM 50% TO 75% ON AVERAGE.

50%

75%

CASE STUDYSam Watts of Make Real explains how VR is improving safety.VR allows employees to learn and train within a safe environment, where they can fail fast and learn quickly without impacting real world development. Remote training using VR also removes the risk of injury for untrained employees working in otherwise dangerous environments, such as construction sites or factories.

Similarly expensive stock or vehicles can be recreated accurately within VR, allowing the real world counterpart to continue to operate and generate revenues rather than sitting in a maintenance / training yard e.g. new train carriages for rolling stock.

BLSC in Melbourne, Australia has been able to contribute to 90% reduction in onsite incidents through creating an immersive, realistic construction site management training programme via a mix of 3D content created by Make Real and associated training scenarios and real-world actors, putting new site managers through their paces in mock-up but realistic site cabins housed away from live sites.

Source: EDF Energy





we’ve been designing, and we’ve had inquiries from other nuclear plants that now want to purchase our training software, and use VR as part of their own training.

SOUTHERN: When we train people to digitally sculpt who have sculpted in Clay for 25 years, we don’t tell them that this is how it has to be now. We

tell them that we are adding more skills to their already amazing skillset. VR is one more benefit.

WATTS: The ability to collaborate remotely is a huge benefit. Whilst many critics say that VR is isolating, since the user is removed sensually from the real

world and those around them during immersive experiences, content can be created to allow multiple users within the same virtual space and environment, allowing remote access over the internet from anywhere in the world.

PAPAGIANNAKIS: VR will be a huge benefit to our sector. New legislation limits the number of hours per week that surgeons can operate, thus they

have less exposure to real cases and less chances to practice. Cadaver labs are expensive, and the number of implant companies and different tools is on the rise, thus more operation types to master. And despite increased expectation for outcomes and

safety, studies estimate that 9 million of an estimated 300 million surgical procedures per year worldwide will encounter major complications. VR surgical training and simulation can help address the problem.

SIMKISS: Every retailer has a dealer management system that differs slightly, so it can be hard for us to measure the value of a particular

change or campaign, and what that did to move the customer further down the sales funnel (this isn't just us, this is mirrored across the whole automotive industry), so ROI is hard for us to measure. Having said that, in our annual survey of our 2,500 retailers, we found that 58% of retailers said the VR experience added value to the sales process in their showrooms, and 33% saw the kit as good value for money. Given the feedback we've had thus far, we will definitely be continuing our use of VR as a sales and marketing tool.

WATTS: The speed of development in VR should be viewed by business as a huge benefit. 2018 will see a number of untethered, standalone, wireless,

all-in-one, lower cost VR headsets come to market, removing many of the pain points associated with the current crop of hardware devices. Similarly, the software platforms are evolving into naturally more user-friendly experiences, and VR-ready laptops are now rapidly reducing in size and weight.

JAGUAR LAND ROVER 2018 VR FEEDBACK

CUSTOMER FEEDBACK 50% felt the experience was exciting and

fun

42% saw it as innovative and on-trend

33% saw it as being informative, engaging and intriguing

JLR now knows that customers are comfortable using VR in the retail environment

83% were more educated about the vehicle after using the experience

41% were comfortable using the headset and 83% keen to use the 'experience'

RETAILER FEEDBACK

VR experience contributed to the JLR brand credentials in a positive way, driving "premiumness'" innovation, technology, performance, design and craftsmanship forward

83% believed the quality was excellent or good for both augmented and virtual

58% said the VR experience added value to the sales process and 42% advised that VR would add value to the sales process if it contained a configurator

50% appreciated the benefit of VR, and 33% saw the VR kit as good value for money, offering a good return on investment—although 50% still believed it was too expensive

As part of its 2018 survey, JLR spoke to 2,500 retailers, asking about the sales impact of VR. This is what they had to say.

STRONGLY AGREE AGREE SOMEWHAT

AGREENEITHER

AGREE NOR DISAGREE

SOMEWHAT DISAGREE DISAGREE STRONGLY

DISAGREE

The project was a commercial success 36% 22% 9% 6% 4% 11% 27%This project came in on budget 26% 22% 14% 8% 10% 14% 7%Users were happy with the project 34% 20% 12% 6% 6% 9% 12%The project achieved its purpose as expected 32% 25% 11% 7% 7% 10% 8%The project was delivered within the agreed timeframe 30% 25% 13% 6% 6% 9% 11%The client was happy with the results 31% 30% 9% 5% 6% 9% 10%

148 VR PROJECTS REVEAL HIGH DEGREES OF POSITIVITY

“THE POSSIBILITIES OF COLLABORATION

VIA VIRTUAL REALITY ARE

ENDLESS.”

CASE STUDYLloyd Dean of EDF Energy explains how VR had a positive business impact.We had an incident in 2015 at the Hinkley Point B power station, where someone was undertaking a scheduled safety test. There was a degloving incident, where the person in question lost the flesh and skin from the fingers of one hand. An in-depth investigation was set up as a result of the accident, and the business owners at the power station found a disproportionate amount of “lost-time” incidents in training (too many of these, and everyone working in the station has to undergo fresh training, costing the plant significant amounts per-hour).

The station director approached our team, and we scoped out the project, to identify what the problem actually was. Having identified the issues, we looked at the potential of using VR. We then worked with an agency to help create a training app. We’ve calculat-ed the return on investment, and in the last year the reduction in health and safety costs, associated directly with our VR training, reduced by £90k. The lost-time incidents in training—which was what got our team involved in the project—reduced significantly as well. And we are rolling this project out to multiple power stations across the country.

Source: Jaguar Land Rover



QUESTIONTHE BIG

GLEN SOUTHERNCREATIVE DIRECTORSOUTHERNGFXEveryone is very positive and excited by what is coming in the future. My team and I firmly believe that VR is only a stepping

stone to full MR and AR so things can only get better. Add to that VR backpack and wireless HMDs and it just keeps getting more exciting. I get very badly VR/motion sick playing VR games so I thought I’d not be able to take part in the VR revolution. VR sculpting has firmly changed my stance on this and with high resolution, high frame rate HMDs arriving, things will just improve at a phenomenal rate. Incredibly exciting times for designers.

PROF. GEORGE PAPAGIANNAKISCEO / CTOORAMAVRThe evolving health care climate will almost certainly require

educators and administrators to cooperate to make the best use of their resources. The experience with simulators confirms that hospitals that support their use will recoup that investment by reducing time in the operating room and improving patient outcomes. Just as laparoscopic simulators took some time to be validated, VR orthopaedic simulators will reach that point as well.

LLOYD DEANHEAD OF DIGITAL AND INNOVATIVE LEARNINGEDF ENERGY There will be some training teams who haven’t thought of how they might use VR yet. And there will be some teams, like ours, who have followed this journey for a longer period of time, and understand the developments being made in the market, and how they can be applied to training. However, what I see at most of the VR conferences that I attend is people working in marketing and social, where VR is being used predominantly because it looks cool. But when you then ask them how VR helped to deliver against an objective, you realise that these teams are using VR for the sake if it, rather than as a tool for business growth and development.

SAM WATTSDIRECTOR OF IMMERSIVE TECHMAKE REALThe challenge is always to go beyond initial expectations and especially with VR, it’s easy to illicit the Wow Moment (such as revealing the true scale of the nuclear power reactor circuit at the end) but now VR-based learning content needs to be measurable and ensure it has meaningful impact and long-lasting use cases and value. Creating content, aligned to hardware advances, that lasts longer than 5 minutes that a learner is going to want to be immersed in for periods of time, is the key factor to advancing the wider adoption of the technology. Beyond gaming, VR will have the biggest impact in the simulation, training, learning and development sectors where virtual environments will allow learners to fail safely without posing risk to day-to-day operations. Many people look to understand how they could make money from VR, whereas the question they should be asking themselves is how can VR save them money?

CHRISTINE CATTANOGLOBAL HEAD OF VRFRAMESTOREObviously, Hollywood and entertainment is a big part of the picture for us. Personally, I’m excited about how VR can be used in areas like education and healthcare. We’ve been dabbling a bit here - but some of the products and R&D projects that are currently out there are pretty mindblowing, I think those are the types of things that will start to move the needle for the general public on the true potential of AR and VR tech.

MEL SIMKISSGLOBAL RETAIL ENVIRONMENT MANAGERJAGUAR LAND ROVERHaving VR more integrated into the sales process is something we need to work on for future projects. What would be great is a customer comes in, having configured the car at home, and they are then issued a code which we can use to demo the car they've configured using VR. Then we can help them order it, there and then, in the showroom. We're a way off just now, but ultimately that's the goal. We also need to have something that is more configurable. We never initially wanted it to be a full configurator, but what we've learned is that customers actually want to see how a car will look with a full configuration, that they've maybe worked on at home.

WHERE DO YOU SEE THE FUTURE FOR VR IN BUSINESS?


In this section, we focus on the platforms and hardware currently driving the new wave of developments in virtual reality.And whatever your views on the predisposition of the mainstream media and critics to fixate on the kooky headsets and ‘plugging in’ elements of VR, it is these subjects that also concern those at the most serious end of VR usage.

Of our panel of 500 business decision makers who have worked in the VR field, we found that 52% still viewed VR as “emerging technology”, with 32% also saying it was too costly.

And when we turned our attention to our panel, they shared some similar misgivings, but their responses also highlighted that VR can go from being seen as ‘established’ to ‘emerging’ technology, depending on the industry that you’re operating in.

HERE’S WHAT OUR EXPERTS HAD TO SAY …

CATTANO: “Right now there’s a big difference in the type of content that’s supported across all the different headsets out there, which can make it

really challenging (and often expensive) to create

content that maximises each platform’s individual capabilities. Some of the best, most immersive experiences, are some of the least accessible for a home consumer.

This is being addressed to some degree by location-based experiences, but more often than not we have clients asking us to design and develop an experience that is accessible from mobile all the way to location-based entertainment (LBE), and in my opinion, they’re totally different canvases.”

PAPAGIANNAKIS: “Whether it’s selling into an implant company, or selling and executing new programs at teaching hospitals, the VR hardware is

still under development. This can make the already long sales cycles for enterprise technologies even longer, and good sales tactics are critical. Also VR hardware still lacks an “iPhone moment” as devices are still cumbersome, of low resolution and not meant to be used for long hours. However, we are constantly witnessing evolution of VR at lower cost, with higher usability and improved form factors.”

SIMKISS: “One of the things we knew was that customers felt a little bit intimidated, so we made something a little smaller. We used a

Samsung GearVR headset and an Oculus GearVR headset, combining AR and VR. We used AR to give us an idea of the scale of the car, and then we moved them into a VR experience where they could engage with the interior. And although we found that 33% of showrooms found the VR kit good value for money, 50% still said it was too expensive. But if you look at what we had for our first piece of VR work, spending hundreds of thousands, and then

consider the £50k required investment from a retailer, £2.5k starts to look like excellent value for money.”

DEAN: “I think that VR is 98% ready as a consumer product, and I wouldn't class it as emerging. For me, then, the biggest challenge of introducing VR

into your business isn’t the technology. If you have one person acting as your VR thought leader, how do you form a team around them? What is the culture of that team? It’s those questions that are more critical, if I’m honest.”

SOUTHERN: “The first app we looked at was Google Tilt Brush, which we liked, but it didn’t give us functioning geometry to work with

beyond VR. We then found Oculus Medium on the Rift, and we have pretty much stuck with that since then. So we were able to decide on tech fairly quickly, but we were lucky. I still think that the cost of implementing VR is the biggest barrier. Once you get past the peripherals, you still need to invest in hardware that’s good enough to run them, and in our case we can also pay thousands for software.”

WATTS: “We are only within the second year of commercially available VR hardware devices and there are current shortcomings associated with

each platform. As a result, VR should have champions internally who are able to setup and operate the hardware, ensuring that the currently immersed learner who has had their senses taken over is not a danger to themselves or others back in the real world.”

SCOPING TECHRemember to look at all the areas of your project when scoping, including whether it will require training.

WATTS: “We tend to scope a project, and then choose the right tools for that particular job. Make Real has deployed

eight learning products since 2014. Three are specifically VR-based, either using HTC Vive or Oculus Rift + Touch. HTC Vive was used originally for “Reactor Builder”, as at the time it was the only commercially available, low-cost hardware that provided

tracked input controllers. Now that the Oculus Rift supports the Oculus Touch controllers, this VR system is our preferred choice, thanks to ease of setup; part of our deployment process includes in-depth training of how to setup, operate and breakdown the VR hardware effectively and we have to consider the technical knowledge and capabilities of all potential employees who may have to use it.”

TOP TECH

“WE CHOSE VR BECAUSE IT IS CURRENT”Our experts had concerns that VR was being used for its buzz factor, especially within the marketing industry. And our survey showed that buzz plays a major role in VR being employed.

Disagree

No opinion

Agree

JAPAN

51%

12%

FRANCE

74%

11%

GERMANY

77%

10%

UK

82%

10%

USA

87%

10%

WE ASKED WHAT PEOPLE'S MAIN CONCERNS ABOUT VR WERE … 36% say there are too many competing products52% say it’s still an emerging technology1 in 3 say it’s too costly to develop VR projects44% say too few consumers own VR-enabled devices

TOP 10

TECH PEOPLE USE IN THEIR

VR ROLES

1 VR/AR

2 SOUND

DESIGN

TOOLS

3 3D PRINTING

4 WEB

DESIGN

TOOLS

5 GAMING

ENGINES

6 DEV TOOLS

7 CAD DESIGN

TOOLS

8 3D MODELLING

9 UX TOOLS

10 VR/AR

FRAME-

WORKS /

LIBRARIES

USING VR 41% ENCOUNTERED

TECHNOLOGICAL PROBLEMS.

37%

15% 13%8%

3%



Source: 'Making VR Real' survey of 500 business decision-m

akers (April, 2018)


A report in association with Produced by

MAKING

VRREAL

A 2018 REPORT ON THE

BUSINESS IMPACT OF VR

FINAL WORD

The world of virtual reality still appears to be one of contradictions. Many people working in VR are vocal about no longer presenting it as emerging tech, yet more than 50% of those that had worked on a VR project viewed it as just that: emerging.

Elsewhere, we discovered that four out of five survey respondents said that they chose VR because of its buzz factor. Viewed in isolation, you can see why some businesses may be put off using VR in any serious capacity by statistics like these.

However, once you move beyond these questionable use cases, you discover that VR is contributing a huge amount to the economies of those countries we surveyed. On a single training project, we saw how VR helped reduce costs by £90k. Elsewhere, we learned that 67% of businesses that undertook a VR project said it was a commercial success. And 27% of the 500 BDMs we surveyed said that VR offered something beyond ROI: it was unique in being able to deliver an experience no other technology could.

The 'Making VR Real' report showcases the potential of virtual reality in 2018, and provides a unique insight into one of the world's most innovative industries.

making - dellin association with dell–has surveyed 500 ... currently working on a vr project, or...

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