How VR Alters Everything and helps Connecting with the Customers

Understanding our customer is what we all aim for. Because of this reason, we get out of bed every day and this is what keeps us up at night. Knowing their problems are difficult: from cancer treatment to service providing for autistic children and 360-degree view for shoppers. Product development teams must empathize with the diverse users across all industry types and this difficulty must get incorporated into our software.
Innovative ways to better know our customers and sharing the knowledge across our organizations is what we must be looking forward to. Start experimenting a little bit with teams using VR to conduct customer research on location with real users.

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From the hype and games into the useful, practical and widely acceptable way, VR has moved so much.  VR has moved beyond this hype that got created.

Sensory experience, incredibly immersive that allow viewers to connect deeply with those who are being recorded. By seeing someone’s world from their perspective, enable you to empathize with their viewpoint and understand their feelings. VR can be used to appreciate difficulty level of the customer’s needs through recording them while performing the jobs and sharing 360-degree videos widely across the organizations.

You can tell what it would like to be a part of an interacting session with a patient in a doctor’s office or selling shoes in a retail store. By understanding the customers better, it will result in developing much better products than before.

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VR research is cheaper than the setup and scaling. Lean mentality team which always tries a minimal viable idea before going all in on an experiment does well. Consumer grade cameras have hit a rapid low in price and are only improving every quarter.

The equipment should be used as such to conduct the research costing less than $1000 entirely which includes two cameras with live streaming capabilities, various Google Cardboard Headsets, all the software and cords required to do the jobs. This is cheaper for technology which was literally science fiction. Most frugal budgets can also afford this setup.

Nikon recently announced that a 4k 360 VR camera costs around $500. You can use it around or by immersing it in water while capturing sharp videos backed with 360 degrees. A year ago, something like this would have cost around certain thousand dollars. Things are moving this fast in this area.

Museums Started Adopting Virtual Reality Technique

A virtual reality presentation model named theBlu has been added to the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County, in between megamouth shark, bison diorama, and a bunch of excited school kids.

In general admission fees of $12, with an extra $10 fee, visitors can put on a VR headset and explore the ocean with blue whales swimming over the head or a group of silvery fish darting by. Visitors can use virtual flashlights to further explore the abyss.

Senior project manager and developer from the VR presentation model say that for the young audience, this thing is attractive. Experiment with VR technology in order to get more people in the door and interested in a wider collection is going on.

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This appeal is not restricted only to tech-savvy teens. Several older adults also come to have a look. This is the first time they were doing anything like this and they were thrilled by the idea.

This kind of exposure is something the virtual reality industry is chasing as a whole. Despite the promise made by VR as the next big thing in technology industry, it’s still to get mainstream.

Venues apart from home are a great space for the public to have their first experience in VR, according to the CEO of the company behind the Blu.

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Wevr gave a loan to the museum, the computers, and headsets. But, the company's broader vision is to make fans of this technology. At some point, perhaps, people will get inspired for buying their own headset and also to subscribe to the VR content produced by Wevr.

Some institutions are coming up with VR tours which allow users to explore the galleries in 3D and 360 degrees for the users that are already comfortable with VR. It enables them to go where people are. It’s no worry that VR will replace what is real. The more the image is digital to publish online, the great attendance it would gather. People when come to know that something exists, they want to experience it in real, original way. And that real life feeling is something VR isn’t yet able to replicate.

The experience is partial; it’s a glimpse or a hint, like seeing something which makes you want to see more. In VR tours, the sounds of museums get missed, the footsteps and whispers of echoes and conversations. 

How VR will help in Transforming Web Design

You all must be remembering all the fuss that was going about 3D a few years back and how it was promised that all TV’s would gradually be 3D and everyone will have to watch it through polarized goggles. Instead, the 3D movies become the niche and because of this, everyone thinks that VR is some trick or stunt which is not true. Everyone involved in web designing will be affected by VR in some way or other. Beneath is discussed ways in which virtual reality is changing web design:-

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• 1.      Moved to the Browser

Until very recent you need to have a headset and an application to get access to VR content online but now web browsers are working on an open standard which makes VR experience possible in the browser. Their plan is to ship to consumers this year which means that ordinary web visitors have to just click and start interacting with VR content without disturbing downloads and that is going to accelerate huge take-up.   

• 2.      Next phase after Demo

Web VR experiments were regarding proof concept & demos until recently, but now developers have surpassed that stage and are working on real apps which can be useful for real people.  

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• 1.      Possibilities ahead

In order to get a real feel for a place, just put a headset and virtually wander around the whole hotel at your leisure. Or rather than navigating a cluttered layout on the screen of your desktop, move all the content in virtual space. If you can’t make it to the conference, the organizers would offer you a way to participate in it using 360 VR.

• 2.      Content Creation Getting Easy

The huge production of headsets has made it easier for consumers to access the VR content over the web. The growing availability of the libraries of open source has made it easier to create that content. Famous frameworks for developing VR content like PlayCanvas, A-Frame, etc means even amateur ones can use to build VR experiences in very less time.

• 3.      Billions getting Invested in VR

Venture capitalists are investing billions in VR right now, with a consortium called VR venture capital alliance declaring $10 billion value of investment in VR and augmented reality projects. The return on that capital will be out soon. It is forecasted that by 2020, VR/AR market will witness a market worth $162 billion.

Startups will Dominate Augmented Reality and not Virtual Reality

The excitement of Pokémon Go is still on but I think that for investing, virtual reality is not a good area to invest, instead augment reality is. Considering the checkpoints in the value chain, there is a difference between the two.

Each media needs means to work, the medium, the matter, content distribution, discovery of the content and monetization. Each of these has its own theory which depends on the medium. The different theory leads to a separate propensity to be managed by a small group of companies.

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By medium, we mean the way through the content/matter is presented to the user. So, for newspaper, printing press and paper becomes the medium. Similarly, network is the medium for internet. The act of getting to the user is not what is meant here rather than the means. Record labels may have the distribution function but Amazon and iTunes are the medium for distribution.

Radio industry has radio sets as mediums, distribution through radio broadcasts, radio shows as content and branded networks to facilitate sell advertising and content discovery. The cost of economies of scale of content discovery and ad sales would mean that the radio industry got dominated by the networks who were the owner of these things and the creators of the matter were not paid very well. The radio sets were subsidized automatically in order to build the audience targeted to create the economies of scale for the networks and break even business was of radio manufacturing.

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What happened later with television matches with this model and not have been a right place to invest. The networks were created by companies which already had complementary assets and also significantly the cash and political power for them to maintain dominance. As existed earlier, those who win don’t require a financing through venture type and companies that needed financing from outside were inevitably destined to go out of business.

Movie industry has developed differently. Movie studios dominated earlier, at that time and they were primary creators of content. The theaters were the means of distribution and not of studios. This is same as record industry. But because of the disaggregated nature of monetization & distribution, movies and music can be made outside of the studio system and occasionally made money. It is arguable that outside financing is a good bet, but the odds can be worse than VC if one knew what he was doing.

There were not any bottlenecks in the value chains and because of this, internet is different. Opportunities were there in all the sectors. Company startups like Cisco and AOL made money in the same medium along with monetization and content discovery & creation which lead to early concentration at discovery of companies like Google. For the content creators, it has also leaded to quite a tough environment.

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Content creation will dominate Virtual Reality’s value chain similarly like movies and computer gaming. The cost of creating Virtual Reality Content is going to be high so the content development is going to economically dominate distribution and discovery. High cost of content development would mean less popular content discovered through typical marketing and PR; word of mouth.

VR headsets need to be cheap because the reimbursing the content cost will require large audience. They can be subsidized initially but eventually the content developers will need them for high margin and low amount hardware. Scarce and expensive content will bend towards lowest common denominator in order to manage risks through portfolio approach like console computer games. This means that few large companies will dominate virtual reality especially those which enter from adjacent industries.

Augmented Reality is altogether different. Because uses of AR are different and content development will be less expensive due to the fact that it won’t be fully immersive environment so no single part of the value chain will dominate.

Augmented Reality is expected to be more similar to internet and its evolution. Content can be out there and get popular and fade but there won’t be any winner takes all in AR content. Because content is less expensive to make, content tool companies will be required. Because this will further lead to different types of content, hardware makers will do it well. It will be according to worker needs and specified & cheaper content will address more specific problems, so for customers, AR will be more valuable than VR. This will allow both hardware and content makers to have higher margins.

VC investments in virtual reality will end up doing bad as startups will outnumber incumbents. The AR market is wide open, on the contrary.

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http://surevin.com/blog/startups-will-dominate-augmented-reality-not-virtual-reality/

Evolve Your Future With Virtual Reality

Virtual Reality is not just evolving technically but also culturally. This is the point we have reached. Walking the other day I noticed teenagers coming towards me wearing the latest sneakers, sunglasses and having their Samsung gear VR on the top of their heads like a fashion accessory. This might not be the intention to use a VR headset but it made me smile.

As people bring their first headset, I wonder how much of their enthusiasm is because they are experiencing it for the first time. People’s first experiences in VR drive them to dive deeper and stay longer.

 

First Step V/S Long Lasting?

VR technology is new. It will change significantly in the coming years and since it is in its start, many people haven’t even had their first VR experience yet. Thus it’s easy to think of the content as temporary.

Even in this early stage, when VR is reaching wider audience, It’s crucial to offer lasting and meaningful stories whether it’s in 360 degree films or games.

It is important to shift our thinking and focus less on spectacle. The content which is made should not be seen as the byproduct of our own learning process. Like cinema from past 5 decades-so much is still gripping, compelling and emotionally captivating today. To be a part of the long term virtual landscape, we should design VR content accordingly.

 

Beyond The Wow Factor

Offering an engagement which will still be there when the viewer has gotten over the initial excitement is what we mean going beyond the wow factor. Talking only about branded projects specifically, technical innovation is the key motivating factor in advertising campaigns adapting to new technology. But innovation in VR shouldn’t be just a trick for your ad campaign.

Your ad campaign can create VR innovation now that VR is truly buzzing but along with it, it must be able to tell a powerful story or offer rich experience for it to have a shelf life.

 

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Limitations

Doing it in a meaningful way is challenging. Teams often remain busy dealing with finding out basic production methodology to dive deeper in the narrative. It’s true that for cinematic VR, you quickly realize how complex it is to make use of the full 360 degree space because it simply not always possible. With cinematic VR especially, everything feels flat and far away-the beauty and emphasis of it is hard to recreate without depth of field to speak of and no close ups.

VR is still young and it’s worth the risk with the ultimate goal of really surprising the people. So focus not on protecting the viewer too much but instead bring them into the process of letting them see early alpha and beta versions of the work and encouraging them to find and play within their own boundaries or vocabulary.

Who Is The Viewer

What role does the viewer have in virtual reality? Storytelling in any shape is built on general foundation however what is uniquely powerful about virtual stories is that we can give the audiences an active role in them. Having your viewer disembodied in a virtual story represents a missed opportunity; they must feel involved and be given a character to play or a task to perform- a reason for them to come back for more.

 

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Evolve With The Technology

Virtual reality technology is advancing at a lightning speed, in the meantime. The next gen VR is already under way. As it will evolve more, we will see less short spectacular moments and more lasting journeys involving complex & meaningful activity.

The line between pre rendered and dynamic VR is disappearing. And VR makers should be thinking of ways to extend current stories in near future so they can evolve with the technology. True potential of VR experiences is that the story will know you’re there and will react differently to you than to someone else.

Building The Future Of VR, Today

Will you make it differently if you knew your project will be viewed by people in 10 years time? The future is heavily reliant on the content the industry is developing right now. It’s the content which makes an audience return and it needs to be diverse and multi layered. Also it should be able to make a lasting impression on the people with a new headset.

As we embark on the second generation of VR experiences, we should aim at a content which can last longer than the first gen headsets will.

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 http://surevin.com/blog/evolve-your-future-with-virtual-reality/

Hindrances keeping Virtual Reality from being Mainstream

Virtual Reality is something which you need to remember and not like anything that’s come before it.

Comparisons have been made as the moving parts of virtual reality have come together into a churning monster with failed technology trends of the past.

• Too expensive
• Going to be like 3D TV.
• Not good enough
• Not ready for it.

 

Although all these criticisms have tangential reality, it’s becoming harder to make comparisons between virtual reality and “what came before”. The realistic way to show it off is to share the experience and feel with people to get them immersed fully into what it offers. You just can’t know how good it is until you have strapped on a goofy looking pair of goggles. The goggles are looking a lot sleek and the first release of VR has begun landing in homes of the customer. It hasn’t been the smoothest but based on PR snippets and responses to the frustrated ones, the struggles to fulfill orders have been due to major demand. 

 

VR Is Exceeding Expectations, Already

The time has come to start taking the technology more seriously. While skeptics will continue straining for those old contrasts with past failures regarding tech, some of the big names in innovation in the same area (with financial and intellectual resources) continue to remind us that it will be one of the biggest breakouts in decades.

Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s CEO, demonstrates the Oculus Rift headset. In September 2015, facebook bought it for 2 billion for vote of confidence over VR’s future.

How we interact with every piece of current technology, VR holds the potential to change it, from mobile apps to gaming systems to virtual conferencing. Even though there is a huge amount of financial backing to the development and exploration of VR’s capability, it still exists as a niche gamer technology to a lot of public. It will be good to see VR pull away from dependence of gaming industry. More than this, VR as it exists for consumers today will mesmerize as quickly as it reminds everyone of what needs to be changed before it stands in the chance of becoming mainstream.

 

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 Price

As it stands currently, VR is boutique technology. The price point places it in the field of early investors and even amongst those, people with money to afford everything required in a VR setup. Currently available headsets to customers are Oculus Rift and HTC Vive. Further considering the already steep entry cost is a technical hurdle you’ll need to overcome in order to run VR software on your home PC. For a using VR technology that has yet to prove its worth, that’s a big shopping list.

Style

Time for an inevitable fact: a brick which is covered in sleek, black, matte finish will still remain a brick. It hangs off in front of your face and irrespective of how comfortable it manages to be, it’s still a brick hanging off the front of your face. If you want your VR experience to extend beyond your PC, it’s not slouch when it comes to setup either but you are going to need several feet of free real estate in your entertainment space.

 

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Comfort

Happily, early reviews from Oculus and Vive owners have overall spoken for the surprising comfort of each headset. They might attract fingerprint or can still look splashy but apart from a few exceptions, they seem easy secure and not heavy as you may expect. Many users claims to have ‘VR legs” under them after a short time spent with headsets on. A few still complain of the spatial discomfort that comes from spending prolonged amount of time existing in a virtual world.

Second concern is a bit predictable. While Vive and Oculus are adjustable enough to fit any size of the head, those who are burdened with spectacles are sporting all variety of sizes and shapes of lenses. Some say that VR headsets are outright painful to wear while some worry that their glasses are going to scratch the expensive lenses inside of the headset itself.

Accessibility

Let’s consider Virtual Reality on a larger scale. If this technology is meant to take off more than gamers, even if it doesn’t happen for five to ten years- serious efforts is going to be made to entice public perception.

While it isn’t a particularly flattering comparison, it’s an apt one. VR has proven its capability. Now, it needs to prove that it deserves place in the average household, and not just the boutique gaming den.

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http://surevin.com/blog/hindrances-keeping-virtual-reality-from-being-mainstream/

Augmented Reality: Introduction to the Future Technology

Augmented reality is considered the modern type of Virtual Reality. When there is simulation in the physical aspects of real world with the usage of imaginary thoughts using sensory settings such as touch, sound, light and sight creating computer generated 3D settings, it is known as virtual world. Imagine yourself pointing at a product, moving it in every angle at a store using a 3D system on a computer screen. It’s a marvelous experience. It is a latest technology ruling the marketing world and it’s Augmented Reality. It’s not just restricted to a promotional tool as its now creating brand and building customer relationship. For introducing products/services in the market and for creating brand image, companies have started using Augmented Reality as a major tool.

 

Augmented Reality is modernized version of Virtual Reality. There are several benefits of AR applications. Some of them are:

1. The originality of these applications diminish after every use, but at present the responsibility is with brands as they can now take advantage of this technology and create more products easily. It’s getting popular with many companies. With each new creation, there is possibility of additional advancement and exposure.
2. Images and other creative media versions can be uploaded with AR. Companies can come up with their own innovation for their users and one can choose from images or videos as they are x factor.
3. Companies can improve their creation and share them with networks. They can also include attractive content.
4. With augmented reality applications, one can reach great extents with its ability to create professional videos unlike many users which can’t.
5. These applications are highly satisfactory when it comes to high quality content and other aspects. For their usability and product-ability, one needs to try them.

 

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If you think that apps and smart phones are indispensable part of today’s living, helps us to keep things more organized, fun and enjoyable, wait until you come across augmented reality. The technology is nothing new having being used for military and commercial purposes as its just exposing data generated by software and apps over reality. The same technology has gained further prominence with Google’s Project Glass.

 

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Its Uses for Today’s Generation

Some of the businesses use it for variety of purposes with the aid of experts in 3D animation. They have really taken advantage on and made work easier and a lot clearer for their staff to understand and absorb.

It can also be used to provide useful information in real time from seeing individual part labeled accordingly holding the Smartphone under a car’s hood to walking into a new neighborhood and discovering ways to access information regarding nearest medical store or restaurant with the help of few taps on your phone.

 

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Retailers have started to integrate augmented reality with digital marketing efforts. Consumers can also experience enhanced shopping. Visualize being able to see how a particular accessory looks while wearing it without actually getting hold of it. Even you can think about getting a new couch for your living room and see where it is complementing your living room’s design or not.

Augmented reality seem like the stuff you read in sci-fi novel or watch in movies but the truth is that with new mobile app developers and businesses, the technology is here. And as it moves forward, its applications continue to expand.

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Why Virtual Reality Is Lot More Important Than You Think

Virtual Reality is best described through the moments or of the things you experience with the headset on or rather the memories. What makes VR a wildly different experience from playing a video game or watching a movie is that we become an active participant in an environment completely different from reality.

Unlike most of the forms of media, virtual reality blocks out rest of the world and takes our senses for a ride and encourages us to suspend our disbelief and immerse ourselves wholly into its own world.

From outside, bystanders see someone wearing a headset, waving hands around, wearing a smile or serious expressions on their face but the person wearing the headset is completely drawn into whole other world where they can actually interact with their environment in a way which isn’t possible in any other medium.

It’s okay to be skeptical about VR if you haven’t tried it. Words don’t do justice, the best way to understand VR is to experience it. Other way to understand it is probably to understand what it isn’t.

 

What Virtual Reality is Not

Before anyone has tried VR, they form an inaccurate opinion about what it’d be like. And after comparing the experience with others, they realize that it’s a mistake lot of people make. So before going into the implications of VR, let’s clear few things:-

Virtual Reality is not a Fad – VR is not like “having a small TV attached to your face” or “the next step after 3D movies”. And it’s not “only for gamers”. Virtual Reality is an emerging breed of technology that is going to take some time fully to take root like the automobile or even the personal computer.

We can always rely to technology growing at an exponential rate but how well we adopt it, however, depends on many other factors. But unlike smartwatch and other related new devices, there’s more buy-in around VR –from Google’s Cardboard, Facebook’s Oculus, HTC’s Vive, Valve’s steam, Sony’s Playstation VR. We can expect the adoption to be faster and smoother than it was for other emerging technology. And it’s a good thing because VR isn’t an incremental step in terms of innovation. It’s a huge leap forward.

 

Virtual Reality is not as same as Augmented Reality – You have probably experienced augmented reality before especially if you have used Snap chat’s video filters to vomit rainbows or swap faces with a friend.

As the name suggests, Augmented Reality, augments reality by applying or forming a layer over your view of real world. AR enhances your perception and doesn’t try to replace it entirely.

Virtual Reality on the other hand removes you from the reality and that’s what affords it a level of immersion we’ve never been able to achieve before. And while it’s possible to merge the two, so that parts of what you see are drawn from the real world and parts of it are virtual. What makes it drastically different from anything else that you have tried is the full immersion you get with “true VR”.

 

Google’s Cardboard and the HTC VIVE are Virtual Worlds Apart – There are two very different VR experiences you can try right now. One is accessible and affordable, consisting largely of 360 degree videos. It can be encountered on YouTube and Facebook. Slot your Smartphone into VR headset or Google Cardboard Samsung Gear VR, fire up a compatible VR app and put it on. Smartphone’s accelerometer enables your point of view to correspond with the movement of the headset.

Considering its low price, Google’s Cardboard headset isn’t a bad way to get a small taste of VR in its most basic form but it doesn’t compare to the experience of true VR. While 360 degree video is a step in a different direction, it would be a mistake to assume that you’ve really experienced VR if that’s the only thing you’ve tried.

Virtual Reality has finally become a Reality

If you haven’t tried VR yet, it’s strongly recommended that you do if you ever get the chance. Because one thing that will surprise you is how good Virtual Reality is right now and how easy it is to lose yourself in the experience.

When you consider the inevitable improvements that are to come for this technology and the still growing library of content for VR, it’s safe to say that- after decades of attempts- virtual reality is no longer something which is only found between pages of a science fiction novel.

Virtual Reality is now a reality.

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http://surevin.com/blog/why-virtual-reality-is-lot-more-important-than-you-think/