Learnings from the VR conference in Berlin

Thursday. February 01, 2018 - 1 min

On 27. November 2017 I was in Berlin at it’s first VR conference. About hundred people attended and several companies presented their use cases. Here my notes from the day:

Usages for VR (presented projects)

• Collaborative learning in schools
• Houses sell better when they are can be visited ahead in VR and fully furnished
• Training for important hand movements in a work setting
• Recovery for stroke patients
• VR meeting room

Usages for AR (presented projects)

• Guided repair and remote support through the HoloLens by an engineer helping a mechanic in the field
• Scanning barcodes and guided navigation to package in a warehouse
• A marketing campaign by turning a TV spot into a 3D HoloLens experience

Rules for creating AR/VR experiences

• In social VR, just like in any other online space, it should be taken care of that nobody gets harassed, bullied and that social norms are beeing kept.
• Keeping the usual social distance to other persons in VR is important. Getting too close or running through each other is in VR as uncomfortable as in real life. Also the problem how to bring the now static avatars to life has to be solved.
• in a school setting only a part of students should be in VR so the teacher still can interact with the students
• Consider, that for many people it’s their first XR experience. Plan for guidance or a the assistance of an experienced partner in VR.

Starting in VR as a business

• There are loads of things that need to be digitalized in 3D
• Speech recognition will be important in VR
• Architecture in VR is huge
• AR/VR projects are complex so better start now because the market will grow fast. Specialize on certain parts.