XR is much more than an entertainment tool
XR has been sweeping through popular culture for a couple of years now, from 3D video experiences and VR arcades or at home VR video games to AR being on everyone’s Instagram, XR is a field of technology that is widely used and here to stay. Contrary to what most of us can see, though, XR isn’t just a tool for experiencing entertainment in a different way. XR has an incredible amount of real-world application, some of which we have written about in-depth on our blog.
XR for business
XR is effective for wherever visualization plays an important role. In the business process, selling, advertising, and marketing all stand to be improved using XR.
In sales, being able to visualize a product while changing its variables is invaluable to the customer experience before the purchase of a product. This is why a company like Ikea created their AR app, Ikea Place, where you can see how any piece of Ikea furniture will look in your own home. A similar idea can be used with car trims, for example. When buying a new car, being able to customize and witness different trim options on the physical model you are looking at is conducive to a better buying experience as it reduces friction in the sales process when the customer can visualize their product how/where they want it.
XR experiences also present an opportunity to create content that allows you to market and advertise your products or business in a new and impressive way. Using XR, the public can easily experience a taste of your product/business and become potential clients. Instead of simply looking at stunning photographs of a building, for example, a user can walk in and around the building in VR, or examine it as if it were a hologram on their desk in AR. This level of presentation allows a user to gain a realistic perspective and understanding of the true scale of what it is that you are marketing/advertising.
To read more on how AR specifically can revolutionize your sales and marketing process, click here!
XR as an engineering tool
Being able to visualize and validate a design with confidence is an asset to the engineering design process as proper validation helps reduce costs and time spent on a project. Utilizing the most fitting stream of XR for a project, engineers can validate measurements, see how their designs work in real space, conduct ergonomic studies, review their work, or run simulated design analysis trials on their design. Typically, many of these steps are unavailable until the prototyping stage, which can be extremely expensive. Instead of having to re-make and re-prototype numerous times after finding faults in a design, engineers can do so in XR and save money on materials and time spent designing. This shortens the design process and makes sure the design is done right, the first time, before it needs to be built.
XR as a medical industry aid
Impacting health care in a positive way is easily done with XR. The training and educating of medical professionals, inside and outside of school, can be rendered more effective as XR allows a more hands-on approach. This means better doctors right out of medical school who are able to retrain on new techniques easily throughout their careers. XR simply helps doctors and surgeons maximize their potential and assist the public better. Surgeons can also utilize VR to prepare for their operations, immersing themselves in an environment with realistic 3D renderings of the body parts they need to work with, guiding themselves through the procedures. This is especially useful for uncommon surgeries, or surgeries which have certain restraints (e.g. patient has a sensitive area that can’t be irritated during a procedure). Here is a video from Intel about one way VR is benefitting the medical community!
XR doesn’t just training health care practitioners but can also be used as a treatment method for mental health issues. XR can be used in addition to or in place of ongoing treatment. Depending on the issue and the patient, XR can be used, for example, as a form of exposure therapy for those who suffer from anxiety or PTSD. Through XR, issues like depression can be helped by placing a user in a calming environment where they can reflect or chat with a therapist (an app CADmech actually created called MentallyVR).
For more clinical mental issues, XR can also act as a form of treatment that helps delay the onset of symptoms. CADmech is in the process of creating a VR application for dementia patients, forcing the user to tackle certain tasks such as cooking, which help the patient workout their mind and body.
If you would like to learn more about VR and mental health, as well as MentallyVR and our dementia app, you can read more here!
XR for training
From XR, the training process can save time, money and greatly enhance the performance of employees. With XR, life-like replications of an environment can be created so training becomes as realistic as possible. In a VR simulation, the user cannot avert their attention from the training task easily, meaning slacking off by looking at their phone is not possible, since in VR their phone does not exist. Training session analytics, available upon completion of a simulation, assures an employer that their trainee participated in training properly by going through all instructed actions. These analytics can include results to in-training tests which the user may be required to do, or heat maps which track what the user was looking at or interacting with most during training. This process not only ensures stronger employees and confident employers but saves time and money on training. Since any physical space or piece of equipment can be replicated in VR, machinery or physical space does not need to be taken up and put out of production in order to be used for training, nor does a replica need to be re-created. XR simply makes training far more efficient and cost-effective.
Read more about how VR can be used to train employees better over here!
Have a look below at one of CADmech’s VR training demos!
XR for teaching
XR is not useful just for job training, but also for formal education. XR can be used to convey and present different types of information, abstract or not, to students of all ages. XR in the classroom helps students visualize subject matter while keeping them entertained and hooked on the material, which leads to better information retention. Imagine the difference between reading a biology textbook about the human body, and being able to actually see all the parts of the body before your eyes in a 3D environment and how it actively works. This type of learning helps all students stay more interested in a subject, regardless of their subject preferences. This form of teaching is not applicable to just grade or secondary school students, but to higher academia as well. Have a look at these two videos below, from AMD, to see how VR can be used in the classroom for not only subjects like biology or history, but even mathematics!
XR for on-site use
On-site capabilities of XR are far and wide, meaning it’s impossible to pin down simply a few industries where it would be useful on-site. In general, though, roles in industries such as transport or machine maintenance, construction, HVAC, or similar areas can stand to benefit from this technology.
IoT data integration can make AR/MR useful for mechanics or HVAC maintenance workers. Being able to overlay schematics and maintenance plans over a view of the real repair piece and see data such as flow and pressure in certain pipe, or life of oil in an engine takes a lot of guess work out of maintenance. This, in turn, extends the life of pipes, machinery, and vehicles, making them safer.
Construction foremen can use AR/MR in the field and in meetings to improve communication between staff, so everyone understands the intricacies of a project. In the field, digital overlays can be used to see progress on different parts of the project, and check important factors such as the installation of safety-related building equipment such as sprinklers, fire alarms, etc.
AR/MR can also serve as a quick reference for maintenance workers when they are unsure how a piece of machinery is put together and repaired. We can model any piece of machinery to be put in AR/MR so that a user can see how it is put together, see the steps of taking it apart, including what size of tools to use to repair the design in question. This form of reference is a lot easier to access/understand and more cost-effective to create than an entire service manual. Below is one of CADmech’s creations where we can see a pump and how it works in AR!
XR for research
With XR, any type of research that requires physical spaces, materials, and a user, can be re-created so that funds can be saved from having to plan and build a physical space. XR gives us the opportunity to better understand human interaction with the things we create.
Market consumer trials for something like a supermarket are very expensive to create and run. A company must buy a physical space, set up shelves and buy products in order to see how an average consumer might react to different layouts. All of this, however, can be done in VR. Through the immersion of VR and advent of eye tracking and analytics, this experience can be completely replicated in VR, saving money on physical space and materials. A fake supermarket complete with shelves and products does not have to be purchased in order to conduct this sort of market research. Similar methods of research can be put into multiple different context as well, such as trying to understand how consumers might feel about a new design of a commercial plane, new building, or even a UX design for a website. Have a look at the video below to see how research for a supermarket might happen!
Many psychology/neuroscience academic and other business-related studies also require specific physical spaces and materials to measure human interaction with them. Oftentimes for academic neuroscience or psychological trials, having a test subject go through a real life experience might not be possible and unethical due to the possibility of harm imposed on the subject. However, XR technology might bridge the gap and allow such trials to take place in VR in a safe environment, possibly helping researchers learn more about the human mind.
Conclusion
Overall, XR, or VR and AR, is not just a tool where the end is entertainment. Through the use of VR and AR in many professional settings, money and time can be saved on a plethora of processes while bringing the element of entertainment and immersion, via XR, into said process. This does not only provide a user with a helpful tool to get what they need to do done quicker and more effectively, but it also immerses the user and brings them to a point of mental stimulation where less distractions and interruptions can occur. XR drastically contributes to a heightened state of efficiency, economical output and productivity in numerous industries all using the technology in a different way.
Do you have a project that can benefit from VR or AR? If so, contact our Lead VR/AR Developer, Victor Truong, at victor@cadmech.com for more information and a consultation!
