Member Precision OS brings virtual reality to surgical residents

VANCOUVER, British Columbia--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Vancouver-based Precision OS (CEO Dr. Danny Goel will be speaking at the VR/AR Enterprise Summit in Boston) has partnered with 10 North American universities and medical institutions to bring their high-fidelity virtual reality orthopedic surgery training platform into the surgical classroom.

“VR training is the way of the future. It will enhance patient care by having a more skilled and well-prepared surgeon. The software and training unit of Precision OS is brilliantly put together and is a major advance for our residency and fellowship training program!”

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Precision OS envisions a future where surgeon trainees (residents) everywhere can receive the highest quality orthopedic training with real-time feedback, augmenting the cadaveric experience. To get there, they’re using the power of virtual reality technology.

Virtual reality offers unparalleled surgical immersion unimpeded by real-world circumstances and without the risk of harming patients. The Precision OS platform simulates operating room experiences, from the virtual tools used to the patient anatomy. This is reinforced with user-specific metric feedback collectively to empower surgeon trainees to reach peak performance through repeated practice and personalized learning.

"Virtual reality has the potential to positively impact and advance the way surgery residents are trained by offering more frequent and in-depth operating room experience. We are looking forward to exploring this technology and introducing the Precision OS platform to our residents and fellows." Dr Joaquin Sanchez-Sotelo, Professor in the Department of Orthopedic Surgery at the Mayo Clinic

Unique to the Precision OS system is the breadth and depth of their training modules. Residents can practice a procedure under a variety of changing conditions, to ensure they are prepared with the skills needed to navigate potential complications in real surgery. Conditions such as arthritis and age can change the standard of procedure for surgeries involving implants. While it is not a guarantee that a resident will be exposed to such surgical experiences in a traditional training program, with VR it is.

The Precision OS VR platform offers surgeon trainees the opportunity to gain more operating room experience than they typically would in a traditional medical residency. From minor complications to critical mistakes, residents can experience surgery up close simply by putting on a headset.

Several hundred surgeon trainees at 10 medical institutions in the United States and Canada will now get to experience this technology first hand in their residency programs. Precision OS will be used for orthopedic surgery training at:

• The Mayo Clinic

• The University of British Columbia

• The Sunnybrook Hospital at the University of Toronto

• The Pan Am Clinic Foundation

• Western University

• McGill University

• Dalhousie University

• The Boston Shoulder Institute

• The University of Mississippi Medical Center.

The Precision OS team are also collaborating with Dr. John Costouros, MD FACS, an orthopedic surgeon and Assistant Professor at Stanford University, to trial virtual reality in training soon-to-be graduating surgeons.

This will be the first time that this quality of high-fidelity and immersive VR technology will be used for such intensive surgical training.

“The next generation of surgeons will have to learn advanced skills and decision-making with limited time for their training. Virtual reality offers an impactful way to create value by improving surgical skill and reducing errors. Precision OS will deliver value to all stakeholders in healthcare: educators, industry, hospitals, insurers, and patients. The timing of such a technology could not be more perfect!” Dr. Jon J.P. Warner, Founder of the Boston Shoulder Institute, New England Shoulder and Elbow Society, The Codman Shoulder Society, and a past president of American Shoulder and Elbow Surgeons

Precision OS offers an enhanced learning environment for orthopedic trainees by increasing access to surgical practice. By way of a headset and handheld sensors, residents can step into the operating theatre any time from anywhere. This increases practice volume and improves surgical skill outcomes in case-based scenarios.

“VR training is the way of the future. It will enhance patient care by having a more skilled and well-prepared surgeon. The software and training unit of Precision OS is brilliantly put together and is a major advance for our residency and fellowship training program!” Dr. Peter MacDonald, Professor and Head Section of Orthopaedics at the University of Manitoba

And each time a resident begins a Precision OS training module they are immersed in a life-like surgical experience. The virtual patient is responsive to successes and errors in a procedure, thereby allowing trainees to learn from their mistakes. This simulated environment is a critical difference between VR and traditional surgical training, as mistakes are not permitted in real surgery to prevent causing harm to patients. But it is precisely this opportunity for error that demands heightened attention and focus from trainees and creates a more active, effective, and impactful surgical learning experience. This is what makes Precision OS unique.

During and following a procedure, residents are provided with detailed performance metrics so they can assess their surgical skills in real-time and identify areas of improvement. This immediate feedback facilitates tangible performance improvements and increases surgical precision quickly.

“Our core agenda has always been to combine surgical education and cognitive skill in a portable, efficient, and immersive learning experience.” Dr. Danny Goel, CEO and Co-Founder of Precision OS, and an orthopedic surgeon at the University of British Columbia

Precision OS is leading the way for innovation in orthopedic surgical training and the international medical community is taking note. Last year, Precision OS secured $2.3M in funding led by AO Invest, the venture capital arm of Swiss orthopedic education and research organization, the AO Foundation.

The company has also been nominated for the Technology Impact Awards and was a semi-finalist at the Orthopedic Research Society.

“This is only the beginning of what may be a complete disruption of how we learn and train surgeons. To be at the cutting edge of introducing this technology, with a focus on demonstrating its value, is a social responsibility for us at Precision OS. Virtual reality is an exciting and innovative area of technology that can influence surgeons and their patients around the world.” Dr. Goel

Precision OS is a software company developing the most high-fidelity virtual reality platform for surgeons to practice specific procedures. Their focus on the critical elements of surgery haptics and metric feedback provides for an unparalleled educational experience. In addition, their pre-operative planning tool eliminates the trial and error associated with fracture care through an immersive interaction with the patients’ images. This, combined with their carefully selected team, provides the domain expertise one would expect to change the delivery of Orthopedic care globally. For more information, please visit https://precisionostech.com/.

22% of U.S. Adults Use Mobile AR (new report)

ARtillery Intelligence’s latest report, AR Usage & Consumer Attitudes examines original consumer AR survey data. Subscribe for the full report. VRARA members get a discount.

How do consumers feel about mobile AR? Who’s using it? How often? And what do they want to see next? More importantly, what are non-users’ reasons for disinterest? And how can app developers and anyone else building mobile AR apps optimize product strategies accordingly?

These are the questions we set out to answer. Working closely with Thrive Analytics, ARtillery Intelligence wrote questions to be presented to more than 3000 U.S. adults in Thrive’s established survey engine. The results are in and analyzed in the latest ARtillery Intelligence report.

This follows the last few months’ ARtillery Intelligence Briefings, which examined social and commerce-based AR. Now, a deeper view into real consumer usage and attitudes validates those narratives while providing new dimension on mobile AR strategies and opportunity spotting.

AR Approaches Adolescence

As for the findings, mobile AR usage is up to 22 percent of the U.S. population. These users are mostly experiencing mobile AR through apps, such as those built on ARkit and ARCore. But we see trending towards lower-friction experiences such as “AR-as-a-feature” and web AR.

These formats have advantages of less friction. Web AR can have easier session launches and compatibility given that it takes place in the mobile browser. AR as a feature meanwhile takes place within already-popular apps. Pokemon Go and Social Lenses are examples of the latter.

Users also appear active and engaged across the board, with more than half reporting they use mobile AR at least weekly. The top app category is gaming, which we attribute to Pokémon Go’s popularity. But other key categories, such as Social AR and visual search, are on the rise.

That includes commerce-related AR like product visualization. And utilities like visual search could represent AR’s first truly mainstream killer app and “all-day” use case. We’re at the stage in AR’s lifespan when utilities will start to emerge to challenge gaming & social use cases.

Double-Edged Sword

Mobile AR users also indicated high levels of satisfaction with the experience. But beyond these and a few other positive signals, there are some negative signs. For example, non-mobile AR users report low likelihood of adopting soon, and an explicit lack of interest.

This disparity between current-user satisfaction and non-user disinterest continues to underscore a key challenge for AR: you have to “see it to believe it.” In order to reach high satisfaction levels, apps have to first be tried. This presents marketing challenges to push that “first taste.”

Put another way, AR’s highly visual and immersive format is a double-edged sword. It can create strong affinities and high engagement levels. But the visceral nature of its experience can’t be communicated to prospective users with traditional marketing such as ad copy or even video.

The same challenge was uncovered in our corresponding VR report last July (we’ll publish the second wave in Q3). This makes it a common challenge with immersive media like AR and VR. It will take time and acclimation before they reach a more meaningful share of the consumer public.

Meanwhile, there are strategies to accelerate that process and to build AR apps that align with consumers’ current standards. We go deep on those strategies in the latest report.

Subscribe for the full report. VRARA members get a discount.

The VR/AR Association publishes the AR Cloud White Paper

Members: download it from our Members GDrive or email info@thevrara.com

Introduction

The world is moving towards a fundamental shift where our physical reality will soon blend with a virtual one. This idea opens up an entirely new frontier in which our experiences and our realities will be extended in ways we could have never imagined. In this near future, the possibilities for AR are endless.

Brands can attract and engage customers with more immersive and interactive experiences not bounded by physical constraints. Employees can learn how to operate equipments more effectively in complex assembly lines, reducing cost and risks for businesses. Students can visualize complicated diagrams in 3D, improving academic performance. Consumer products, instruction manuals and textbooks are just a small fraction of static objects that can be brought to life.

For mass adoption of AR to occur, content must persist in the real world across space, time and devices. The 3D virtual art will “live” in that space as if it’s really there and will not disappear between different app sessions. Multi-user, occlusion are two additional functions that are key to augmented reality adoption. To enable these abilities and a streamlined experience, the “AR Cloud” is needed.

Authors:
Alex Chuang, Shape Immersive
Amy LaMeyer, EnteringVR
Colin Steinmann, Bent Image Lab / youAR
Gabriel Rene, VERSES
Mikko Karvonen, Immersal
Sam Beder, Ubiquity6
Steven Swanson, VERSES
Contributors:
Matt Miesnieks, 6d.ai
Kris Kolo, VRARA

Table of Contents
1.1 Definition(s) of AR Cloud
1.2 Tech Giants Are Investing in AR
1.3 Building the AR Cloud
2. Use Cases
2.1 Gaming: Niantic
2.2 Indoor Navigation: Immersal
2.3 Productivity: YOUAR
2.4 Social and Gameplay: Ubiquity6
2.5 Events: Geogram
2.6 Location and Tracking: Fantasmo
2.7 AR real estate: SuperWorld
3. Conclusion

The VR/AR Association Welcomes Gabriel René of VERSES to Global Advisory Board

New York, April 16th, 2019, - The VR/AR Association (VRARA) is adding industry leader, Gabriel René to its Global Advisory Board which includes industry veterans like Cathy Hackl from Magic Leap.

Mr. René, is the Executive Director of VERSES Foundation, a non-profit developing the open protocols and interoperability standards to power the Spatial Web which connects Augmented, Virtual and Mixed Reality, Artificial Intelligence, IoT, Blockchain and other Web 3.0 technologies together. Mr. René will provide the Association cross-functional technology insight and counsel with respect to the role Virtual and Augmented Reality will play in matters of privacy, security and interoperability across the Industry 4.0 ecosystem as the VRARA continues its global expansion.

“As the VRARA continues to grow, we welcome Mr. René, and appreciate his leadership in helping move our industry forward, we also look forward to his keynote at our Global Summit in Vancouver Canada in November 1st-2nd.” said Kris Kolo, Global Executive Director, VRARA.

VRARA is the global industry association for VR and AR, connecting leading solution providers with brands and customers with over 4200 companies, brands, schools and 25,000 professionals registered, over 50 Chapters, and 20 industry committees. VRARA programs and initiatives are designed to accelerate growth, knowledge, and connections.

Gabriel René is a technologist, entrepreneur, researcher and media producer with a 25-year career spanning the high-technology, telecommunications, and media industries. Mr. René serves as Executive Director of the VERSES Foundation, he serves as the Chair for the VRARA’s AR Cloud Committee and will be keynoting at the VR/AR Global Summit.

For more information about VERSES please visit www.verses.io

About VERSES Foundation

VERSES Foundation is a non-profit organization developing open source standards and protocols for the interoperability of Virtual and Augmented Reality, IoT, Artificial Intelligence and Distributed Ledger technologies across every major industry. For more information about the VRARA please visit www.thevrara.com

About The VR/AR Association

The VR/AR Association (The VRARA) is an international organization designed to foster collaboration between innovative companies and people in the virtual reality and augmented reality ecosystem that accelerates growth, fosters research and education, helps develop industry standards, connects member organizations and promotes the services of member companies.

MEDIA CONTACTS:
Kris Kolo , Global Executive Director                                               
kris@thevrara.com

Bay Area: Join us May 8th for an Evening with Niantic

Niantic is a product and revenue leader in AR. And it's not stopping there. With recent technology acquisitions, continued success of Pokemon Go, and the upcoming launch of Harry Potter, Wizards Unite, there's a lot going on.

The company is also in the process of an ambitious AR platform play. The Real World Platform will carry Niantic's valuable learnings, AR interactions, game mechanics and scaling capability. It will package up these assets in a platform that developers can use to build their own geo-spatial AR apps and experiences.

How will Niantic continue to build a business that defines mobile AR? Where is it headed next? How is it fulfilling its mission-driven goals to get more people outside? And what's its vision for our AR future? We'll dive into these and other questions on May 8th with Niantic AR lead Ross Finman in a fireside chat. 

Our research partner ARtillery Intelligence will kick things off with a presentation to set the stage with the data, insights and trends it's tracking. Altogether it will be a valuable evening of knowledge & networking. 

Register here. VRARA members get in free.

Event details

• Doors open at 6:00p and the program starts at 6:30. The event will conclude at 8pm

• The event is free for VRARA members. Please note: VRARA Membership is an annual, dues-paying membership to a professional association. Belonging to our Facebook Group or following the VRARA on Twitter does not qualify you as a member. To join the VRARA, see here: join the VRARA

• USF Students and faculty also get in free and can register through their separate system (link forthcoming).

• All attendees receive an ARtillery Intelligence report ($499 value)

• We're also looking for sponsors. Please contact us if you're interested!

All other details including registration and speakers can be seen here.

Is Holographic Display the Future of Display Technology?

Holographic display is a method of displaying visual content that is only now making early steps into the market. It is based on a totally different physical principal to what you usually find in the world today. When you look at a normal display you are basically looking at a big array of pixels, where each pixel gives some colour depending on a filter that is put in front of it.

You see an image but that is not really how we see the real world. When you look at the world around you, you are not seeing a 2-D pixel array of colours, you are seeing light reflecting off surfaces and that light adding up in complex ways to give interference patterns that your eye then interprets as an image.

So say you want to create the perfect display system. You would need to mimic the physical process that natures uses in order to relay visual information to you. However, rather than relying on actually reflecting light off things, we can compute the light patterns that are reflected from objects, and represent them on a display device. We have to compute the entire wave-front reflected from a given object so that it encodes all the visual information, including all the object’s depth information.  This complex pattern is known as the hologram. We reflect light off the hologram to your eye and you see a 3D holographic image.

This contrasts with what is widely described in the ARVR industry as hologram - they often use it to mean any virtual object placed in a scene. When we say hologram, we mean in the full academic sense of the word - creating a full 3-D object using only the interference properties of light.

VividQ started off in 2017 with a very rough prototype. We managed to get some initial investment and for the last two years we have been building that into product. It turns out it is very difficult to sell just algorithms to people so we have actually had to make the entire software pipeline ourselves - everything from how you capture your 3-D data from 3-D sources like game engines and 3-D cameras, through to how you output that onto a display device that can support holographic display.

Now, an optical engineer or any researcher can take our entire software package, drop it into their system and have an end-to-end solution that allows them to connect their source data with the display and create genuine 3-D images.

The technology behind the software

There are several key components that are required for holographic display. You cannot just use a normal display like what you would find on an iPad or TV. The way we generate the hologram is by reflecting light off a display that is showing a particular pattern of phase.

This phase pattern is what we call a hologram - we reflect light off that and then the wave-front of the light is modulated by that pattern which appears as an object when you look at the display. Because of that we need a type of display known as a spatial light modulator. This enables you to create that phase mask and to update it as fast as you like so you can have a moving image.

Our software is currently built on top of an Nvidia stack so we rely heavily on GPUs. In fact our underlying code is written in very low level CUDA C – NVidia’s GPU language - and then on top of that it has a C++ layer and then a C API so that the developers can easily connect and code against it to hook up their SLM or into their content.

In terms of the other technologies we support, as I said we talked to Unity, Skyrim, and we are adding support for Unreal right now. We are compatible with a host of 3-D cameras like  Stereolab Zed cameras, the PMD Picoflexxf and a few others. We have mostly got content covered, and it should be relatively easy for engineers to implement.

What types of people or industries should use this software?

Anyone designing holographic display for basically any purpose should use this software. We have identified augmented or mixed reality as the first potential target. In our view, for MR specifically to achieve real consumer use, you need to overcome several of the display issues that it currently has.

A massive topic of the conference this week has been on something called the accommodation vergence conflict. This is the effect you get in current generation displays when your eyes are forced to converge on a certain object, but because the information your brain presents to your eyes is fundamentally two dimensional, your depth of focus is not where you are  converging your eyes.

Imagine you are always focusing here, but your eyes are being told the object is over there. This is a very confusing sensation and has caused a lot of the nausea, headaches and dislocation from reality people experience when using MR or VR. Holographic technology naturally fixes this because you are presenting the eye with a genuine 3-D image, and so you do not run into the same problems.

VividQ will transform display technology

I think that holographic display will be the dominant display technology of the next decade. VividQ will be the underlying software powering all of that. It will be in the same way that companies like ARM are basically the supplier to everybody running mobile phone chips and so forth.

You will find our software embedded in all your devices that has a holographic display. Holographic display will be the thing everyone uses, because once you have full 3-D, where you don’t need to wear glasses or any of that stuff - why would you ever have a 2-D screen again?

Visit our website here www.vivid-q.com

Source

Healthcare VR and Regulatory Challenges

Join our VRARA Healthcare Committee here

Virtual reality used to be associated solely with entertainment (mainly games) and the provision of virtual walk-throughs and immersive environments for product designers, architects, archaeologists and the like. Furthermore, apart from the need to accommodate the psychological and visual disorientation and other side effects such an immersive 3D environment has the potential to provoke, the legal, contractual and intellectual property ramifications of the technology were little different from those thrown up any other product combining hardware, software and audio-visual content.

Now, however, the VR/AR sector is colliding with the healthcare sector (which has historically been very different in terms of technology, culture and regulatory framework) as it is beginning to develop and roll out new alternatives in terms of diagnosis and treatment. These new solutions are attractive and potentially game-changing not just because of their novelty but because, insofar as they offer alternatives to filling patients with drugs or putting them under the knife, they could, if fully-realised and properly implemented, be lower risk, more cost-effective and less time-consuming for patient, healthcare professional and primary carer alike. All this presses the right buttons with a cash-strapped NHS.

Examples of particular note include:

• Training doctors and nurses in a virtual environment and recording their performance for subsequent analysis.

• Allowing medical students to experience operations for learning purposes in a far more immediate and immersive way than if they were just looking over the surgeon’s shoulder.

• Using 3D virtual mapping of organs for pre-op diagnosis as an alternative to opening the patient up to take a look.

• Treating autism and phobias by means of exposure to a bespoke virtual or augmented environment.

• Diagnosing and treating Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s and other neurodegenerative diseases.

• Using games technology to improve cognitive abilities, hand-eye coordination and physical dexterity as part of rehabilitation after, say, a stroke or surgery.

• Using VR to train athletes and treat sports injuries.

The list goes on and is always growing.

However, all this innovation presents a challenge. The increased use of AI in the medical field gives rise to dilemmas in the form of, for example, who bears the risk in the event of a catastrophic misdiagnosis or a surgical robot going haywire and shredding the patient, and how the risk of those things happening should be allocated between manufacturer and user. The regulatory framework and insurance industry will need overhauling to accommodate these challenges and NHS policy makers are already on it. The advent of VR/AR on the healthcare scene presents similar problems.

For example:

• VR/AR methods of training, diagnosis and treatment could entail the creation, storage and manipulation of the subject’s image (or images of part of that individual’s body). What waivers will the subject need to provide and who will have the rights to that image?

• Inevitably patient data will be stored and created. Will it be stored securely? Who will have access to it? Has the patient given the requisite informed consent to such storage and creation?

• Who will be liable if the virtual assistance tool malfunctions and ends up being a hindrance rather than a help to surgery or if, due to an inherent defect or misuse, the therapeutic VR environment makes the schizophrenic patient worse, not better?

In these circumstances the regulations may not need reinventing as much as they do to accommodate the new AI applications already mentioned but the risks listed above will certainly need mitigating through the adoption of technical safeguards built into hardware and software, strict operating procedures and well-drafted contracts and consent forms to be signed by manufacturers, users and patients – an intriguing challenge for a technology everybody once thought was only good for playing games on.

Visit our website here

Regards,

Simon Portman sportman@marks-clerk.com

Join our VRARA Healthcare Committee here

ZDNet interviews the VR/AR Association: What it's doing and why it matters

VRARA Enterprise Summit: More Speakers from Siemens, DiSTI, Zimmer Biomet, Precision OS. We'll demonstrate VR/AR in Aerospace, Defense, Energy, Healthcare

More info and tickets here

Come see experts from the Aerospace and Defense, Energy, and Healthcare verticals demonstrate the latest industrial VR/AR applications!

Rick Smith, Live & Digital Surgeon Learning Manager, Zimmer Biomet

Zimmer Biomet is a publicly traded medical device company. It was founded in 1927. The firm is headquartered in Indiana, where it is part of the medical devices business cluster. Zimmer designs, develops, manufactures & markets orthopaedics products.

John Cunningham, Chief Revenue Officer for the DiSTI Corporation

John is the Chief Revenue Officer for the DiSTI Corporation, a leading virtual training software and solutions provider where he is responsible for global sales, marketing and product management. Since joining DISTI in 2017, he has been focusing on helping Manufacturing and Defense organizations incorporate Virtual and Augmented Reality technologies into their business practices. John is located in Orlando Florida which is considered to be the Modelling and Simulation Center of the United States.

Kevin Carpenter, Director - Global Operations Training Network , Siemens Energy, Inc.

Kevin will discuss how Siemens Power and Gas is incorporating VR/AR technology into technician training and field services.

Danny Goel, Orthopaedic Surgeon and CEO/ Co-Founder at Precision OS, Clinical Associate Professor, University of British Columbia

Danny is the CEO and Co-Founder of Precision OS Technology, a VR/AR software company in Vancouver, BC. He is also an Orthopedic Surgeon with an interest in resident and surgeon education. Danny is an examiner for the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons a member of the UBC Residency Training Committee, Codman Society, American and Canadian Shoulder Elbow Society. His research interests include health care economics, patient access to timely care, ocular perception during surgery and training with VR applications. He is also a manuscript reviewer of several leading Orthopedic Journals Danny and his co-founders have created an immersive, and comprehensive approach to VR orthopedic surgery. Precision OS technology was a semi-finalist at the Orthopedic Research Society, identified as a Ready to Rocket company and nominated by the Technology Impact Awards for Excellence in Technology Innovation.

More info and tickets here

How Virtual Reality Improves Customer Shopping Experience at Supermarkets

Through VR/AR, brands want to reach consumers and assist them on the product’s shelf. This way, users will know more about the practicalities of the products or how to use the product. VR enriches the experience by the entertaining user that cut through the confusion of traditional shelf-edge advertising. Watch the video to learn more!

And visit our website here

How Virtual Reality Improves Customer Shopping Experience at Supermarkets

The landscape of the industry continues to change after the advent of Virtual Reality in online shopping. The involvement of such advance technology transformed the tedious online shopping pattern. This forced the retailers or vendors to rethink how to manage or transform their most valuable physical asset.

Virtual reality is creating its own space in virtual layouts without relying that much on traditional environments. VR in the supermarket is helping retailers in incorporating VR featured solutions to accommodate online orders and keep in-store shoppers engaged. VR in supermarket transport customers into a 360º rendering showroom that is customizable where users can explore, customize, and buy products.

Virtual reality offering exclusive factors to supermarkets

Virtual Browsing:

VR-generated superstores let customers virtually browse the store no matter where they are. They are well-organized apart from compelling and immersive. Simple and accessible designs with 360-degree panoramas that offer an experience of moving through a physical store.

Information-fueled experience:

VR introduced in supermarket improved the ways to find and compare the different product’s details to uplift experiences in stores. VR in supermarket promises to create the differentiated brand experiences that drive conversions. This improved customer service based on individual needs resulted in repeat visits and higher revenue.

Understand Consumer Behavior:

Consumers are curious about the walk-through superstores. VR is offering brands stimuli in a comprehensive virtual environment to enhance its services. This technology offers environments of flexibility to understand the granularity of the customer’s action in the superstore. Businesses with VR can analysis to see factors on a quantitative level.

How VR is Improving Shopper Experience

Retailers can gather feedback from targeted groups using VR. To improve the qualitative level of the services, retailers need to monitor behavior differences in buying patterns of the online customer.

VR supermarkets are embedded with virtual floorplans, 3D lighting, HD items display, immersive walk-through, and many more. VR offers a storytelling platform built on customer behavior insights.

VR has the ability to closely inspect goods in the store into a VR experience. Brands and supermarkets can provide memorable experiences through VR vital elements to help maintain user encouragement

VR with real-time collaboration unlocked the strategies to overcome the challenges in the supermarket. Hence the conversion rate benefits of making consumers feel comfortable. The rate of Consumers making purchase mistakes reduced thru the return rate.

VR supermarket more-accessible platform

Supermarkets are set to completely transform the shopping experience using virtual reality (VR). Hence, it is well to say that VR is a key to success in striking the right balance in allocating resources to users with digital experiences.  

Through VR brands want to reach consumers and assist them on the product’s shelf. This way user will know more about the practicalities of the products or how to use the product. VR enriches the experience by the entertaining user that cut through the confusion of traditional shelf-edge advertising.

Several major brands in FMCG have created an app that enables people to browse and pay for products in VR. VR produces an immersive experience that informs and entertain online users. This technology plays a vital role in creating more engaging encounters of the brand’s sale conversions.

The Bottom Line  

Virtual reality technology has already been around to help businesses in specific streams. The technology becomes more accepted due to the visualize store layouts and potential traffic benefits. Moreover, it offers the concept that combines product selection and customizability. VR is beneficial in term of capitalizing various opportunities embedded with interactivity and execution.

PTC and Shockoe sponsor the VRARA Enterprise Summit at LiveWorx

See event website and get tickets here

The VRARA Enterprise Summit, hosted by the VR/AR Association, will take place on June 10th at the LiveWorx digital transformation conference at the Boston Convention and Exhibition Center. The full-day event will bring together the best minds in VR/AR from across the globe. Presentations from industry leaders will include VR/AR Enterprise topics on AEC, Aerospace & Defense, Manufacturing, Training, UX & Design, and much more. LiveWorx is the world's most respected conference for the enterprise to experience the most innovative and disruptive technologies — VR/AR, IoT, machine learning, blockchain, robotics and much more. 6500+ attendees are expected. LiveWorx is June 10-13. More here

About PTC

Enabling Industrial Digital Transformation. As a global software company, PTC drives Industrial digital transformation by enabling companies to design, manufacture, operate, and service things for a smart, connected world. Since 1985, PTC has been enabling customers to stay one step ahead of the competition by combining our strategic vision with leading, field proven technology. PTC technology helps companies to quickly unlock the value now being created at the convergence of the physical and digital worlds through the IoT, augmented reality, 3D printing, digital twin, and Industry 4.0. With PTC, global manufacturers and an ecosystem of partners and developers can capitalize on this promise of physical digital convergence today and drive the future of innovation. More here

About Shockoe

Emerging Technology - We like to keep an eye on what’s new, next, and noteworthy. It’s a way for us to help your business stay ahead of the competition. But we do more than simply watch from the sidelines—we can help you bring your ideas to life. Our strategists, designers, and developers are able to help you craft a technology roadmap for the next five weeks, five months, or five years. We’ll help your organization understand the best possible use cases for everything from voice and augmented reality (AR) to virtual and mixed reality (VR/MR). More here

Healium Secures Webby Nomination for Mind-Powered Mindfulness and VR/AR

A Columbia, Missouri company that makes biometrically-controlled virtual escapes for areas of social isolation took home top honors recently in two national events including a Webby nomination for "Best Use of Augmented Reality". StoryUP Studios makes Healium, a virtual and augmented reality mindfulness platform powered by the user's heart and mind via their wearables. The three-year old therapeutic media company is harnessing the power of the body's electricity to heal virtual worlds for areas of emotional pain and situational stress. 

The Webby's, the internet's most coveted award, are chosen via a public voting process. This is the link to vote for Healium. wbby.co/vote-game4. Healium also took home a top prize recently at CES's pitch competition and a 1st place finish in the XR category at SXSW. 

The Webby-nominated experience, Healium AR Butterflies, is available for download on the IOS and Google Play stores. It allows the users to hatch butterflies from a virtual chrysalis with their feelings of positivity.

Two published studies in Frontiers in Psychology and the Journal of Neuroregulation showed Healium reduced moderate anxiety and increased feelings of positivity in as little as four minutes. These mindfulness-in-nature escapes have the option to be powered by EEG and heart rate data from the user's wearables like a smartwatch or meditation headband. Positive or calm memories are empowered to change the environments with either just a mobile device or inside VR goggles.

Healium supports Honor Everywhere, a free VR tour program for aging Veterans who are no longer able to physically travel to see their WWII, Vietnam or Women's Memorial in Washington, DC. People who purchase Healium kits enable free Healium experiences for Veterans on a waiting list for virtual Honor Flights.

The Webby's winners will be announced on April 23rd and public voting continues through April 18th. 

For more information on Healium kits that allow you to grow virtual peace with your feelings, please visit tryhealium.com or email hello@story-up.com

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Motive.io Receives Funding to Expand their Scenario-Based Training Platform

Motive.io is thrilled to be granted funding to expand our Bionic Detective project. A first-of-it’s kind collaborative AR scenario that is not only entertaining, but has potential to increase engagement and success in training law enforcement to process crime scenes.

First launched as an entertainment piece for the VR/AR Global Summit last fall, we look forward to experimenting with the immersive training version of this work.

More info

The VR/AR Association San Francisco Welcomes Shel Israel as Advisor

VRARA SF welcomes author, startup advisor and thought leader Shel Israel

The VR/AR Association tagline is Growth | Knowledge | Connections. And we strive in the San Francisco chapter to embody those principles in all moves. Pursuant to that charter, we’re happy to announce that author, startup advisor and thought leader Shel Israel joins the chapter as advisor.

Having written seven books on tech transformation, Israel brings historical perspective of past tech disruptions, and business realities that defined them. This will broaden the knowledge base of our chapter advisors, and thus our ability to be a business resource for members.

Specifically for AR and VR, you could say that Israel “wrote the book” on their expected transformation. The Fourth Transformation stands out on the bookshelves of our chapter principles, and remains a signpost for the early stages in a long evolution of AR and VR.

"Now that the mania of immersive technologies has tapered off, the business of real people using AR and VR to perform more and more tasks and services has begun. Enduring business models are taking form. From the factory to the classroom and the operating table, these technologies are making the world safer, more efficient and more entertaining. I am proud to be an advisor to this pioneering organization and its grown number of members.”

Stay tuned for more news for Shel’s involvement, including our developing event calendar for the remainder of 2019. This will involve advising chapter strategy, involvement in chapter events, and facilitating knowledge and perspective around VR and AR transformation.

There’s also industry news projected for the remainder of 2019, which Israel will help us contextualize, including Oculus Quest and the continued evolution of consumer and enterprise AR. It will be an exciting time for the industry, and we’re excited Israel will experience it with us.

“As someone who’s defined tech transformation both with his thought leadership and his hands-on work advising startups, Shel has been a hugely influential figure to all of us in the SF tech community,” said San Francisco Chapter co-president Emily Olman. “We’re thrilled to formally welcome him to our team.”

Call for Presenters and Invitation to Participate in our Storytelling Committee Webinar

The VR/AR Association Storytelling Committee is inviting speakers for a Webinar we are planning for June. Please email info@thevrara.com if you’re interested to present! Let us know if you’re also interested in Sponsoring this webinar.

The mission of the Storytelling Committee is creating best practices, guidelines, and call to actions (e.g., recommendations for standards) for Experiences & Storytelling in VR and AR in order to grow the audience (user base) for VR/AR. 

In the past, our Committee has presented several webinars (see the recordings here), published a creating best practices, guidelines for VR. See here. We also put together a panel of panel Industry leaders in the storytelling community for the VRARA Global Summit in Vancouver in 2018 . 

Join our Committee and representatives from producers and content creators, and other industry leaders.

We also invite you to our next conf call:

Thursday, April 25th⋅11:00 – 11:30am PST or 2pm EST

Join via Hangouts Meet meet.google.com/oua-aukn-aqo

or Join by phone‪: +1 573-343-8418‬ PIN: ‪745 622 962‬#

Regards,

Jeff Olm & Michael Owen

VRARA Co-Chairs

VRARA Member ThirdEye partners with Verizon for 5G and Mixed Reality Glasses that can help change how we see the world

Come see ThirdEye present at our VRARA Enterprise Summit! More info here

Today, there are already a plethora of augmented reality (AR) use cases for businesses, however, bulky headsets and motion sickness have become big barriers to scaling usage. The cost of such devices has also made them unattainable for consumers since expensive computing power needs to be built into the headset.

Enter 5G. With high bandwidth and low latency, as well as the power of mobile edge computing, 5G makes it possible for AR/MR glasses to offload the majority of their workload to the edge of the network. Thanks to the reduced compute and power needs, smart glasses are about to become significantly lighter and cheaper, ultimately increasing adoption.

Consider First Responders wearing AR/MR glasses – they’ll be able to travel to a scene and have images fed to the corner of their glasses to help plan rescue actions before they arrive on-site. The glasses can also display live video feeds from drones hovering over the scene as well as street or topographical maps to help them better prepare.

At Verizon’s 5G Lab in New York City, ThirdEye, creator of the world’s smallest mixed reality glasses, recently showed off this 5G use case. The company demonstrated how its smart glasses – along with its AR/MR software – can help bring about a new era of hands-free human interaction with computing at the edge. While wearing the glasses, users such as First Responders can directly interact with surrounding objects or digital information placed in their field of view.

Additionally, field service workers (like auto mechanics) will be able to scan an object, such as a complex motor, with the glasses’ built-in camera and send images to a remote expert for help. They can then receive live audio/video guidance from the expert appearing at the top right of their smart glasses while working hands-free, instead of having to look down at a tablet or booklet to repair the part.

“5G really helps in terms of latency,” said ThirdEye’s Nick Cherukuri. “For AR smart glasses we have to stream live video or live 3D models, which can end up using a lot of data. 5G will eventually help reduce latency to under ten milliseconds, which will be a total game changer.”

For consumers, using the smart glasses over 5G will allow for more interactive and collaborative gaming experiences, as well as enhanced in-flight entertainment. Imagine being given a pair of AR glasses preloaded with HD movies when boarding a plane, then after take-off, being able to stare at the ceiling or even look out the window and see your movie presented directly in front of you in a screen size much larger than the seat-installed TV.

Stay tuned next week for another cool 5G demo from Verizon’s 5G Lab!

For related media inquiries, please contact Christina.moon.ashraf@verizon.com

Source

Come see ThirdEye present at our VRARA Enterprise Summit! More info here

RSVP for our Webinar: "ROI for VR/AR in Advertising and Marketing + Monetization" expert panel featuring Loreal, Island, WarGaming, King, Snapchat and others

RSVP here

New sessions added to our VRARA Enterprise Summit at LiveWorx! Come see the latest in Training Solutions and get Market Insights!

More info and get tix here

We have exciting updates for you regarding our VRARA Enterprise Summit at the LiveWorx digital transformation conference at the Boston Convention and Exhibition Center. Our Summit is on the first day, June 10, of the 4-day LiveWorx (June 10-13) event. 6500+ attendees are expected!

Our full-day event will feature solution & service providers and end-users of the technology to give you the best insights and demonstrations.

Market Insights Tracks

Enterprise VR/AR spending is expected to reach $13B in 2019. Get examples and data from both sides of the table, enterprise users & their suppliers. Also, get a snapshot of current R&D investment, XR usage by industry and common business use cases. Plus, you'll get the AR smartglasses landscape, their current major use cases, and what the future looks like. Sessions include:

1. Hard ROI from Enterprise VR/AR

2. Exploring Opportunities on XR's Next Frontier

3. AR/MR Smart Glasses Landscape

Training Track

Corporations invested $87B on Training in 2018. VR has retention rates of 75%. Learn about the myriad of VR training use cases and how companies small and large are leveraging immersive technology to train their workforce. Sessions include:

1. Transforming Learning in Retail with VR/AR

2. Disrupt & Add Value – VR Training On The Rise

3. New Shape of Location-Based VR and AR Experiences for Military Training

More info and get tix here