Is XR technology’s “Zoom moment” finally on the horizon?
/by KnowledgeWorks Global Ltd.
Every year - like clockwork - technology experts and futurists speculate as to whether this will finally be THE YEAR for mass market adoption of VR (virtual reality), AR (augmented reality) and MR (mixed reality), now commonly referred to under the useful catch-all umbrella term XR (extended reality) technologies.
When the vast majority of the world’s population was plunged into lockdown this year, and whether we liked it or not, staying in became the new going out, these debates around XR adoption logically intensified. This was to be the perfect storm. Suddenly the conditions were ripe for immersive innovations to really come to the fore and show their full potential.
The dream ticket
On the practical side, a huge portion of the globe’s workforce was suddenly thrust into new working habits, and technology was very much powering this transition. Meanwhile, on the entertainment side, billions of people were now seeking escapism from the grim realities of house arrest, cancelled vacations and limited contact with family and friends, and here too, technology played a pivotal role.
There was a massive captive audience, with time on its hands, eager to try new things, explore new technologies and invest in innovations to dramatically enhance their new-look working and social lives. You could call it the dream ticket.
XR on the rise
Some reports boast of a significant breakthrough and an uptick in adoption of immersive technologies during the pandemic. As people pine for traveling and vacations, there has been a growth in immersive VR travel experiences. And culture vultures, deprived of museums and galleries, have been flocking to AR apps and virtual tours to interact with collections from as far afield as the Smithsonian Institute in Washington D.C. and the National Museum of Singapore, to the Met’s acclaimed 360 Project and Art Basel’s Online Viewing Rooms, which was so popular it crashed on launch day.
It has been a time for experimentation. British journalist Tristan Cross was missing his local pub so much he decided to recreate it using VR, and staff at app development firm Exyte replicated their office boardroom in VR form as part of a quarantine hackathon.
But aside from gaming, where XR technologies have really excelled during the COVID-19 crisis is via practical applications in areas such as healthcare and education and training. Innovations such as VR surgery simulations and VR-based telehealth and remote treatments have grown significantly during this period, and some XR companies in the education sector have been adapting their offerings for home learners by offering VR content as web-based XR content to overcome the fact that not every household has a VR headset, yet.
Modest gains, unrealized potential
Despite these positive gains, for many in the industry, progress has been slower than anticipated. While others, like Gartner’s principal analyst Tuong Huy Nguyen, are not at all surprised that XR has not yet been embraced by the masses: “The pandemic has risen the profile of AR and VR, for sure. But it’s not going to come all at once today, or tomorrow, or even within the next year,” he commented recently, while reaffirming his two-year-old original forecast that it will take between five and ten years for these technologies to really reach maturity.
While predicting substantial growth in VR headsets from 13.1m in 2019 to 55.5m by 2024, George Jijiashvili, senior analyst at Omdia, commented: “It’s a big growth. But if you take a step back and compare it to TVs and smartphones, it is a very small addressable market.” He went on to emphasize that the main issue was that content creators were waiting to invest in VR specifically: “For most companies, it’s not viable to invest a lot of money in this category when only a small number of users could potentially be exposed to that content.” As highlighted in the Gartner report we are still looking ahead to the point when XR can enjoy its time in the sun, or its “Zoom moment” – moving from small markets and niche enterprise applications towards widespread consumer adoption.
The global pandemic has without doubt nudged along immersive technology growth. We’ve seen an exponential rise in new applications being discovered, trialed and implemented, and are only just at the start of XR’s exciting journey. The possibilities for these technologies are indeed endless, even if to date, use cases and applications have been somewhat niche and experimental.
In future blog posts we will explore how XR technologies are being adopted in the various different publishing sectors. Click here to check out some views on immersive technology in the corporate training markets from KnowledgeWorks Global Learning.
