Post originally appearing on xrtoday.com by Demond Cureton.
Companies across the virtual, augmented, mixed, and extended reality (VR/AR/MR/XR) industry have begun focusing on the future of industrial XR. Many hardware manufacturers are removing the barriers to successful XR experiences with innovative headsets and solutions aimed the enterprise market.
Organisations have launched numerous platforms to facilitate dialogue on the future of spatial communications, namely as businesses hope to reach their highest potential with immersive tech.
The ongoing Immerse Global Summit (IGS) 2022 is taking place 5-7 December in Miami, Florida. Scores of companies, thought leaders, and experts across the global tech industry have attended the gathering to share their knowledge on the future of Web3 technologies.
At the event, XR Today spoke to Jason McGuigan, Head of Commercial Virtual Reality, on his company’s latest product lineup, his views on the Summit, and thoughts on the industrial metaverse.
XR Today: What are your thoughts on the IGS 2022 Miami, and what have you learned and accomplished so far?
Jason McGuigan: There has been a lot of great energy in the crowd during the keynote. We’re seeing a lot of shakeups in the industry right now, but despite this, everyone at the event still carries impressive energy and excitement.
Regarding the enterprise metaverse, I gave an interactive conversation where people could choose their direction and what they wanted to hear about from a customer perspective.
We want to show how to bring XR technologies to the enterprise, and we’re currently at the spot where we need to prove that to people outside of the industry. We need to also prove return on investment (ROI) as we can’t get people to invest in what’s possible for tomorrow if we do not show them ROI today.
I discussed in my morning keynote about how to prove ROI and getting the next level of the Metaverse, as well as some topics on futurism, generative artificial intelligence (AI), and others. We also mentioned our new ThinkReality VRX headset, which is coming out early next year.
XR Today: Can you provide any updates on the ThinkReality VRX and what you hope it will accomplish?
Jason McGuigan: Currently, we’re walking into a very mature landscape and are not generating something from the ground up. While organisations are still discovering use cases for AR, VR still has a lot of proven ROI.
A lot of business use cases have demonstrated its effectiveness and how it could save enterprises significant amounts of money. From this perspective, organisations believe it makes a lot of sense to invest in. They are going to see that return in a very short period of time while saving money and lives, and protecting the legacy of an organisation.
This is achieved by upskilling employees with better skills, making them less adverse, and avoiding the possibility of having accidents or injuries on the job.
We focus our attention on these things and that is our big push for the next few months: to work with major independent software vendors (ISVs) in VR. This ensures that those bringing their software to our headsets are ready to go on day one.
We’ve got great partners at Qualcomm assisting in this battle, and we’re also excited to bring this out to market soon. Regarding AR, the A3 is a fantastic product. We’re consistently updating the device via the Snapdragon Spaces software development kit (SDK), so it has new and better features all the time.
It’s a device that, even a few months back, had already significantly evolved in just a few short months, and we’ll see that constant evolution of that technology. This is because the software constantly receives updates and improves to enhance features dramatically.
XR Today: What do you think industrial XR will look like in the near future, and will the enterprise drive the creation of the Metaverse?
Jason McGuigan: I think the enterprise will open the doors to industrial metaverse. I’ve consistently talked about the enterprise leading the way as it has the most money to spend. Furthermore, it also has many people managing a lot of devices for multiple use cases.
This also improves the consumer space as well with a trickle-down approach as the enterprise space develops and grows the market. These technologies will eventually move from the enterprise to the consumer, but I think the consumer market could hit a wall temporarily as more people adopt XR.
Many people realise that when they try the device for the first time at work, they eventually buy a consumer device. Using these tools on the job becomes the first encounter with XR for many people, giving them a taste of the technology that leads to its adoption in their personal lives.
XR Today: What are your concluding thoughts on the conference and what do you expect from it in the near future?
There are so many conferences for technology that are generalised for tech. The IGS 2022 is one of the few specifically centred around immersive content. Where I see the difference between this one versus your Augmented Enterprise Summit (AES), Consumer Electronics Show (CES), or Augmented World Expo (AWE), there’s an enthusiasm with this group unlike ever before.
Although it doesn’t take itself quite so seriously, there’s a lot of business getting done, people are making great connections, and it takes place at amazing destinations. The previous one was in Madeira and this one is taking place in Miami, allowing people to attend places they want to visit and experience beautiful locales with the people they enjoy spending time with.
This helps inject creativity and liveliness into conversations that I don’t think you get at some of the other major conferences. I’m looking forward to seeing the continued success, and as we meet many of the same people here, it grows into a really strong community that builds upon itself.
