Watch the video recordings from our Enterprise Summit 2024: Best in XR, Digital Twin, AI here
Originally Published by Demond Cureton
Extended reality (XR) technologies continue to permeate conversations on the utility of spatial computing solutions.
Across a host of industry verticals, enterprises are reigning in the hype about the Metaverse as business face the sobering shift to pragmatic, utilitarian approaches to XR.
Two experts in the field of XR voiced their opinions on the rising trends shaping the industry to date, using their culmulative experience and observations of real-world use cases of the virtual one via digital twins.
The fireside chat included the following extended reality (XR) experts:
Amy Peck, Chief Executive, EndeavorXR
Damon Shackelford, Co-Chair, VRARA Enterprise Committee and Employee, Eastman Chemical Company
Don’t Believe the Hype (Cycle)
Regarding the developing trends in XR, Peck urged the audience to differentiate between viable ones and hype cycles, citing the Metaverse.
To her, the current hype cycle had allowed Artificial Intelligence (AI) to ‘supplant’ the Metaverse in the news and media. However, regarding spatial computing solutions, she noted that businesses were returning to rationally assessing their capabilities across their workflows.
Explaining her stance, she said,
I think it’s nice that we can actually get back to what the technology does really well today, [especially] while we are planning how to implement [them] in the future as their capabilities expand.
The two then explored two of the most important trends taking shape in the virtual, augmented, mixed, and extended reality (VR/ AR/ MR/ XR) industry to date, which would take centre stage over the next few years.
Digital Twins
According to Peck, digital twins were a prime example of trending XR technologies, namely after piquing in her consultations with clients such as Booz Allen Hamilton.
Amy Peck, Chief Executive, EndeavorXR
She noted that the defence firm had announced a partnership with Unity Technologies a year and a half ago, leading to easier deployments of digital twin solutions.
Amy Peck, Chief Executive, EndeavorXR
Booze Allen Hamilton’s partnership states that digital twins “interweave multiple data streams to create unbroken, and living, threads of insight that improve mission outcomes.”
Peck added that digital twins were “foundational” and are being utilised on the NVIDIA Omniverse, deployed across BMW’s advanced manufacturing platforms, and leveraged by tech giants such as Ericsson and Siemens.
Mixed Reality
Highlighting the need for secure deployments across all forms of immersive technologies, Peck explained to Shackelford that there were opportunities to build digital assets once and then “add multiple data streams to construct […] layers of visualisation.”
However, this provided challenges to the technology stacks involved in their deployment, which required a multiple approach to cybersecurity.
She told audiences:
Damon Shackelford, Co-Chair, VRARA Enterprise Committee
Managing all of that data is part of the challenge in deploying this in highly-secure environments. But then, when you add the XR layer of a headset, or you need it to be web-based, on mobile, or [otherwise], you can have that elevated headset experience, but each platform adds layers of challenges in their deployment.”
Training
When asked by Shackelford about the potential for XR to increase return on investment (ROI) in training, Peck explained that most clients focussed on VR training whilst she was launching EndeavorXR in 2014.
She stated that XR training was the “easy first step” for enterprise users, adding, “We can do the math on [its] efficacy and how quicly you can get people out into the field.”
Furthermore, she included that, for mixed reality (MR) devices, “see-what-I-see” (SWIS) and passthrough technologies were “still [some of] the simplest solutions.”
SWIS capabilities allow remote observers to view what a person using an immersive device is doing as they interact with content or livestream their operations.
Conversely, passthrough provides digital overlays to an MR device users physical environment to seamlessly merge the two environments.
Damon Shackelford, Co-Chair, VRARA Enterprise Committee
Shackelford replied that XR training’s readily-available calculations facilitated budgetary justifications among decision makers.
Peck added that a key factor when consultants work with clients was that they needed to remain careful when scaling up technological deployments across business units, even “with one use case.”
She said: “You know, we used to be in a kind of proof-of-concept (PoC) joil, but now we’re in a sort of pilot jail, so that’s a small improvement.”
Despite this, companies were not deploying “tens of thousands of headsets for the most part,” but rather a few hundred for specific training needs, Peck continued.
Workforce Engagement
Finally, when asked about workplace engagement using digital twin training and mixed reality solutions, Peck explained that there were two major “hurdles” to their adoption.
The first was deploying solutions among existing information technology (IT) infrastructure, and secondly, understanding the intended goals to accomplish with the XR training solution in company workflows.
She said,
“We call it planned prevention for a reason. The second is often overlooked and is really understanding not just who your user is, but what you need to accomplish and what their workflow is.”
The fireside chat took place at the VRARA Best in XR, Digital Twins, and AI event last week, bringing with it a host of use cases and panel discussions on the future of spatial computing and emerging technologies.
Numerous companies like Siemens, Unity, EndeavorXR, Duke Energy, Dassault Systems, Amazon Web Services, Unity, and Merck, among many others, showcased some of their most premier examples of XR deployments across businesses and clients.
The VR/AR Association’s Kris Kolo hosted the single-day event to place XR milestones in the spotlight of industries worldwide.
