Exciting News from HTC VIVE: Upcoming Events, Big Announcements, and VIVE Pro 2 Price Drop!

Join VRARA Member HTC Vive for two major events in September—an exclusive virtual reveal and a hands-on demo in San Francisco. Plus, don’t miss the newly discounted VIVE Pro 2 headsets. Register today to be part of the action!

Announcement #1: Exciting news is about to drop!

• There’s a big reveal coming on September 18th. Be the first to hear what’s new at our virtual event on Wednesday, September 18th at 7 am PT / 10 am ET. Attendees will get a brief overview of what’s being announced, and a chance to ask their questions to our experts. Register now at https://business.vive.com/us/events/sep-18-webinar-event/ . If you’re unable to attend live, register anyway and you’ll be sent a link to the recording.

Announcement #2: An evening of fun (and some games!) in SF

• Please join us on Sept 30th at 5PM in San Francisco at the Sandbox location on Market Street to try out HTC VIVE’s new headset hands on, and hear talks from Shen Ye, HTC VIVE Global Head of Dan O’Brien, President Americas at HTC VIVE. This is an exclusive glimpse into the latest XR headset for enterprises and consumers, and we hope the VR/AR community members can join us. This event is 21+ to attend. Space is limited, so register now to reserve your spot:   https://business.vive.com/us/stories/vr-event-sep-30/

Announcement #3: New price on VIVE Pro 2 PC VR headsets

• One of the best-rated PC VR gaming headsets now has a new low price. Get $200 off our Enterprise version or our Consumer version. Full Kits and HMD only versions too.

https://business.vive.com/us/product/vive-pro2/     

Gordon Bell Appointed as VRARA Silicon Valley Chapter President

We are thrilled to welcome Gordon Bell as our VRARA Silicon Valley Chapter President!

Gordon Bell has over 25 years of sales and marketing experience. He serves as Vice President of Business Development & Marketing at Tests Assured, a leading AR/VR testing service based in Silicon Valley. Before joining Tests Assured, Gordon was part of the founding team at Energous Corporation, which he joined as employee No. 2 in 2013 to build a brand for the wireless charging startup and nurture it from its earliest years through an IPO and global expansion. Before Energous, Gordon was president of Prosoft Engineering and held various sales and marketing roles at ELSA GMBH, Media 100, and other companies. During his time at Energous, he also served as a board of directors member and on the Marketing Advisory Panel for the AirFuel Alliance, an independent, nonprofit consortium working to establish wireless charging standards.

I am thrilled to step into the role of Chapter President for The VR/AR Association Silicon Valley Chapter. As we continue to support and expand the VR/AR ecosystem in the greater Silicon Valley region, I am committed to fostering a community of innovation, collaboration, and growth. Our mission to nurture and expand the VR/AR ecosystem in the greater Silicon Valley area remains stronger than ever. Having worked closely with Feroz, Marv, and Peter for the past year and a half, I'm truly honored to take on this pivotal role. Stay tuned as the Silicon Valley chapter has some exciting updates on the horizon as we continue to evolve! -Gordon Bell

Enhancing accessibility in multi-learner virtual reality platform

The VRARA Silicon Valley chapter is proud to share the latest content from their member, Edstutia.

Email Yogini Joglekar <yjoglekar@edstutia.com> to get a copy of the study.

Abstract

Purpose

This study aims to investigate and propose guidelines to enhance the accessibility of virtual reality (VR) interfaces for all users within professional learning environments. Motivated by a lack of comprehensive accessibility guidelines for VR learning, the study delves into a case study of Edstutia’s VR campus.

Design/methodology/approach

This case study examines the intersection of VR platform development and learning experience design through the lens of accessibility in human-computer interaction. It elaborates on how user experience feedback from differently-abled learners who were unable to fully participate in the VR experience due to disability shaped the 2.0 version development of a VR platform.

Findings

The outcomes of this case study are (1) a description of an inclusive and empathetic design application to increase multi-learner VR platform accessibility, (2) a sample actionable path from a design/development perspective in ensuring the accessibility design of a VR learning platform, and recommendations to facilitate the design process.

Research limitations/implications

This case is a foundation for further research on improving accessibility in VR. In future work on VR campuses, we recommend scholars undertake research with an inclusive approach that actively involves users with different abilities in shaping guidelines, particularly on how individuals with different abilities should be approached for their input during the design and development process in a sensitive manner.

Practical implications

The authors summarize the steps taken to enhance the accessible interplay between the end users and the interface of VR technology in the emergence of VR accessibility standards. Central to this case’s exploration is the integration of accessibility as a pivotal element into an academic VR campus, i.e. multilearner education platform.

Social implications

Increasing access to VR has strong social implications in a world where 17% of people report a disability.

Originality/value

This case contributes to the limited research available on increasing access to VR on campuses.

Please contact VRARA Silicon Valley Chapter President Feroz Mohummed for more information on how YOU can benefit from joining their community!

VRARA Silicon Valley Presents: Transforming Education and Training with Spatial Computing

Our panel of distinguished experts provides insights into the use of immersive technologies across diverse educational settings, from K-12 to higher education and corporate training.

Chapters:

VRAR Overview: 00:00:44

Event Intro: 00:04:19

Panel Intro: 00:08:16

Panel Discussion: 00:18:15

Learn more about the VRARA Silicon Valley Chapter!

Call for Sponsors: Deploying Enterprise XR & Web 3.0 (Silicon Valley Chapter Event)

VRARA member news: Xvisio launches SeerLens™ One AR glasses for the North America market

Xvisio Technology Co. recently announced and demonstrated live SeerLens™ One, its first mass production AR glasses product for the enterprise for the North America market.  SeerLens™ One is a USB tethered cross-platform AR glasses with on-board vSLAM* engine based on the Epson VM40 free form prism optics. It can be paired up with PC, mobile phone or dedicated mobile computing pack via USB type-C cable. SeerLens™ One is light-weighted and comfortable to wear, includes fast autofocus RGB and stereo fisheye cameras, built-in microphone with AI noise cancellation.  It works seamlessly with Windows, Ubuntu, and Android devices supported by feature rich AR foundation SDK for contents development.

Xvisio AR foundation SDK enables compelling AR user experience such as spatial anchoring, superimpose, map creating and sharing, 25 joint gesture control, multi-user collaboration, etc. It supports enterprise AR applications such as field services, manufacturing SOP assist, remote assistance, logistics and transportation, virtual collaborations, or meetings.  Xvisio works with ecosystem partners proactively to enable such use cases for the enterprise.  As a recent member of the VRARA, Xvisio invites fellow VRARA member companies in the enterprise space to explore collaboration opportunities.

SeerLens™ family includes the SeerLens™ One glasses and Seerlens™ One Helmet with a few peripherals that enable the core features of immersive experiences for the Metaverse applications.

“We are extremely excited to launch SeerLens™ One AR glasses product series in North America for enterprise customers.” said John Lin, founder and CEO of Xvisio Technology. “SeerLens™ One offers very compelling values proposition to our enterprise customers and system integrators who need more advanced capabilities than the basic HUD (Heads Up Display) products on the market at a much affordable price compared to other AR glasses and HMD (Head-mounted Display) products. We position our SeerLens™ One products as step stones to the Metarverse world.”

Xvisio will roll out the SeerLens™ One family and its peripherals introduced in the diagram above with SeerSense™, SeerLens™ and SeerPad ™ launching in July 2022, and SeerController™ launching later in 2022.

SeerLens™ One introductions video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DFGtmiQ-uq8

 About Xvisio Technology

Xvisio Technology is a global technology and product provider for XR industry with R&D centers in China, US and Europe. It provides best-in-class vSLAM based perception and interaction system solution for XR devices. The company offers design service for XR product development and two major product series -SeerSense™ sensor module series and SeerLens™ AR glass series for Metaverse applications. To learn more, please visit Xvisio’s website: www.xvisiotech.com.

For inquiries or media contact: contact@xvisiotech.com

XR is the perfect workplace investigation communication tool. We just need to use it.

The complex world of workplace accidents

Effectively communicating the casual and contributing factors of workplace accidents has always been a challenge. Accidents are complex, particularly when they involve people. During one of my first health and safety roles I was tasked with developing a process to communicate learnings from incident investigations across a large, geographically distributed enterprise. Being new to the industry, I searched for effective ways to communicate investigation outcomes and came across the US Chemical Safety & Hazard Investigation Board (CSB) investigation videos; in particular the video of the Formosa Plastics Vinyl Chloride Explosion accident, which happened in 2004. The video included a computer-generated simulation of the events that led to an explosion of highly flammable vinyl chloride. The simulation was an effective way to communicate a complex work process and accident event timeline.  

Source: https://youtu.be/fjOfp_3GRb4 

At the time, XR technologies as we currently know them were in their infancy. Remember, this was 10 years before even Google cardboard was released. I recall finding a conference paper from a few years earlier that discussed a simulation of a mining fuel truck accident that was developed using 3D Studio MAX and exported into virtual reality modeling language viewed via Cosmo player. Too complicated, clunky and expensive to implement back then, I reluctantly settled on PowerPoint slides packed with photos with annotations and the occasional video. Throughout the rest of my health & safety career, video really took off to communicate workplace accident investigation outcomes, but XR never took hold.  

This all came back to me a week or so ago when I received as WhatsApp message from Martin Sawtell, XR Director at Dell Technologies. He sent me a link to the latest video from CSB, a simulation of a fire at Evergreen Packaging. We were both really impressed with the quality of the animation, a massive improvement over the 15 years since the Formosa Plastics video. Sure, it’s pre-rendered but it highlights how effective simulation and storytelling can be to communicate the complexities of significant workplace accidents. 

Source: https://youtu.be/mF1fHHUcstg 

Having worked in XR for a while now, it dawned on me that XR technologies are still not widely used for incident investigation communication, so I Googled “VR for incident investigation communication” and guess what popped up on the first page of results;  the conference paper with the mining fuel truck simulation using 3D Studio Max. 

VR is often used for health and safety training; in fact, it may even be the most common VR use case across the globe. So why aren’t XR technologies used more often for incident investigation communication? Let’s briefly explore the use case. 

Incident investigation 101

I am not going to go into the safety science or the forensic side of incident investigation, or even the difference in definition between accidents and incidents. Simply put, when things go wrong at work; something gets damaged, people get hurt (or worse) or the environment is harmed etc.; organizations have an obligation (often a legal one) to understand what went wrong on several levels (organization, system task, individual etc.). They do this to try and identify what they can improve. In modern safety science, it is becoming more popular to not just investigate when things go wrong, but also when things go right (perhaps this is an even more powerful approach). Either way, effectively all investigations have a timeline of events and outcomes that can often be very difficult to understand, especially if the work process is highly technical and the geospatial relationship between hazards and people is challenging to articulate in text or 2D. Communicating the outcomes of an investigation across an organization is a requirement of good safety management, generally a regulatory one. Communicating investigation outcomes are often poorly executed. 

Investigation communication 101 

I’ve dropped the word incident preceding investigation communication in the title of this section, because investigating good work is also a great idea and well worth communicating. Typically, investigations are communicated via a .PDF “newsflash”, .PPT slide deck (*snore – yes, I am guilty of this hundreds of times over), but if you are lucky perhaps a video is created as a communication tool and if you are really, really lucky, that video is supported with an animation. 

XR for Investigation Communication 

So here is the opportunity. Investigations are ultimately stories, so what better way to communicate a story than with immersive technologies? You can start simple, recreate an incident scene using a 360 camera, add annotations and port to a VR headset for low-effort immersive experience. For more complex scenarios, developing a CGI simulation could be well worth the effort to enable effective investigation communication without geographical constraints. You may even consider using AR to spatially anchor historical incident information around an asset, using a pair of AR smart glasses that overlay investigation learnings as you walk through the facility. The technology is available to improve the way we communicate investigation outcomes, it’s just waiting for us to use it. 

Cameron is a global XR strategist & chartered health & safety professional most comfortable exploring the intersection of emerging technologies and business performance. Cameron holds a BSc in Physical Therapy and a MSc in Ergonomics, Safety & Health with postgraduate studies in digital transformation and artificial intelligence ethics. He has extensive experience in safety & risk management and business transformation in high-risk industry having worked around the globe for ExxonMobil, BHP, Vermilion Oil & Gas and Oil Search Limited. Cameron is currently leading the commercial Augmented & Virtual Reality business for Lenovo in Australia and New Zealand after 3 years as a Solution Engineer with RealWear Inc. deploying wearable computing for enterprise.  

As the trusted voice for XR safety and risk management, Cameron volunteers on the Augmented Reality for Enterprise Alliance Safety & Human Factors committees, the authoring committee for the ISO Standard for AR/VR Safety and contributes to the ISO Standards committee for Artificial Intelligence. 

https://www.linkedin.com/in/cameronmstevens/