The next level in developing augmented and virtual reality solutions is to harness the potential of artificial intelligence and machine learning to the fullest. Artificial intelligence is one of the fastest-growing industries in the world, expecting to reach $126 billion in global revenue by 2025.

Forbes declares that “whoever controls the strongest artificial intelligences controls the world.”

The reason why AI is so powerful is that it deals with a vast amount of data. And in this highly political era of economic powers fighting for supremacy, data represents a significant competitive advantage.

But what do AI and ML have to do with AR and VR? In what ways could these two technologies of the future work together?

Before we dive into the particulars of AI and ML boosting AR and VR, let us start with defining the terms AI and ML and the differences between them.

Artificial intelligence entails that the machines are capable of carrying out so-called “smart tasks” and making independent decisions. Machine learning goes a step further – it enables machines to improve themselves as time goes by and as algorithms become more and more sophisticated.

Several groundbreaking innovations were important for the advancement of AI and ML.

The first one was Artur Clark’s approach that instead of teaching machines everything they should know, we should teach them how to learn and improve themselves. Secondly, because the internet and a monstrous amount of data became available worldwide, better learning and modeling of the machine mind became possible.

Up until now, software developers would supply intelligence to a system with their supreme coding skills – a process that is not artificial intelligence. Those were simple software applications with no capabilities of learning.

However, AI is now being used to automate many mundane processes. It can be implemented in all industries that rely heavily on complex data sets: healthcare, banking, retail, business, logistics, and more.

There are various ways that artificial intelligence can be applied along with virtual and augmented reality.

Let’s take a look at some of the most striking examples:

It is incredible that VR and AR, together with AI, can educate the next generation of professionals in life-threatening and high-risk jobs such as doctors, factory workers, firefighters, pilots, and alike.

We have shared our own example when VR is used for training and maintenance in factories of the future. The same kinds of solutions are used for doctors that can go through countless virtual scenarios without jeopardizing a single life.

Healthcare, in particular, can benefit from data reorganization. In countries across the world, patient data is stored in fragments – a powerful AI solution that untangles and connects those fragments piece by piece will revolutionize this sector.

Virtual reality powered by AI is also available to firefighter teams that go through the worst scenarios, pilots that bring back the plane’s altitude to safety, or emergency medical teams (EMTs) that save people’s lives from traffic accidents and natural disasters.

One of the most significant benefits of artificial intelligence is that it has the power to make complex decisions. This is incredibly useful in the defense industry. Before any actual weapons are used, an AR military system fuelled by AI can be deployed. This set-up would allow for many simulations that can be tested and compared to the system archives to find the best military strategy.

The constant advancement of tech shows us where future battlefields will take place.

For example, the ARC4 is AR technology that delivers tactical situational awareness no matter the time of day. It connects to the military satellites and drones to highlight dangers and threats in AR mode.

AR filters have become the norm on social media. How many of your friends have used filters where they can transform themselves into a cat or dog or a Disney princess? How many have used the ‘Which __________ are you?‘ filters? All of those are considered AR filters since they augment reality – make it appear on the screen as something more than it is in real life.

Chatbots are typically AI-powered services that you can find on plenty of web pages. If you see a chat icon in the corner of a screen offering you instant help, it’s a high chance that there isn’t a human but an AI system behind it.

These AI chatbots are evolving as we speak, and one of the next avenues is to include a VR component. VR Chatbots will come in the form of avatars – life-like human simulations that should, thanks to AI, talk and act exactly like real humans. The benefit of VR chatbots lies in more realistic interaction. They should be able to help you with pretty much any question you have or retrieve any data from an accessible database.

Similar to high-quality CAD (computer-aided design) models for training and maintenance, companies are turning to AR to help them map large areas and enhance them with relevant data. (Data that can be gathered by AI.)

Take the example of a Danish construction site that emphasizes health and safety. An AR solution helped them view full BIM models on-site in real time, allowing them to recognize and avoid any inaccuracies that can occur in early-stage construction. AR has succeeded in turning a reactive approach to construction errors into a preventative one.

Our future looks promising because we are continually expanding our frontiers of what is possible through technology. Not only do we map the walls and furniture inside buildings, but we can also see the internal organs of patients that need to be operated on in real time.

In June 2020, surgeons at Johns Hopkins performed the first-ever AR surgeries. Neurosurgeons performed one spinal fusion operation and another to remove a cancerous tumor from a patient’s spine. In both cases, they used AR headsets that project the patients’ CT scans onto their body – essentially providing the doctors with X-ray vision.

Timothy Witham, M. D., who led the first spinal fusion operation, said, “When using augmented reality in the operating room, it’s like having a GPS navigator in front of your eyes in a natural way so you don’t have to look at a separate screen to see your patient’s CT scan.”

By taking advantage of AI, ML, AR, and VR, all these insights and automatic depth perception with precise adjustments will be ingrained into emerging technology devices.

Our examples of this cutting-edge tech in healthcare, construction, military and defense, and customer service are just a glimpse of what is possible. When it comes to machine learning, the options are endless. We are looking forward to a future where machines take over routine procedures with more accuracy and less risk of error than humans will ever be able to achieve.

Interested in an AR or VR app for your business? Contact us with your ideas, and we’ll see what we can do to make them a reality!

The year 2020 was unprecedented in many ways. With the spread of a pandemic, most of the global workforce was forced to start working from home. Travel has been severely restricted, and large events were canceled altogether. Due to all these COVID19 restrictions and the need for remote work and learning, augmented and virtual reality experienced a market boom. There’s no better moment than now to learn about the AR and VR trends in 2021 that will disrupt the tech industry.

According to Statista, the value of the virtual and augmented reality market in 2020 was around $12 billion. By the year 2024, this number is expected to reach $72.8 billion. That is an astounding growth rate in just four years!

With pretty much every industry out there realizing the potential and necessity of quality AR and VR technology, here are the exciting innovations we’re expecting to see in 2021.

Outdoor navigation is an electronic device standard. There is no smartphone, tablet, or even smartwatch out there that can’t provide navigation services through built-in GPS.

However, indoor navigation is decidedly more complicated. GPS is useless in enclosed areas; visual positioning systems work only for large indoor spaces; WiFi positioning systems are often pricey and challenging to maintain.

Augmented reality is the perfect solution for indoor navigation. It offers more accurate user positioning data with a whole host of benefits for organizations:

Take a look at how Volkswagen utilized AR indoor navigation to improve localization in their manufacturing processes. This caused a dramatic decrease in costs and downtimes, as well as better optimization of inventory management, inspections, and more. We can expect large investments to be made in AR indoor navigation technology in 2021.

A rising trend in the augmented reality market is remote assistance.

Imagine a quite regular situation: you’re having trouble with your WiFi. Your router is malfunctioning, and you dial the call center of your provider for help on how to solve the issue.

Typically, an assistant would come on the line and try and guide you through a solution over the phone. If it doesn’t work, they would have to dispatch a technician to take a look, and you might have to wait for a couple of days until you get your WiFi back.

AR remote assistance eliminates all of this. No more blind phone call guidance, no more waiting for an expert to save the day. AR technology will allow you to share what you see directly with a technician without having to wait for them to come over. The technician will be able to annotate your screen, point out what you need to do and where, and easily fix your issues in record time!

Remote assistance in AR is the future of a post-COVID19 world.

Machine learning, or artificial intelligence, is experiencing a meteoric rise of its own. This is partially due to the ongoing health crisis – AI is helping in the process of early detection and infection diagnosis, development of vaccines, and assisting overworked healthcare workers.

AR and VR software developers are dedicating more time to AI and creating artificially intelligent solutions for a wide variety of industries, especially the healthcare, automotive, and entertainment sectors.

For example, a combination of AR and AI could provide an additional layer of safety to drivers by pointing out potential hazards on the road. At the same time, these technologies could also alert the driver to historical landmarks or sightseeing spots they might be interested to check out.

The power of AI’s incredible data processing capabilities and AR and VR visual representation will have a significant impact on automation, image and facial recognition, and highly interactive workspaces.

One of the virtual reality trends that will continue growing in 2021 is the result of the immersive nature of the technology. Education through VR might be a bit behind, but VR training is steadily gaining popularity. Across the world, businesses are investing in virtual reality hardware and software to safely, inexpensively, and effectively coach their employees in new procedures and processes.

Virtual reality in retail industry is a prime example of this. By immersing themselves in VR, employees can learn how to manage long queues or crowds of shoppers without disrupting the actual daily workflow.

Top virtual reality industry trends include this versatile technology taking its rightful place in training programs, everywhere from manufacturing and manual labor to healthcare procedures to dealing with customers in retail or food service industries.

A major benefit of VR is that it can be used for improving both soft and hard skills, which can become invaluable to organizations of all types.

A niche use of virtual reality is integrating 360-degree scenes into marketing campaigns. These relatively simple scenes allow consumers to get a realistic impression of a hotel room, a travel destination, a real estate property, a new car they’re hoping to buy, or similar.

It is experiential marketing at its finest. Organizations aren’t offering just static pictures and a list of features – they’re offering an entire experience. A consumer that enters the 360 space and gets a feel for the environment first-hand is not likely to forget it any time soon. They’re even more inclined to make a purchase after a positive experiential marketing event.

With the development of 360 videos, 360-degree marketing is taking on a whole new dimension in 2021. Platforms for developing virtual tours are popping up left and right, and you might want to look into setting up one for your business before your competitors beat you to it.

Augmented and virtual reality future trends aren’t limited just to the sports, gaming, and entertainment industries. With the rapid development of technologies such as AI and ML, more use cases are unlocked for AR and VR across the board.

We’re facing breakthroughs in augmented reality medical applications, mixed reality applications, virtual reality marketing, training and education applications, and more. AR indoor navigation will set a new standard for manufacturing companies, while AR remote assistance will have a massive impact on how different procedures are handled in most industries.

There are still some drawbacks that we have to mention – even though VR trends are on the rise in the business sector, we still can’t expect this technology to replace convenient smartphones, tablets, and other household devices. VR headsets are still too cumbersome and too limited with their use for virtual reality to become ubiquitous.

That being said, the future looks promising. 2021 will be a productive year for AR and VR, and hopefully, it will treat us all a little bit kinder than the previous one.

If you want to learn more about how to incorporate these innovative technologies into your business, feel free to send us a message. We look forward to collaborating with you!

Even though it was first conceived in the 1950s, virtual reality (VR) didn’t really take off until the recent years. Head-mounted display systems (VR headsets) are becoming more prevalent in households across the globe (with as many as 55.5 million predicted by the end of 2024), and VR games are slowly but surely drawing in a strong fanbase. VR’s sister technology, augmented reality (AR), is finding its use in marketing, product testing, education, training, and even social media.

To say that VR and AR are relatively new technologies wouldn’t be wrong. However, because the tech world is evolving at almost breakneck speed, newer and more efficient versions of AR and VR are already on the market.

In this post, we’re going to discuss XR (extended reality) – more specifically WebXR – and how it influences the world of AR and VR, what you can do with it, and what it means for your business.

XR means ‘extended reality’ that encompasses AR, VR, and other present and future immersive technologies that will doubtlessly find their way to the public. WebXR is an API (application programming interface) that allows software developers to work on a wide range of XR experiences for mobile devices and desktops.

WebXR allows IT companies to create AR and VR software that is web-based. These XR experiences are accessed through a browser and don’t require any app downloads or installations from the user. Anyone with a smartphone can have an AR (or VR) experience just by clicking on a link.

Understandably, this opens up a whole new set of possibilities. Businesses can now take advantage of extended reality without worrying whether their consumers would want to download the app or if their devices would be able to support it. Anyone can use WebXR. For pretty much anything.

The better question here is: what can you do with WebXR? In theory, options and purposes for WebXR are limitless. Here are just a few examples of what you can do in WebXR:

WebXR can be used in entertainment, marketing, education, training, virtual travel, you name it. Businesses from all corners of the industry are flocking to the new technology that enables their consumers to try out immersive surroundings and real-world enhancements like you wouldn’t believe.

One of the most impressive examples of WebXR is Amazon’s Sumerian Express, a VR scene where you find yourself on a train, the Sumerian Express, and get to explore a passenger compartment while the train is in motion.

If you’re a fan of history and travel, you may also want to take a peek at Rome’s Invisible City from BBC, a WebXR experience that transports you to Rome. Once in the city, you get to learn about its ancient buildings and monuments, wonderfully narrated and accompanied by stunning 360-degree images.

We weren’t joking when we said nearly anything was possible in Web XR.

We’ve mentioned how all you need to partake in WebXR experiences is an internet browser. Can it be any browser? It depends.

Here is a list of all the browsers that support WebXR. Google Chrome, Microsoft Edge, and Opera are ahead of the game, though in some other browsers, such as Firefox, you have the option to enable WebXR support.

Is WebXR the way forward?

The truth is, no one knows what technology will arrive even a year from now, let alone longer than that. But we are confident that WebXR, due to its efficiency and ease of use, will rightfully surpass classic AR and VR apps in due time.

If you’re a business owner interested in integrating any of these technologies into your campaigns to drive consumer traffic, definitely consider the option of WebXR. Your potential customers will be impressed by the fact that they don’t have to do anything more than simply click on a link and enjoy the exciting new things you’ve prepared for them.

If you’d have to pick any industry which would be the best fit for innovation in visual technology, which would it be? I’d bet the fashion and clothing industry in general would be among your top 5! Especially in the upcoming ‘new-normal’ post-covid19 world. Can you imagine waiting in line at your local Zara in front of a changing room to try on clothes that someone else tried on like 10 times? Didn’t think so. But you CAN imagine users standing in front of an AR fitting mirror and trying on different outfits with a tap of the finger. That’s why the fashion industry is eager for the innovations that augmented, virtual and mixed reality bring!

We’ve narrowed it down to an example from each of the 3 aforementioned technologies, AR, MR & VR innovative fashion solutions.

One of the main products that will lead the innovation of the fashion industry in augmented reality clothing is certainly the augmented reality fitting mirror. This product consists of a giant screen in front of the user with a camera which can track the users movements and allows them to try on literally an infinite amount of products, from hats, sunglasses, jeans, shoes, etc.

The AR fitting mirror is a product which can be used by fashion retailers by placing it in the store for the consumers to use and cut down the time they spend in the changing room whilst trying on various designs.

The AR fitting mirror can also be used by the producers of fashion products, where they can use it in their showroom to present new designs to clients!

So, the Augmented Reality Fitting Mirror is adaptable to both the B2C and B2B business model for the fashion industry!

Mixed reality can have some people confused, but to simply put it as Microsoft described it’s HoloLens 2, a MR device is a self-contained standalone Mixed Reality (MR) holographic computer, which enables users to engage with digital 3D content and avatars as holograms who can interact with the real world around them.

An great example for an MR solution for the fashion industry would be in using HoloLens2, or a similar Mixed Reality device mainly in conducting B2B. For example, lets say a fashion brand wants to synchronize their design for the next season with the factory which will produce the fashion products. A great way to do it would be by using holographic visualization. A 3D model of the design, or even an avatar (fashion model) wearing it could appear right in front of you, and you could change the design with a tap of a finger, view it from all angles, change lighting conditions, etc.

Virtual Reality offers by far the most complex, yet most immersive experience when it comes to visualizing different environments. Many industries already successfully use complex VR solutions for a variety of applications, like virtual training for employees, architecture plan visualization and the most recent trend is VR meetings and conferences.

One of the ideas of how the fashion industry could apply VR in a B2B environment is through a complex system for visualization of 3D models and designs regarding fashion innovation and clothing innovations.

Imagine that you could put on a headset and a pair of haptic touch gloves and be transported directly to a factory. There you could see exactly what kind of designs are being proposed for your products, and with the haptic gloves, you could actually feel the fabric, be it silk, cotton or something else.

This kind of solution would significantly reduce costs of sending cloth and design samples from the factory to the customer!

The fashion industry is definitely ready for a major technology innovation! Augmented Reality, Mixed Reality & Virtual Reality could easily be applied to a vast majority of processes in this industry.

In January of 2016, Goldman Sachs published a report on the current state of the then mostly unknown, and lowkey market which consisted of the mystified words AR and VR. Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality has now become a normal term used by businesses, and marketeers worldwide.

But in 2016, it was new to everyone and Goldman shook the markets when the report was released by claiming that this unfathomed territory will rival the PC and the smartphone head on!

They had released three scenarios of this technology’s take at the market.

The ‘base case’ or the most likely size of the AR & VR market was a whopping $80bn in revenue by 2025! It would be divided $45bn in hardware and $35bn in software.

The ‘accelerated uptake’ or the most optimistic view, was a seemingly incredible $182bn.

And a ‘delayed uptake’, or a bit pessimistic scenario, had the market at $23bn.

Goldman’s report outlined the 9 key industries that need to take up AR & VR for this market to start making the astonishing revenues they predicted. The selected 9 were: videogames (obviously), live events, video entertainment, healthcare, real estate, retail, education, engineering & finally military.

Well, as you can see by the way that we have linked almost every of the aforementioned industry use cases for VR, just of the top of our heads, they were not wrong!

Now, according to the latest figures released by Statista from December of 2019, we can see that the size of the AR & VR Market in 2018 & 2019 combined was $22.6bn and their forecast for 2020 alone is $18.8bn!

Now, this Statista report was not the only one to come out in December!

IDTechEx, has released an extensive report rivaling the 2016 Goldman market report on AR & VR in the impact it is having!

The IDTechEx’s report is all-embracing, factoring in historical data from almost 100 companies, and more than 170 products released for AR & VR markets. Their report is a bit more realistic than Goldman’s, as they’re now dealing with real hard data, one that Goldman didn’t have in 2016. They now estimate that the AR & VR (and MR) market is set to be worth OVER $30bn by 2030! And that is a realistic estimate at most!

When you look at the historical figures, the AR & VR market has grown by 107% between 2016 and 2019. Now a jump to $30bn by 2030 means ‘just’ a 46% increase, which is a lot, but is also LESS than certain trends show! If Goldman was right in their initial report, and we are in a ‘delayed uptake’ of the entire AR & VR market, we actually might expect an even higher jump than the 107% between 2016 and 2019! IF that turns out to be true, it could mean that this entire market is still currently UNDERVALUED, and that it will be worth much, much more than the $30bn forecasted by IDTechEx.

There could be a real chance that the market could increase in the coming years, and maybe not by 2025, but certainly by 2030, it could well be worth the initial $80bn that Goldman had predicted in 2016!

Hardware is a major part of the entire AR, VR and MR market, because, as stated by the Goldman report, it accounts for 56% of the entire market. We’ll take a look at the previous flagship VR devices, as well as the current high end HMD’s for VR and MR.

The hardware part of the AR & VR market wasn’t and still isn’t ‘cheap’ despite some attempts (*cough* cardboard *cough*), we’ll go back to that a bit later.

The main player in the hardware department we will look at is Oculus (now owned by Facebook). In 2016, Oculus Rift was the frontrunner of the VR Head Mounted Displays’ or simply HMD’s. It went on preorder for $599, which is now, when you adjust that for inflation, $642! (you could get a new iPhone for that money then) and because you needed a ‘VR ready’ PC to run it, that bundle would cost you $1500 ($1600 today!)

Whereas now the severely upgraded version of Oculus’s flagship Rift, the Rift S costs just under $400 that’s a 46% price drop for better tech in just 3 years’ time!

Now, that was the PC based VR hardware, the mobile based hardware is another story.

Mobile VR (and AR) was supposed to be a cheaper alternative to the expensive PC VR experiences, even though they looked nicer. Google had an amazing idea, to bring VR to the masses, with nothing more than cardboard. The cardboard VR headset was a great success actually. Everybody remembers when the New York Times, sent out 1.000.000, that’s right a million, Google Cardboards to their subscribers in order to promote their own VR app!

Samsung also joined the party with the Samsung Gear VR, produced by Oculus, a dedicated headset, with a connector, that allowed only Samsung phones to be connected, and when so, triggered the Samsung VR app. This also proved to be an ‘expensive sport’ as the flagship Samsung S6 that was being branded as compatible with the new Samsung Gear VR glasses went for almost $700 and the Samsung Gear VR, if you hadn’t got a deal and got them together, went for as high as $120 at the time. This meant that you needed to spend more than $800 to enjoy mobile VR, which was still in the early adopters phase.

Things seemed good for mobile VR, as it was beginning to be frequently used for marketing purposes, and for exhibition displays. Even Google joined the proper headset game, when they released Google Daydream View.

Then in October 2019, disaster. Both officially, and unofficially, Phone based VR had ended. You could still order a custom app made for you, and Unity, or a similar engine would produce an .apk file for you to install on your device (or upload to the Play Store) but Daydream was no longer up to date, as no new phones supported it, which lead people to believe that Google had abandoned the project. Samsung also hadn’t released a new Gear VR for two years, despite shipping a total of more than 5 million units just in the first year. Up until now Samsung hasn’t stated officially that the project was put on hold or discontinued. But as the headset is made by Oculus, Oculus’ CTO John Carmack, stated that that VR device’s days are numbered.

The future for VR in general though is much brighter than it is for mobile based VR. the PC based headsets are coming out and have good reception with users. But PC based VR has always been in its own league when quality is concerned. The thing that is replacing mobile based VR is the new ‘Standalone VR’ headsets.

Google has replaced their aforementioned Daydream View, for the ‘Daydream Standalone’. HTC is giving it a go with the HTC Focus, Lenovo brought out the Mirage Solo (this one’s powered by Google’s Daydream) and of course, we’ve saved the best for last, Oculus has two main players, the Oculus GO, and their flagship Oculus Quest. The last two cost $150 & $400 respectively.

As these do not require you to be separated from your phones, waste their battery, and generally are optimized specifically for VR, people just accepted them, and are fonder of them then mobile VR. The Standalone VR headsets might just be what the overall market needed to go and transfer the consumers, and ‘trigger’ the early majority to kick in and drive the market to a peak.

We won’t dwell to deep here. We’ll just be mentioning a few key players in the Mixed Reality, MR, market.

Why not start with the biggest of them all? Microsoft.

People might still not be fully aware of it, but there is a whole part of Windows dedicated to MR. The Windows Mixed Reality Platform. This consists of dedicated VR headsets and titles, but it also has exclusives for Microsoft’s flagship MR device, the HoloLens (well actually the HoloLens 2).

But arguably the biggest name in Mixed Reality is Magic Leap. The company that patented and released a novel technology for presenting holograms needed for proper MR, it only recently released its product, the Magic Leap 1, but it began hitting the headlines when the big names started to fund it out of the blue. After the most recent funding round (December 2019) it raised a totally unreal $2.6Bn! Some of their investors include Google, Alibaba Group, and AT&T.

VR is still young, 4 years ago, nobody really cared, then there was an initial craze for it, with everyone throwing everything at it, before natural adoption took place. Now things have settled down, and we are in for a steady growth phase. The invisible hand of the market has spoken (or has it moved!?) and it pushed mobile based VR away, and brought us standalone VR headsets, even better PC based VR, and it brought magic to life with Mixed Reality.

If the numbers are right, and they tend not to lie, with AR, VR & MR as technology adoption is concerned, we are heading into the Early Majority, and it is unclear how long it is going to stay there, as there are more innovations on the way, and even more drivers for true mass adoption. The great thing is that according to Professor Everett Rogers’s curve, the entire market is only at, or slightly above 25% of total market share, which means there is a lot more room for growth, innovation, new devices, new ideas, new use cases, well we could go on and on. We’ll leave you with the following, as one optimistic indicator for 2020 and beyond. It’s not by accident that Gabe Newell and Valve are stepping into the Half Life territory once again, and are taking it straight, and exclusively to VR!

Since virtual and augmented reality are making their way into almost every segment of our daily lives, it is only natural that they also trickle into marketing, an industry that nowadays heavily relies on digital media.

Digital marketing is defined as the type of marketing that employs electronic devices or any sort of digital content to get its message across. Virtual and augmented reality certainly fall into this category.

So, how can you utilize this perhaps still mysterious technology to your advantage? How can your project or your business benefit from something that is still new and developing?

The answer is easy: precisely those qualities of virtual reality – the fact that it is new and not fully explored – are what make it hot, trendy, and a real breath of fresh air in the midst of all those stale marketing tricks we’ve seen before.

Take a look at some simple, straightforward ways you can incorporate virtual and augmented reality into your marketing, and how this will boost your profits in record time.

One of the main ways this technology can help your business is by offering your customers the opportunity to embark on a virtual tour of your choosing. Do you have a store? A restaurant? Or perhaps a factory where your product is manufactured?

Thanks to the wonders of virtual reality, your customers can slip on a headset and be instantly transported into another world. Depending on the level of intricacy of the app, they can either take a look around the space and feel the atmosphere, or they might even be able to walk around and discover new things.

Virtual tours are a great way to introduce your spaces to customers who might not be able to visit them personally.

Say that you’ve been working on a new product. It has been in production for a while, and it is about to be released to the public. Classic advertising and marketing strategies are in place, but you might also want to consider using virtual reality.

By having your customers take a look at the product itself before the launch, or perhaps even test it out (see our next segment), you are generating buzz that will spread and garner attention.

And attention is definitely what you want when it comes to putting a new product out in the world.

Whether your product is new or not, it is always a good idea to allow the customer or client to test it out before they buy. That way they get a feel of how the product works, how it might look in their home or on their person and are more certain of and happier with their purchase, increasing the likelihood of them coming back to you for more. A win-win situation for all.

Product testing through virtual reality can be applied to a wide range of product types, from apparel and footwear to cars and other means of transportation, even to travel packages and real estate. Your customers will be grateful for the chance of trying out the product, and let’s face it – testing new things in virtual reality is just a fun experience for everyone.

Through all of these ways of including virtual reality into your marketing campaigns, you are strengthening your relationships with your clients. This is especially true for the younger demographic. New technologies spark interest and wonder, and your customers will get an opportunity to learn more about your company and/or projects.

Through VR, you can easily demonstrate the way your business operates, the way your employees contribute to the common goal, and thus your customers can feel included in the entire process, becoming more emotionally invested in the end result.

Finally, there’s no one to say you can’t use VR simply for allowing your customer to have some fun. Take the example of McDonald’s and how they made it possible for kids to enjoy a VR game after a Happy Meal. The game neither offered new insight into their products or helped them learn more about the company – it was there purely for the entertainment of their youngest customers.

As such, it fulfilled its purpose of connecting the brand with fun times and encouraging kids to come back for more Happy Meals in the future.

If you want your marketing to benefit from using AR and VR then CONTACT US, and we’ll get the show on the road!

IT professionals who work with both Augmented and Virtual Reality can provide us with the industry insights after taking the realistic view on both technologies. Due to the availability of smart phones it seems that AR will prevail much easier and it will be possible to use it in various industries. Personally I find it appealing how the creator of Magic Leap Rony Abovitz showcases the major differences between VR and AR.

“Our philosophy as a company (and my personal view) is to ‘leave no footprints’ in the brain. The brain is very neuroplastic and there is no doubt that near-eye stereoscopic 3D systems have the potential to cause neurologic change.”

Rony’s best observations can be viewed in the section Ask Me Anything on Reddit and below we outline 3 industry and end-user scenarios where AR is much better solution than VR.

There are several pre-requisites for Augmented and Virtual Reality to be used more often: hardware needs to be affordable and accessible; the technology should work all the time; and there should be social component to using it.

Because of these three reasons, AR is already much more wide-spread, which also indicates that humans who are using AR want to add a layer of content to their reality rather than to replace it with VR and to completely shut themselves off.

With AR learning and interaction becomes more collaborative due to the very nature of interface where people look at the markers and the additional content in person. In VR, specialized social networks are so far the only way for users to connect while each of them wears their own headset and has their own VR view to the world.

In VR there are so called 6 DOF (6 degrees of freedom) as users’ activity and gaze are tracked along the x, y and z axis. These 6 degrees practically mean that you may physically move yourself: left, right, forward, backward, up and down and you will get transported to a different world of immersive experiences.

On the other hand, in Augmented Reality, the quality of graphics, higher resolution displays and other metrics can be more rudimentary and basic since you are not viewing content directly, in front of your eyes and in the immersive manner. With Augmented Reality, technical requirements for you to make an app may be less demanding and certainly developers do not have to worry about consumers’ and players’ motion sickness.

Since hardware for both technologies still needs to improve in UX, it will be possible to impress users with AR and VR in foreseeable future.

As it is the case with most of the digital transformation projects, AR and VR as enterprise solutions are not easy to implement. The buy-in from different stakeholders is needed, the technical rigor is a prerequisite, the timeline for project implementation and the budget should be precisely followed.

Therefore, when screens need to be provided for thousands of users and employees such as in projects for Industries 4.0 it is much more logical to use AR and web-based VR on the existing smart phones and the computers of employees than to buy thousands of VR headsets whose price ranges from dozen dollars to several thousands (depending on the company brand).

ARVRtech is providing solutions in both AR and VR space, depending on customer specific needs, and aiming to provide the maximum value and experience to the end users.

To analyze top eight educational systems in the world, we went through several resources such as WEF’s scores and literature including the book The Learning Revolution.

Let us start with the score that WEF found to be viable in assessing the readiness of the entire countries for educating the next generation at the highest level. The text is adapted from Independent’s article on the best educational systems in the world.

According to 2015 statistics Estonia invests on education 4% of its GDP. This strategic decision is in alignment with the country’s 1992 Education Act, which indicates that the goals of education are “to create favourable conditions for the development of personality, family and the Estonian nation; to promote the development of ethnic minorities, economic, political and cultural life in Estonia and the preservation of nature in the global economic and cultural context; to teach the values of citizenship; and to set up the prerequisites for creating a tradition of lifelong learning nation-wide.”

The striking results that Estonian education system achieves are in alignment with globally relevant work in e-governance that increases the competitiveness for both entrepreneurs and big companies.

The noblest work in education is to make a reasoning man, and we expect to train a young child by making him reason! This is beginning at the end; this is making an instrument of a result. If children understood how to reason they would not need to be educated.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Not too long ago in 2012 BBC stated that Qatar was “becoming one of the most significant players in the field of education innovation, supporting a raft of projects from grassroots basic literacy through to high-end university research.”

This country, rich in oil and obtaining competitive edge by education, has a strategy on a national level to improve education standards and teach citizens for jobs in 2030 thanks to Vision 2030 programme.

Qatar is a country with high percentage of expat experts so their decision was to offer free government-funded education only to its citizens, whereas most foreign nationals tend to send their children to private schools.

The hardest conviction to get into the mind of a beginner is that the education upon which he is engaged is not a college course, not a medical course, but a life course, for which the work of a few years under teachers is but a preparation.

Sir William Osler

Despite hosting head-quarters of many Fortune 50 ICT companies in Dublin and doing significant work in the field of education, recession hit hard Ireland’s education.

A recent report indicated that Ireland spent on education 15% less than the developed world during the height of the financial crisis, 2008 to 2013, which indicates important changes for the future.

When it comes to the secondary schools in Ireland, most of them are owned and managed privately, but the state funds them. Apart from that, state comprehensives and vocational schools exist.

I’m always ready to learn although I do not always like being taught.

Sir Winston Churchill

Netherlands is famous for its open attitude to learning, as schools typically don’t give much homework until secondary level and students indicate low levels of stress and pressure. Thus, 2013 Unicef study officially confirmed that Dutch children are the happiest in the world, leading the way of globally educational well-being among others. Schools are divided between “neutral” state schools and faith schools, with a tiny fraction of private schools.

The freedom to make mistakes provides the best environment for creativity. Education isn’t how much you have committed to memory, or even how much you know. It’s being able to differentiate between what you know and what you don’t.

Anatole Franc

Singapore scores incredibly highly in the PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment) tests, which measure and compare the performance of students in different countries. Still, it is very unfavourable for Singapore students, that since very young age their school system puts them under pressure.

Children want to learn to the degree that they are unable to distinguish learning from fun. They keep this attitude until we adults convince them that learning is not fun.

Glenn Doman

Belgium has four types of secondary schools: general secondary schools, technical secondary schools, art secondary education institutions and vocational secondary education schools. According to the Fulbright Commission in the US, which organizes student exchanges with Belgium and Luxembourg, “Education enjoys high priority, and the largest share of the regional governments’ annual budget in Belgium. The complete systems of public and private schools are available to all children between the ages of 4 and 18, at little or no cost.”

Learning how to learn is life’s most important skill.

Tony Buzan

Surprisingly enough, just 5% of children attend private schools in Switzerland. Depending on the region, the lessons are taught in different languages and German, Italian or French are the most common languages of instruction. From secondary schools students are separated by ability.

An education isn’t how much you have committed to memory, or even how much you know. It’s being able to differentiate between what you do know and what you don’t. It’s knowing where to go to find out what you need to know; and it’s knowing how to use the information you get.

William Feather

Finland is on the top rankings of global education systems and is famous for leveling the differences in abilities since all pupils are taught in the same classes. Consequently, the gap between the weakest and the strongest pupils is the smallest in the world. Finnish schools heavily rely on intrinsic motivation of students and they give relatively little homework, while there is only one mandatory test at age 16.

If you are planning for a year, sow rice; if you are planning for a decade, plant trees; if you are planning for a lifetime, educate people.

Chinese proverb

Bearing in mind all these diverse perspective, ARVRtech aims to be at the frontier of innovation and to provide the global solution for education: Immersive4Learning platform. By integrating real-life needs of the market and top-edge technology Immersive4Learning will provide the tools for learning for life as well as provide the foundation for the best learning tools and methods. The main question we should ask is „How to Learn?” and “What is the purpose of learning in the 21st century for the job markets that continuously change?”. Immresive4Learning platform will enable practicing and doing, as well as providing tools to collaborate and teach others – ultimately increasing students retention rates to 90%.

ARVRtech is leading the current EdTech revolution with our Immersive4Learning platform. I4L employs Artificial Intelligence processing in order to produce a personalized learning experience for users and can be applied for a plethora of use cases. ARVRtech’s Immersive4Learning platform helps to improves conventional education, enhances language learning and is even used for industrial and corporate training!

Cloud computing and Augmented and Virtual Reality are two most emerging technologies today that receive attention even from those who do not have technical background.

VR solutions for marketing can create greater engagement and increase brand awareness of products and services that marketers want to put upfront. Due to interactive nature of Virtual Reality, marketing becomes also more dynamic, spot-on and creative. Another mechanism to implement VR in marketing are VR platforms. with customized templates and on-demand metrics to measure.

Thus, ARVRtech created a cloud-based platform on the premises that Augmented and Virtual Reality applications can be intuitively created without programming. Through numerous interactions with our clients we have learned that marketing agencies, clients in retail, consumer electronics, tourism, education and other verticals want to be in tune with the latest technologies while they also create the content.

Digital natives have moved in their thinking and testing from ‘‘I want somebody to show me how this technology works’’ to ‘‘I want to try this myself and create my own versions of AR/VR apps and solutions.’’

In our first version we have just focused on creating drag-and-drop platform for AR, but now our strategy and product development have evolved so that we integrated the component of Virtual and Augmented Reality.

Therefore, we invite all of you to try and test MRgenie Web Creator, the drag-and-drop, cloud-based platform which evolved thanks to needs and wants of our clients.

MRgenie is easy and intuitive to use as you follow the procedure for using it in four straightforward steps:

What can a cloud-base platform such as MRgenie do for marketing agencies, their clients and profitability?

1) MRgenie is a fantastic solution to cater to the needs of both brands interested in targeted campaigns and individual users who want more personalized, self-made content. We have created two MRgenie options: an app for the Public Market and your Private AR&VR Creations.

2) Another challenge that clients of VR and AR companies face is that the standardized, single kind of content should be delivered on different headsets that exist.

The good news is that many hardware options and gadgets for VR and AR exist in the realm of consumer electronics that the upcoming thing is creating all different kinds of content which is going to engage and entertain all users.

This is where the magic of marketing agencies comes into practice so that they can join forces with our engineering team and create campaigns that convert users.

3) Likewise, another benefit that marketing agencies have while working on cloud-base interface is that the product life-cycle in VR and AR campaigns gets short.

Thus, it gives users competitive edge as they are in charge of the result they want to create and they can try out the best templates from VR and AR libraries.

For example, available VR templates are VR Gallery and VR Game, whereas available AR templates range from Photo, Photo Markerless, Greeting Cards, all the way to our favourite product Treasure Hunt – Game, IoT, AR Blank.

We used appropriate AR Photo templates for Ski Dubai or Technology for Marketing fair in London, and we realized how applicable MRgenie is in the event industry. At the moment, our decision is to expand into the marketing vertical so that MRgenie becomes the go-to tool where different inputs and outputs are going to be tracked.

MRgenie in the updated version will rely on inputs, pilots, and previous campaigns of our clients. Then the user would be able to feed data related to the project content, context, collected data and principles of artificial intelligence and machine learning. The final output will be that the campaigns can be created across sectors with different templates, and some content can be added or subtracted to it, as we track marketing metrics and get extra engagement with VR and AR.

AR content stems from 2D models, 3D models, text, video, photo/flash button, to web link and share. Also, there are different types of VR content in a 3D environment: photos, audio, video, text, 2D models, and 3D models which are upcoming.

MRgenie is the project in motion which will depend on what our users demand and how technology evolves. Time and team effort will tell what the limit for the world of VR and AR is.

When clients hire us on campaigns for managing their brand or activation of users, we help them choose among all different types of AR and VR content. Of course, many of those content categories are available on MRgenie and clients can test User Experience and how VR and AR feel to them.

It takes special magic power for an organization to gather top people from the niche industry in a short period given the busy times we live in.

This is why VR AR Online Conference achieved a stunning success with more than 75 Speakers, 9 tracks, and 10.000 webinar viewers.

ARVRtech was delighted to present its VR projects in education and training for industrial purposes and you can follow the webinar here.

Boris Pokrić spoke about ARVRtech’s solutions for enterprise training, serious games and the prototype of Immersive4Learning Platform.

In the beginning of the webinar Boris explained how synthetic environment based on Unity 3D engine was used for creating enterprise training in VR for the cement company. This solution could be applied for maintenance assistance for certain machinery, to obtain feedback from users and to prepare them better for work at the company. If HTC Vive controls are used, even more interaction with machinery may happen.

The intention of ARVRtech team working on this project was to provide a generic solution that enables creation of new courses, materials and content. When it comes to ARVRtech’s serious games Boris presented two apps fueled on gamification elements: AR Treasure Hunt and AR Multi-player for Air Quality.

One of our AR Treasure Hunts was created in the European Commission project with the intention to change user’s behavior in public buildings so that they increase energy efficiency.

AR Multi-player for Air Quality was created in collaboration with Disney Research in Zurich in the project FI Content, funded by the European Commission. For instance, there would be slum-based algorithms to place some avatars on the streets. The avatars would change depending on the quality stations, placed in the city. The players of the game would guess the conditions on the basis how avatars looked like and what accessories they wore.

In the final segment of the webinar, Boris explained the educational component of Immersive4Learning platform for the fast creation of educational VR courses, powered by Artificial Intelligence and personalized recommendations. In other words, not everybody will see the same content and the platform may recommend the best pedagogical model to use for a particular kind of material.

Monitoring of learning is based on cognitive models as people’s behavior is checked and the answers they give. Even biometric parameters such as heart rate or movements may be measured. More clues may be added in the educational material.

The great thing about Immersive4Learning platform is that its concepts may be used for different school subjects (from mathematics to chemistry and STEM) as well as enterprise environment: from instructing users about the safety of the equipment or HR processes.

Overall, for the purposes of the webinar, VRARA Industry Committees presented 9 tracks with an admirable array of international speakers: AEC, Education, Enterprise, LBE Arcades, Marketing & Advertising, Retail, Storytelling, Training, and WebVR.

Such a remarkable event attracted equally strong sponsors: the renowned AR/VR software platforms, immersive experience labs, agencies delivering top-notch AR/VR solutions for clients in various industries and AR/VR smart hardware technologies.

Sponsors of VRARA global webinar were: You Are Here, Atheer, ThirdEye Gen with X1 Smart Glasses , PTC, Kaon Interactive, Vuze, Marks & Clerk, aisle411, Order 66 Labs, SecondMuse

This event is a fantastic prelude to VR/AR Global Summit in Vancouver to show the potential of the entire AR/VR ecosystem and to forge extraordinary partnerships.

On September 21-22 The VR/AR Global Summit will take place as a focal point for innovation and knowledge exchange among content creators, hardware developers, big brands, designers, and manufacturers. Not only in North America, but world-wide.

Speakers from Google, IBM Watson, Ford, NASA and HTC Vive are already confirmed; and their expertise will leave no visitor indifferent.

Through various education and presentation formats, participants and speakers will gather, learn, connect and share their knowledge on the ongoing basis.

VR/AR Global Summit will be a place for inspiration, real-industry insights, meaningful insights as well as hands-on workshops.

VRARA, i.e. VR/AR Association is one of the leading IT industry organizations in the world whose proud member is ARVRtech.