Mit welchen Geschäftsmodellen Virtual Reality zum Milliardengeschäft wird

Virtual Reality wird einen komplett neuen Wirtschaftsmarkt schaffen. Das zeigen unter anderem die potenziellen Anwendungsbereiche der Technologie. Zudem wie zügig die Wirtschaftsunternehmen ihre Produktentwicklungen vorantreiben. Und nicht zuletzt die hohe Zufriedenheit der Erstnutzer, die als Konsumenten für den nötigen zukünftigen Absatz sorgen werden. Was aber werden die virtuellen Geschäftsmodelle der Zukunft sein?

Keiner, der sich ernsthaft mit dem Einfluss neuer Technologien beschäftigt, kann Virtual Reality jetzt noch als reinen Hype abtun. Bezüglich der technologischen und wirtschaftlichen Fortschritte, geht die Tendenz hin zur Prognose, dass VR mit der Entwicklung und gesellschaftlichen Relevanz von Smartphones und sozialen Medien vergleichbar ist. Das bedeutet, dass sich Virtual Reality schon in wenigen Jahren zum Milliardengeschäft entwickeln wird. Zu dieser Erkenntnis kommt unter anderem auch die Trendstudie Consumer Technology 2016, die wiederum teils auf Basis einer repräsentativen Umfrage des Digitalverbandes Bitkom entstanden ist. Dabei kommen die Herausgeber zu dem Ergebnis, dass Virtual Reality als neue Technologie ein auffallend starkes Wachstum vorweist und zu einem zusätzlichen Standbein innerhalb der Consumer-Technology-Branche wird.

Computer- Videospiele als treibende Kraft

Der Gaming-Branche kommt innerhalb dieser wirtschaftlichen Entwicklung eine Vorreiterrolle zu – das deckt sich auch mit der Eigensicht der Entwickler und Hersteller der Computer- und Videospiel-Industrie. Zu Recht, denn laut der Studie des Digitalverbandes ist momentan der Großteil der potenziellen VR-Endnutzer – 41 Prozent – vor allem daran interessiert, Computer- und Videospiele in der virtuellen Welt zu erleben. Auf den weiteren Plätzen folgen mit 35 Prozent, Menschen, die gerne ferne Orte mittels Virtual Reality kennenlernen würden. 23 Prozent der Befragten würden sich wünschen, virtuell bei Musikkonzerten live dabei zu sein. Filmfans schlagen mit 20 Prozent zu Buche und 19 Prozent würden gerne zeitgleich und direkt bei ihren favorisierten Sportereignissen mitfiebern.

Die Resonanz der Verbraucher ist herausragend

2016 war auch das Jahr, in dem mehr Erstnutzer als je zuvor Kontakt mit der virtuellen Realität aufgenommen haben. Und laut den Experten zeigt deren positive Resonanz wiederum, dass VR ein riesiges Potenzial hat. So haben bereits mehr als die Hälfte aller Deutschen über 14 Jahren von Virtual Reality gehört, was repräsentativ 59 Prozent der Befragten ausmacht. Fast jeder dritte Deutsche kann sich vorstellen, eine VR-Brille dauerhaft zu nutzen. 9 Prozent haben sogar erste virtuelle Luft schnuppern können und eine VR-Brille selbst ausprobiert. Natürlich arbeiten deshalb auch die wirtschaftlichen Big Player im Hintergrund auf Hochtouren, um diesen neuen Markt für sich abzustecken. Ob Hardware-Entwicklung, Content, E-Commerce oder Kommunikation: Apple, Facebook, Google, Amazon oder Ali Baba – die Tech-Unternehmen rüsten sich für einen heißen Kampf um die Marktherrschaft.

Was sind die virtuellen Geschäftsbereiche?

Was aber werden die Geschäftsbereiche sein, für die Virtual Reality neue Branchen schaffen wird? Wie werden Entwickler, Hersteller und Produzenten skalierbare Businessmodelle umsetzen, die vom Endnutzer angenommen werden? Ein analytischer Blick auf die einzelnen Branchen hinsichtlich des prozentualen Gesamtumsatzes für Virtual Reality und Augmented Reality im Jahr 2020:

Hardware-Verkäufe

In wenigen Jahren wird man ihn wohl als den klassischen VR-Wirtschaftsbereich bezeichnen: die Entwicklung, Produktion und der Vertrieb von Hardware wie VR-Brillen sowie von Zubehör. Schon allein in diesem Jahr wurden bereits kopulierte 158 Millionen Euro mit VR-Hardware umgesetzt. Hier scheinen sich die wirtschaftlichen Schwergewichte bereits herauskristallisiert zu haben: Oculus gehört zu Facebook. Google setzt auf Magic Leap sowie Daydream und weitere eigene Entwicklungsstudios. Zu Apple gehört Metaio, dazu kommen Microsoft, HTC/Valve, Sony und Samsung mit eigenen Entwicklungseinheiten und eigenen Hardwareprodukten. Ganz klar wird die Hardware-Entwicklung und Umsetzung mit 25 % Umsatz zu einem der größten Geschäftsbereiche im Jahr 2020 gehören.

E-Commerce

2020 werden 20 % des gesamten VR-Umsatzes auf den E-Commerce-Bereich fallen. Kräftig mitmischen wird dabei die chinesische Ali Baba Group, rund um den Gründer und Vorsitzenden Jack Ma. Das Unternehmen konnte schon Anfang 2016 eine überraschende Umsatzsteigerung von 32 Prozent mit umgerechnet 4,8 Milliarden Euro verkünden. Dieses Geld stecken die Chinesen direkt in die Entwicklung neuer virtueller Technologien für zukünftige Absatzmöglichkeiten. Denn Ali Baba sieht im Bereich VR den Zukunftsmarkt für das Geschäft E-Commerce.

Und das aus gutem Grund: Zwar boomt der E-Commerce-Markt, allerdings ist auch das zukünftige Wachstum für Unternehmen momentan stark gebremst. Denn der digitale Handel leidet unter einem starken Manko: Mehrheitlich möchten Kunden vor dem Kauf die Ware gerne ausprobieren und näher ansehen. Dieses Manko gilt es auszumerzen. Durch die virtuelle Begehbarkeit eines Shops können in Zukunft auch die momentan kostspieligen Retouren größtenteils vermieden werden, was zu einer allgemeinen Gewinnsteigerung führen wird. Für viele E-Commerce-Unternehmen werden die Karten somit neu gemischt und der Markt neu sortiert werden. Virtual Reality wird also ein sehr wichtiger Branchenbereich für E-Commerce werden.

Werbung

Mindestens 25 % des VR-Umsatzes werden sich im Jahr 2020 auf Werbeeinnahmen verteilen. Ein weiterer wichtiger Unterbereich wird zudem die Nutzung von Augmented Reality sein. Das ist nur konsequent: Denn es gibt kein modernes Medium, das nicht als Werbefläche oder Kundengewinnungskatalysator genutzt wird. Virtual Reality wird dabei sogar noch weiter gehen als alles, was wir bisher kannten. Und dabei sogar einen völlig neuen Absatzmarkt im Bereich Marketing kreieren.

Denn wie kein anderes Medium ermöglicht es VR, durch erfahrbare Erlebnisse Kunden zu gewinnen, zu binden und zu begeistern. Ob VR-Live-Event, Branding-Immersion, Content-Advertising, Sponsoring oder VR-Werbefilme – die Möglichkeiten scheinen momentan unbegrenzt. Hinzukommen noch Werbemedien innerhalb von VR selbst, die sich auf immersive Erlebnisse spezialisieren werden. Fest steht aber schon heute: Werbung, wie wir sie heute kennen, wird 2020 anders sein.

Medien-Abos

29 Millionen wurden 2016 durch VR-Content umgesetzt und mindestens 10 % des VR-Umsatzes werden im Jahr 2020 durch Medien-Abos erzielt werden. Netflix, Amazon, Spotify – die bisher bekannten Business Modelle für das Web und Mobile lassen sich perfekt in die virtuelle Welt transferieren. Doch neben den gegenwärtigen Businessplayern der Bewegt-Bild-Branche werden sich noch weitere innovative Unternehmen am Markt etablieren – und einige der bisher gut funktionierenden Firmen vom Markt verdrängen. Vornehmlich solche, die als Erste verstanden haben, Content zu produzieren und zu vermarkten, der in der virtuellen Welt funktioniert.

Ob das eine Flatrate für die begehrtesten Musikkonzerte der Welt sein wird, ein VR-Film-Portal in dem Indie-Produzenten mit Blockbuster-VR-Filmen konkurrieren oder eigene Erlebnis-Themen-Welten, wie eine Mittelalterwelt oder ein virtueller Nachbau von Fernsehserien und Filmszenarien wie zum Beispiel Westworld oder Star Wars, wird sich noch zeigen.

In-App-Käufe

Schon jetzt stellen In-App-Käufe im Web- und Mobile-Markt das Kerngeschäft für viele Games-Produzenten dar. 2020 wird das nicht anders sein. Nur dass die Kunden bzw. Gamer mit deutlich mehr Bewusstsein und Leidenschaft bezüglich ihrer virtuellen Upgrades und verbesserten Gegenstände agieren werden. Mehr als es heute schon der Fall ist. Denn wer momentan 10 Euro für einen verpixelten Digital-Dolch ausgibt, dem wird es wohl noch leichter fallen für ein immersives Schwert 100 Euro über den virtuellen Ladentisch zu reichen,. In-App-Käufe werden deshalb mindestens 5 % des VR-Umsatzes ausmachen.

Premium-Apps / Content

Unter Premium-Content wird jedes Spiel, Programm oder anderweitig digitalisierte VR/AR-Produkt fallen, für das die Nutzer einen Endpreis bezahlen werden. 5 % des Umsatzes werden 2020 damit umgesetzt werden. Den bisherigen Durchschnittspreis von 60 Euro werden Spiele dabei wohl auch halten können, auch wenn zukünftige virtuelle Spiele als Großproduktionen deutlich teurer werden. Der Grund ist einfach: größere Spielewelten, nachhaltigere Spieleerlebnisse, mehr Produzentenaufwand. Dafür wird sich der Spielemarkt aber einem noch breiteren Publikum öffnen. Das hat bereits der Hype um Pokémon Go gezeigt, der gefühlt die halbe Welt mobilisiert und Spieler erreicht hat, die normalerweise keinen Controller anfassen würden.

Kommunikation und mobile Networks

Auch die sozialen Netzwerke werden 2020 ganz anders genutzt werden als in der Form, wie wir sie heute kennen. Noch dazu werden Sie um einiges mehr an Bedeutung für unser Privatleben sowie für das wirtschaftliche B2C- und B2B-Geschäft erlangen. Denn VR bietet unendliche viele Möglichkeiten, Kommunikation zu visualisieren. Facebook arbeitet bereits daran, sein gegenwärtiges soziales Netzwerk komplett auf VR umzustellen. Ebenso werden VR und Augmented Reality mit den immer leistungsfähigeren Handys verschmelzen. Das mittelfristige Ziel der Hersteller wird somit auch sein, dass Virtual Reality mobil wird und die virtuelle Kommunikation hauptsächlich über das Mobiltelefon geschieht. Mit diesen weitreichenden Nutzungsmöglichkeiten wird dieser Markt in Zukunft auch 20 % des VR-Umsatzes ausmachen.

 

Der Beitrag Mit welchen Geschäftsmodellen Virtual Reality zum Milliardengeschäft wird zuerst gesehen auf VR∙Nerds. VR·Nerds am Werk!

The complete guide to virtual reality – everything you need to get started

From Oculus Rift to Google Daydream, VR is getting plenty of hype. Which system should you go for, what do you need to buy, and what should you play?

Until recently, virtual reality had been something of a fantasy for storytellers and technologists. As long ago as 1935, American science fiction writer Stanley G Weinbaum described something like virtual reality in a short story called Pygmalion’s Spectacles.

“But listen – a movie that gives one sight and sound. Suppose now I add taste, smell, even touch, if your interest is taken by the story. Suppose I make it so that you are in the story, you speak to the shadows, and the shadows reply, and instead of being on a screen, the story is all about you, and you are in it. Would that be to make real a dream?”

Related: Virtual reality for the masses is here. But do the masses want VR?

Related: After the success of Pokémon Go!, what is the future for augmented reality?

Related: PlayStation VR review – there's magic, but the mainstream is a way off

Related: Is our world a simulation? Why some scientists say it's more likely than not

Continue reading...

VR vs. In Other News…

There are only so many hours in a day, as I am sure you are aware. As 2016 ticks down and I slowly approach the end of my second year on VRFocus it’s incredible how much things have changed since those early days. You remember. The pre-retail days when people were chattering on about what the newfangled Oculus Rift DK1 and DK2 signified. Amazing isn’t it? Barely a handful of years and things have already changed so dramatically. In those early days there was of course a lot less news, which obviously follows since what “the product” of virtual reality (VR) was going to be was still very much up for discussion. Now there are breaking stories all over the place. With all manner of industries and platforms taking an interest in an ever increasing number (no, really we should probably make a list at some point) of head-mounted displays (HMDs) for VR, augmented reality (AR), mixed reality (MR) and…some… other terms people are touting mostly so they can perhaps trademark them.

Something you probably don’t know is, among the various hats I wear at VRFocus – I occasionally joke that my true job title is ‘hatstand’ – is I find a lot of the stories we write about.  As such I can confirm that we’ve gone from a trickle of stories we could tell you about to ‘Oh dear God, it’s coming into the house! The barricade is doing nothing – everyone get to the roof!’. It’s one of the benefits to there being several VR specialist websites out there. I would hope you get, to a degree, different viewpoints and different stories through this; as I likewise hope you believe that we at VRFocus give you a great variety of stories and topics. but the truth of the matter is we simply can’t tell you everything so we give you as good a selection as we can before they are deemed to old to really bring up any more. As, naturally, other stories come up to replace them.  I was thinking on this when deciding what to write for this week’s VR vs, and I thought ‘why not actually cover these’. Not just some either. What if I actually gave you a rapid fire summary of things we’ve not covered. Because the items we aren’t able or in the end choose not to write about as they are relatively minor in the grand scheme of things come from all over the place and is indicative of just how the technology is spreading.

A note before we begin: There may be things you know, and there may be things you’ve seen elsewhere. Not being you, I don’t know that. So telling me in the comments that you saw it on VR So-and-so last Wednesday is kind of irrelevant, as that’s not the point of this. So here we go…

  • We start though with AR and with Pokémon GO, which is now the subject of a second class action lawsuit. It seems a number of people weren’t very happy about having crowds of people descend on their property just because a Snorlax is in their back garden or their driveway is a Pokéstop. This “intentional, unauthorised” placement of gyms and stops represents, according to (the ironically sounding like it should be a Pokémon name) law firm Pomerantz LLP,  a “continued invasion” of their privacy. An attorney on the case stated that ,”Defendants recklessly developed and marketed a product without properly considering its impact on private homeowners, depriving them of their right to enjoy their property without nuisance.  The Pokémon Company, Nintendo, and Niantic failed to realize that their virtual game has very real-world consequences.”
    Pokemon Go GIF
  • It is probably something of a blessed relief to our American readers that the election is nearly over. However if everything somehow spirals down into a worse hell than it already seems to be you may want to escape into the bliss of VR – and thanks to a tour going on which re-commences tomorrow in Chicago you might well be able to do that. Entitled the Virtual Reality Experience Tour, the tour is being run by VR Voice in conjunction with the Creating IT Futures Foundation. Running from 1AM to 5PM, local time at the Conference Center at University of Chicago advanced registration in free. Future stops for the tour are New York (November 15th), Boston (November 17th) and Las Vegas on January 6th 2016.
  • Onto education, Virtualspeech have launched a new application called Language VR, as you might imagine with company and application names such as those it is a vocabulary learning app. It offers an array of different options as it aims not just to teach you the language but teach you about the culture of the language you are studying too. Allowing you to listen to literary classics such as Treasure Island and Alice In Wonderland in audiobook form with both language texts on screen, take in 360 degree images of various locations around the world with descriptions about their history. The app even has roleplay tasks for you to help hone your skills.VirtualSpeech
  • Sony’s recent financial results for Q2 of 2016 missed their target according to a report over at Bloomberg, in part due to an earthquake back in April which damaged one of its chip making facilities. The main direction and focus of profit generation for the company at present is the PlayStation however which enjoyed 320 Billion Yen in sales netting the company a cool 19 Billion Yen in profit.  PlayStation VR is believed to be the driving force for this future push, however according to one quoted analyst Sony’s setup to launch wasn’t the best. “Their guidance for PSVR shipments didn’t sound particularly strong, so perhaps that didn’t meet expectations which is why we’re seeing some disappointment.” Hmm, I seem to recall someone saying something about Sony not doing enough on this very column…
  • Drinks company Mountain Dew is not a stranger to appearing on VRFocus. Previously we’ve covered representatives being high on the potential for VR advertising, a snowboarding experience from them, a NASCAR related tie-in from them and the company used 360 degree video as part of a campaign back in May. The company has just wrapped on the first appearance of art, fashion and technology showcase The Camo Collective which also featured the debut of CamoFlector. Created by Portland-based studio dotdotdash, CamoFlector is an AR experience that uses special mirrors to ‘virtually’ outfit people in custom patterns from the Collective’s “Camo Out” campaign and then puts you in a music video. You can expect to find it, and other aspects of the convention at other Mountain Dew promotional events throughout the remainder of 2016 and into 2017.
  • Over to Education, Canada’s Groupe Média TFO has launched LUV – an incubator for the next generation of content and specifically for virtual universe production. It’s a laboratory designed to create French-language educational content. Speaking at the launch, Minister for Education Mitzie Hunter said, “It’s important that Ontario’s students engage with technology and develop global competencies like critical thinking, problem solving and creativity. Thanks to partners like Groupe Média TFO, students have access to online educational resources that will allow them to build on these skills and ensure they thrive in tomorrow’s economy.”
  • Next more AR and the field of healthcare: AR companies such as Vuzix, Ubimax and Pristine are amongst those mentioned as those expected to lead the way in medical training by ABI Research. An impact that will truly begin to be seen and felt not in 2017 but during 2018 and 2019. “Before medical AR reaches its inflection point, several key milestones need to be met,” according to Michael Inouye, the Principal Analyst at ABI Research whose reported findings can be viewed here. “Early first responder trials need to move forward to deployments. Expansion into more medical education applications will be critical, because they will ensure that AR becomes a tool that future professionals learn and can use after graduation, in the medical field and beyond. Interest for AR in surgery shows great promise but will require significant investment as well as safety trials.  We expect to see this all start to take shape as early as 2017.”
    Vuzix M300
  • Speaking of market predictions, a report from Scalar Market Research indicates that the wearable technology sector – of which AR is included, alongside such technologies as smart watches – is set to have a total market worth of over 71 Billion US Dollars by 2021. North America and Europe are expected to lead the way in terms of adoption and “key players” are expected to include Sony, Microsoft and Google, as well as company’s such as Xiaomi.
  • Back to health, and among a number of topics Digital Health Summit at CES 2017 will be examining the role of technology in modern medicine from everything from training to prevention to cure and rehabilitation. Naturally VR and AR are a part of the conversation and their use in treatment for mental illness, trauma and other afflictions as well as its use in pain reduction will be a topic discussed. The session takes place on January 6 at 11:30 AM, PT.
  • Lastly film, and one from a little bit further back as this was mid-October: At Paramount Pictures’ VR On The Lot a keynote speech from Robert Stromberg (winner of an Oscar for special effects and more recently the crafter of the VR tie-in for The Martian) discussed Steven Spielberg’s reaction to putting on a modern-era VR headset for the first time. “I remember how truly excited he was when he took the headset off… it was like he was a kid again.” A promising statement indeed, one can only imagine what someone like Spielberg could craft with the medium. Stromberg himself finished with the assertion that “I truly believe that VR will reach into all of our lives.”

There we go, a quick helter-skelter rider through just some of the other stories out there we never even got a chance to cover. It shows you just how much VR and AR there is out there. Games, film, education, health, industry – it’s all happening. Changing, evolving all the time. What will be revealed next? Let’s find out…

Oak: Augmented Reality Spielfeld für das iPhone

ToneTree hat seine neue Entwicklung mit dem Namen „Oak“ über eine Kickstarter Kampagne finanziert und benötigte mindestens 30.000 US-Dollar für die Entwicklung. Diese Grenze ist aber bereits überschritten und somit wird das Projekt auch in Entwicklung gehen. Falls ihr noch partizipieren wollt, dann habt ihr aktuell noch 24 Tage für eine Entscheidung Zeit.

Augmented Reality Spielfeld für das iPhone

oak-iphone

Mit Oak hat ToneThree eine Halterung für das iPhone entwickelt, die ein Tabletop Spiel in eine Augmented Reality Erfahrung verwandeln kann. Das Produkt vereint echte und digitale Elemente und möchte somit eine einzigartige Spielerfahrung liefern.

Um zu starten, muss nur das iPhone in die Halterung gelegt werden und die Oak App gestartet werden. Einige Anwendungen werden direkt zur Verfügung stehen, doch ihr sollt auch eigene Erfahrungen erstellen können. Die Oak App wird beispielsweise mit einem Rockstar Kit ausgestattet, welche euch verschiedene Instrumente spielen lässt. Das Gamer Kit hingegen macht euren Tisch zum Spielfeld und erweckt eure Spielkarten zum Leben. Ebenso steht auch ein Explorer Kit zur Verfügung, welches euch ein Raumschiff durch das Weltall steuern lässt.

Zur Erkennung der realen Elemente werden teilweise Marker verwendet. Damit das iPhone weiß, wann ihr mit einem Objekt interagiert, sind in der Oak Halterung auch Laser integriert. So lassen sich auch verschiedene Punkte auf den Karten drücken, um gewisse Funktionen der Karte zu aktivieren. Außerdem könnt ihr somit die Instrumente spielen, denn das System weiß, wann ihr die Karte berührt.

Das Team hat bereits ein Accelerator Programm von Intel Education abgeschlossen und somit ist es wahrscheinlich, dass das Produkt auch umgesetzt wird. Die Auslieferung von Oak soll im August 2017 stattfinden. Der reguläre Preis von Oak liegt bei 69 US-Dollar und beinhaltet die Oak Dock, das Rockstar Kit, das Card Kit, das Explorer Kit und das Developer Kit.

(Quelle: Kickstarter)

Der Beitrag Oak: Augmented Reality Spielfeld für das iPhone zuerst gesehen auf VR∙Nerds. VR·Nerds am Werk!

‘Metaverse’ is a ‘Pokemon GO’ Style AR App Where We All Build The Experience

‘Metaverse’ is a ‘Pokemon GO’ Style AR App Where We All Build The Experience

Pokemon Go was a major leap forward for augmented reality when it comes to bringing the technology into casual households even though it has suffered massive drops in player base since launch, partly expected and partly due to poor updates throughout its life. Regardless, it was an introduction to AR for many people and GoMeta wants to take the next big step. Augmented reality, in its simplest form, overlays digital information or images onto our real worlds. GoMeta’s Metaverse aims to maximize our surroundings by turning them into massive adventures and we’re all the dungeon masters.

Via a blog post, GoMeta announced the release of Metaverse on Halloween and we reached out to founder and CEO of GoMeta Dmitry Shapiro to speak about the program, its inspirations, and more via email.

Metaverse is a program that takes your smart devices and turns them into augmented reality swiss army knives. “Creating AR experiences is hard.  It requires programming, graphics editing skills, creation of 3D objects, etc,” says CEO of GoMeta Dmitry Shapiro, in an email interview. “Metaverse experiences can be created in under a minute, and this changes everything.”

There are interactive experiences already in place for you to stumble upon, but the crux of Metaverse is when players create their own events using the Experience Builder. In it, you can upload characters of your own, write their dialogue, and place them anywhere you wish. You can create quick little treks across areas or even make massive scavenger hunts like the GoMeta team did in Santa Monica.

Geocaching is an outdoor recreational activity that has people hunting for landmarks and trinkets using GPS coordinates and is a clear inspiration for the program, “geocaching for the masses” as Shapiro put it. He also says the book “Ready Player One” was an inspiration, likely referring the novel’s fictional virtual game OASIS that has the entire world on a bit of a scavenger hunt.

The astronomical rise of Pokemon Go also brought about safety concerns with people being taken advantage of and robbed while wandering outside. Metaverse could even be a bit more dangerous considering individuals can create targets and place them where they want, so we asked if there were safety initiatives already in the works. There’s nothing concrete right now beyond the in-app warnings, but “over time may be able to create additional technology to help with that.”

Currently, Metaverse can be downloaded on IOS devices here and creators can also request access to the Metaverse Studio beta so you can create deeper and collections of interactive experiences.

Lenovo Phab 2 Pro: The First AR Smartphone Powered By Google Tango Arrives

Lenovo Phab 2 Pro: The First AR Smartphone Powered By Google Tango Arrives

Welcome to the beginning of a new age. Today, the Lenovo Phab 2 Pro smartphone is officially being released. The Phab 2 Pro has several things that make it unique. It boasts a colossal 6.4 inch touch screen display (to put that in perspective, the iPhone 6 plus’ screen is 5.5 inches), a herculean 4050 maH battery that can hold a charge for up to two days, and it is the first ever smartphone to come equipped with Google’s revolutionary Tango augmented reality technology.

Tango is  the brainchild of a dedicated team of engineers led by Google’s Johnny Lee. It is a combined hardware/software system that uses the phone’s camera, a depth sensor and a fistful of brilliant algorithms to create a device that is capable of understanding where it is positioned in 3D space.

According to Lee:

“In some ways you can think of [Tango] like GPS…Once we had the abilities of those systems,  a whole ecosystem was birthed. Being able to know how we move in space around us is fundamentally important. When our devices are given that same sense of spacial reasoning, a whole new suite of experiences are possible”

Ever since the advent of GPS technologies, your phone has been able to pinpoint its location to a specific region. This is helpful for macro navigation and basic wayfinding, but Tango takes things a step further. With this system on board, the Phab 2 Pro is able to understand not only its position on Earth, but its position in your living room.

This is one of those broad-strokes computing revolutions that sounds simple enough on the surface but actually opens the door to an enormous number of powerful new applications and programs. One of the apps that shows off this tech’s potential the best is one of its simplest: Google Measure.

Because Tango is able to understand and “see” its immediate surroundings, it is capable of accomplishing tasks that no other smartphone could. As the above video demonstrates, with Measure you can use Tango to measure a bookcase, plot out a remodel, or tackle a number of other home improvement projects. This may seem trite but the importance of the jump in this phone’s “brain power” is significant.

Tango-enabled devices can also show you new things as well. A huge use case for the Phab 2 is augmented reality. Because it can process its environment, it can overlay digital data directly on top of the physical world to create a number of one of a kind experiences.

A Google blog post published today revealed what several of those experiences are:

  1. Measure anything in your home from your door frame to your desk with

    Visualize how furniture and appliances will look in your home with

    Play dominoes anywhere without having to pack up the tiles later, with

    Paint and draw on all the surfaces of your home with

    Take epic selfies with your favorite dinosaurs using

    Play with virtual pets with

    Explore the solar system with

    Build new digital worlds with

    Race on your own personal race tracks with

    Customize your videos with exciting 3D filters with

There was the occasional hiccup, however. As you can see in the video below, Tango’s ability to read a room is not 100 percent perfect yet. It sometimes failed to calculate angle and depth correctly during our demo, occasionally reading objects in the foreground — such as a leg — as being flush with the ground.

These blips were few and far between however, and most of the time Tango was able to understand its surroundings with high accuracy, to the point of being able to place a digital domino up on a table and having it fall onto the ground below.

The Phab 2 Pro is only the beginning for Google and its Tango platform. According to Lee there will be “many more” Tango-enabled handsets coming to market soon from a “number of manufacturers, providers and partners.” Google declined to comment on exactly which companies it’s partnering with and what sort of devices they may be working on.

The Phab Pro 2 costs $499 USD (unlocked) and is available for purchase now.

Top Investors Discuss VR and AR Strategies and Opportunites at IMMERSE 2016

Business leaders gathered at this year’s Seattle based IMMERSE Summit (previously Sea VR) to explore how VR/ AR and Mixed Reality is transforming manufacturing, design, education, health and medicine and much more. Road to VR‘s Michael Glombicki caught up with two VR/AR investors to get their insight into the opportunities available in the immersive technology space and the strategies they’re employing to capitalise on them.

At this year’s IMMERSE Summit, Road to VR sat down with Matt McIlwain, managing director at Madrona Venture Group (investor in Envelop VR and Pixvana), and Patrick Eggen, managing director at Qualcomm Ventures (investor in Owlchemy Labs and Magic Leap), to discuss their investing strategies when it comes to virtual and augmented reality.

SEE ALSO
Madrona Venture Group on Why Seattle is a Hotbed for VR and AR

Road to VR: Matt has mentioned before that it is very hard to pick winners when it comes to VR content. Qualcomm Ventures is an investor in Owlchemy Labs, which is a content creator, so, Patrick, can you talk about Qualcomm’s strategy regarding investing in VR content?

Patrick Eggen, Madrona Venture Group
Patrick Eggen, Madrona Venture Group

Patrick Eggen: We have this thesis that there is a content creation bottleneck in VR. There is very limited quality content out there. We are looking for early stage companies which have limited dependencies in the VR ecosystem. The beauty of a company like Owlchemy is that they are producing high quality VR content but there’s a broader play there. Longer term, there is a potential platform play where they make the picks and shovels for the broader VR ecosystem. Think of them today as being in content creation but ultimately opening up to enable other VR developers to seamlessly create VR content. First and foremost, I think that’s the challenge.

It’s the same with Pixvana, granted they are all video, but the sophistication of creating content on VR is very, very challenging. Look at a company like Matterport: Matterport is not a pure-play VR company. One of the use cases they have is seamlessly converting their 3D models into VR content. All of a sudden you have 300,000 homes which, in the future, will be VR models and arguably the largest VR library in the world. Think of us not as investing in pure-play content, but think of it as a near-term hedge strategy where there’s always a broader play.

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Matt McIlwain, Qualcomm Ventures
Matt McIlwain, Qualcomm Ventures

Matt McIlwain: I think that’s similar to our philosophy. Take a company like Pixvana, which we are investors in: it’s about real video and, beyond the point of capture, how do you stitch that video together? How do you process that video? How do you encode it so that it can be distributed to all different consumption devices? Well, they’re not a content company, but they might work closely with a couple of content creators to make some proof points and a demonstration of content that’s out and ready to be distributed broadly in the emerging VR world. I think that’s always been a balance between a company that wants to fundamentally have a broader technology platform but is trying to show existence proofs of what is possible now.

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I think companies here locally, like Pluto VR and Rec Room, that are trying to demonstrate shared presence are in a similar challenging time. You have to be able to show the actual application space. Rec Room’s got a great charades game and a really fun frisbee-golf game and my hunch is they have a broader platform play behind that, but they are using those applications to show what’s possible in terms of highly distributed shared presence.

Road to VR: Last year, this event was called SEA VR and it was focused mainly on virtual reality. With HoloLens and Magic Leap we’ve seen a broadening of the conference to include augmented reality as well. How do you see the comparison between the VR and AR opportunities for investment? Do you expect one to be bigger? Do you expect to see a convergence of the two?

Matt McIlwain: We think about a graph: there is VR and AR and then there’s tethered and mobile. Tethered and mobile will go across the time dimension and AR and VR will go across a sophistication dimension. Over time we think AR and VR converge into a world that the Microsoft folks call “mixed reality.” Over time, things will become increasingly untethered down to the point that they’re really kind of full 360 immersive experiences that I don’t need to have a separate computing device that I’m connected to through a wire. Is that a five-year journey? Is that an eight-year journey? Hard to tell specifically, but that’s the direction it’s going.

So, for me, there’s a set of technological things that feel further off in terms of what you might call “high-end AR” compared to what we are seeing in a “high-end VR” experience like an HTC Vive. I think Oculus is getting there, but I still think it’s behind, to be candid, even with the latest stuff that is coming out for Christmas. What Valve has with the Vive is the state of the art from a full, 360 immersive experience and I think that’s further along now. I think HoloLens has some interesting things that they’re putting out; we have a HoloLens in the office and we play with it in different use cases. Patrick knows more about Magic Leap so I’ll defer to him on that.

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Patrick Eggen: First and foremost, I concur. I think AR and VR are going to converge. In a simplistic way: VR takes you where you want to go and AR brings anything into your analog world and you can calibrate that dial. If you think of 100% of VR as completely immersive and digital and you dial back a bit you can see elements of both. I think the key is that they are all sort of distinct platforms today. Whether it’s mobile VR, or tethered VR, or VR with a console, or mixed reality, or AR, they’re all very distinct, so you currently have significant fragmentation.

We were early investors in the AR landscape. First, we invested in a company called Blippar about five years ago. Blippar was immediate go-to-market. They used the cameras on existing smartphones to amplify the analog world. They were working with 200 tier 1 brands and they were actually able to monetize. Three or four years before Magic Leap and this whole renaissance, AR was just a sea of dead companies. We were very adamant in investing in one company per sub-sector and we picked Blippar. Out of the gate they scaled to where it made AR mainstream. Basically, they made any object a media format. For four or five years we saw companies that had only one of the two aspects we were looking for: 1) technical acumen using computer vision and 2) marketing chops. Blippar was the one that had both of those attributes. Fast forward and you’ll see they ended up buying Layar.

It wasn’t until Magic Leap came along where we saw a new paradigm: a full-stack platform. I can’t really reveal anything about magic leap but it is fundamentally a new paradigm. If you look at what Rony [CEO of Magic Leap] said at the Fortune conference, he spoke about it as a full-stack compute platform. We think the AR/VR convergence will become the next platform beyond the smartphone and that’s where we’re investing.

In terms of AR, we’ve had a barbell strategy: Blippar was immediate go-to-market and Magic Leap is more of the moonshot going for a new compute experience and we are trying to search for a similar analog in the VR world.

Matt McIlwain: The other thing I’d say is that we’re already seeing, in VR, elements of the virtual reality environment being augmented by my physical world. For example, we’re investors in Envelop VR and they, ironically, help bring the things you did on the screen into VR. But then, when I’m in VR, a lot of people still like using their keyboard and their mouse, so through cameras, they can project your hands and your keyboard and mouse into your virtual reality environment. They’re augmenting your VR world with your physical world and so that is an example of the blending together of VR and AR.

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Road to VR: One of the things that is challenging from a media stand-point is covering China. Is that also true when it comes to investing?

Matt McIlwain: It’s not really our strategy because our strategy is to be early stage and mostly focused on companies based in the Pacific Northwest. We look around the world to see what the trends are and what’s real and what’s hype. That’s why having friends like Qualcomm Ventures is great for us because, through them, we can see some great things that we may not be seeing ourselves as easily. We do our own homework as well, but I really defer to Patrick and their team on what they’re seeing on the ground in China.

Patrick Eggen: You really need investment folks on the ground. It’s similar to the strategy that Madrona has in Seattle because they are the beacon for anything in the Pacific Northwest. Not only do they have dedicated investment partners here, but they have the very profound network of eyes and ears. Similar for my colleagues in China, it’s very competitive there and it’s important to have that access on the ground where you can get in early on these deals. I would say China is a hyper-competitive market. Valuations are not cheap. In fact, there could even be a premium there at times. China has really crossed this chasm from being a follower and copy-cat to truly innovating.

On the mobile VR side, we have a portfolio company called Ximmerse in China that a lot of people haven’t heard of. The big issue with mobile VR today is that it doesn’t have six degrees of freedom, so it’s very limited in positional tracking. With the right mobile VR input controllers, that resolves that gap and that’s what Ximmerse is doing. What we saw with Oculus at Connect is they sort of hinted at this holy grail prototype of untethered, optimized computer power, low latency, real time, 6 degree of freedom tracking.

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We see wonderful ecosystems like Seattle and LA where you could have break away companies. We’re not biased towards San Francisco and we’re one of the rare firms that invest in fly-over states. We are in seven different countries around the world and the talent here in Seattle that Madrona is investing in is very special. But, I think when you look at Asia, you see some amazing innovation from companies. This is not just a copycat sort of phenomenon. We have folks on the ground in Beijing in Shanghai to invest there. Given the somewhat tepid demand, from an investor’s standpoint, to invest in a series A or series B, we see a lot of companies from Asia, and particularly China, participating and that’s not dumb money. There’s actually understanding there.

Road to VR: Are there still hardware investment opportunities out there?

Matt McIlwain: I think the question there is if there are a lot of venture-backable opportunities versus bigger company opportunities. I think there’s only going to be a few Magic Leap-style bets out there. Ximmerse is an interesting example because they’re picking a broadly defined problem. What are the input devices that provide the ability to create without a big headset and PC sitting by me? They offer a possible solution from an input device perspective.

There’s probably some specific components within the hardware that I could imagine. For example, if there was a fabless chipset design that is going to go into a particular kind of device, I could see that as being an opportunity. But even still, I would bet on Qualcomm or somebody else more than I would bet on Joe with his startup team. If you talk to the folks at Microsoft, they’ll tell you they’ve been putting a lot of money into the hardware that powers HoloLens and I bet Magic Leap will say the same.

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Patrick Eggen: To Matt’s point, from a venture-backed lens, it’s challenging unless you calibrate your returns and are looking for a company to be bought. There will be a lot of these companies being very acquisitive by addressing product gaps. You may also see acqui-hires as we’re seeing in the AI space because I think a lot of this talent will be at a premium. But overall, I think early stage we’re investing more on the software side where there’s lower dependencies. Later stage or mid-stage, we’ll look if there’s a higher dependency like visual tracking or eye tracking or something really non-trivial that’s interesting to us but we will calibrate our expectations with respect to returns.

You have to remember that it’s still very early days. I hate to be jaded but the adoption is very limited today. We are in the midst of these platform wars. We don’t have enough content creation out there and it’s still a little unclear. We’re still treading very carefully. As we saw with the AR data points, it took a long time before we got through the woods to this renaissance. We are bullish mid to long-term but we are very cautious for the next 6 to 9 months. We have three investments in this area and we’re hoping to have more but we are very cautious in how we approach it as well.

Road to VR: Do you have a killer app that you are really looking out for?

Matt McIlwain: For me the, the most amazing experiences are the ones where I can be in a shared presence environment in VR or presumably AR. I’ve really only experienced these in a VR environment. That means that myself and somebody else are physically separated and are experiencing something together. Those same things could be as simple as you and I having a conversation in some shared space. It could be on the beach or it could just be in a room. But we could also work on a whiteboard together and when we’re done working on the whiteboard together, we have an electronic record because it was all done digitally.

I think this is a little bit futuristic, but we know they are working on it from the videos we’ve seen at Facebook’s F8 and Oculus Connect. Those are worth watching. In the F8 one, they took a selfie on the London Bridge and then posted it to the real world of Facebook versus the virtual world that they were playing in. That’s actually pretty close to what I want. We’ve seen those kind of experiences, in some cases further along, and I want to see those get commercialized. Those shared presence, rich, immersive experiences that are not just about you and I being in a room but the things that we can do.

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So why would you invest in something like that? I want to see that, but you could imagine there being somebody that says: “it’s great that Facebook does what it does, but how about all these other apps? What’s going to be the set of tools that are going to power that kind of shared presence experience?” I don’t think Facebook is going to open-source what they’re building. They’re trying to build a social network, so the strategic play there is somebody who’s going to license or sell that capability to all the other apps and all the other app builders that want to have the cool use-case and application that’s now a shared presence application instead of a single participant application.

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Patrick Eggen: I think that’s a really good, quintessential example and shows the power of Facebook. We looked at a company called AltspaceVR in San Francisco and their vision was that Matt and I could go into our own immerse environment, go on the whiteboard, and talk about deals. Then, we could go into the lounge and go watch the Sounders game in a way that amplifies the experience. It will take time and Facebook as the catalyst can just muscle and flex that much faster.

The post Top Investors Discuss VR and AR Strategies and Opportunites at IMMERSE 2016 appeared first on Road to VR.

Augmented reality is driving construction’s creative reinvention

As the use of AR grows, the building industry will benefit from the ability to visualise virtual objects in the real world

Constructions projects can often be besieged by problems. Planners typically work off paper blueprints and drawings, which makes it harder to capture and analyse data and share information with contractors to ensure quality control and smooth running.

The industry has, up to now, been one of the least digitised industries, according to research by global consultancy firm McKinsey & Company, but digitisation allows information to be shared in real-time and leads to better outcomes. For instance, by overlaying virtual data and images on to a physical space, potential flaws that may arise in complicated processes such as laying ceiling pipes can be spotted early. Workers are able to see how a construction schedule might be affected by potential problems and take measures to avoid them.

Related: Virtual reality and sport: breaking ground on and off the pitch

Related: What does artificial intelligence mean for the creative mind?

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moBackAR– First platform for all content sharing in VR and AR

While Pokemon GO showed the world what augmented reality could mean as a game and brought a new wave of experience, there is a lot more to be discovered in this sector. Keeping the trends of AR and yet building a better experience another start-up moBack is making waves to fill the gap through their new product moBack AR.   While the technology has always favored the developers and users, moBack is taking a step further by adding ease to the artist’s and animator’s life.

Building on top of what is already available to the public regarding virtual and augmented reality viewing and experiences, moBack AR will create a free platform for everyone to use. Artists can present their work with sound, animation, and textures, along with the 360 degree view to better showcase their portfolio.  Enterprises and small business can upload shops and experiences to unveil their products for purchase, as well as provide a new and easier way to view goods within the user’s home without the hassle of walking through aisles and aisles of a store after store to find just the right thing. For people just wanting to use the app and not upload their content, the moBack AR app works similarly to that of Youtube with creators uploading their content to be shared with the masses.  MoBack believes in building a portal to support all 3D work and content in VR, AR and probably in the future for MR thus opening the world of imagination and content to all the enthusiasts.

Apart from uploading and building a portfolio, the content creator can also share his/her work with others, and also view more content created by others. Adding another feature of application moBack AR helps the author place his/her work into different applications for a more advanced use than just building a portfolio.

The new revolution in content is not too far from your fingertips… try it to believe it

The post moBackAR– First platform for all content sharing in VR and AR appeared first on Infinityleap - Technology stops for no one..