immersion – Augmented & Virtual Reality Confabulation

December 20, 2021

Halo Infinite’s talkative Grunts are bad stand-up comedians

Halo Infinite's Grunts constantly quip like Marvel heroes -- and it gets grating fast.

April 24, 2021

Grabbing The Bull By The Horns: The Importance Of VR Hands And Presence

We spoke with several VR game designers and developers about the important (and difficulty) of creating believable and immersive hands in VR.

The Importance of Believable VR Hands

VR hands are a strange thing to ‘get to grips with’ so to speak. Not only do they allow you to interact with the virtual world in front of you but they allow you to become part of it. As you shape yourself to fit into that world, it does the same to fit around you. In real life, you have limited strength and ability but VR gives you that rare opportunity to be better than real life; it lets you become an action hero.

“It was pretty clear right off the bat that it was important,” Kerry Davis, a Valve programmer that worked on Half-Life: Alyx, said in an interview “Even if you didn’t have a full-body avatar yet, to at least have hands so that you could sort of connect with the world and actually participate. We all have an innate desire to control the world we inhabit. As a VR user, you don’t simply want to sit back and let the story happen—you want this organic control over the world. “People really wanted to have hands.”

Half-Life: Alyx’s design encapsulates this. There’s this visceral sense of control you have covering your mouth when you come across Jeff or even that satisfying click you get from loading up ammo. Tristan Reidford, a Valve artist who also worked on Alyx, learned this previously when working on the Aperture Robot Repair Demo that shipped as part of The Lab.

“We didn’t have hands in that… we simulated the controller… that satisfied people’s desires to have representation,” Reidford said.

Oculus Touch - Hand Presence Technology screenshot

The most fascinating thing about VR hands is the spectacle itself, the representation of you. When using a controller, you can disconnect and understand that certain buttons equal certain actions. The uncanny valley nature of movement in VR makes it just close enough to true immersion to become distracting when it’s not.

The uncanny valley in this case represents that physical and mental border between what your eyes see in the headset lens and what you feel around you. As VR gets closer to real life, it also gets further away. There’s something distinctly recognizable, yet alien-feeling about this imitation of real life. VR is at its best when it’s immersive and compelling but not trying to lie to you. It offers you a fantasy and, in the case of Half-Life: Alyx, that alien feeling comes from somewhere else: Xen

“Now you don’t need as much of an abstraction so you can almost get an exact representation of reality,” Davis said. “It turns out it’s almost harder to do in VR.”

The complicated nature of emulating some sense of real-life movement means you often have to trivialize or exaggerate that movement. “In VR, your interactions are so close that your brain wants to fall back to actions you’ve known since you were a toddler,” Davis said. “We still have to put this interface layer in there and say we’re defining what the constraints of this virtual world are.”

You are constrained in two senses when in VR. There are the constraints of your movement—such as how far you can move in your actual room and how much you can lunge forward before colliding head-first into your dresser—and the constraints of the tech itself. There is this wonderful creativity that springs from necessity when creating games atop necessary limitations.

Oftentimes, a world has to be made less organic and genuine to feel real, as paradoxical as that sounds. The swinging of a sword feels natural but you don’t have to undergo a year of training before you can use it in VR. It throws a little bit of ‘real life’ out the window to provide a more fun and, ironically, more immersive experience.

Limitless Limitations

Over at Streamline Media, a small group working on their first real VR title. “Due to resolution issues they (the team) often went back to using just larger gestures and bigger levers,” Stefan Baier, COO at Streamline Media, said. “Smaller hand gestures didn’t reliably scale and made it not work well with the dev work we were doing for PS4 where you don’t have that input.”

When working with it, PSVR often has to be at the bottom of the barrel, technologically speaking. This means that whilst hand gestures are held back in some sense, the choice to fit certain actions in are made purely for the player experience. When you can’t show off the tech or provide hyper-realistic details, you only provide what’s necessary. A streamlined control system allows for more natural movement, even if it’s constrained.

“We are always limited by the hardware…Especially with these fairly new technologies…tracking will massively improve”, Christof Lutteroth, a senior lecturer in the department of computer science at Bath University, said. “There’s nothing fundamental that will prevent us from simply tracking our hands. It’s just a computational problem that’s harder to solve.”

Ultimately, we are always held back by the tech but this doesn’t mean we should stop and accept it as it is.

facebook Quest 2 Hand Tracking

“From what I’ve seen…It’s definitely a big step forward. However, it’s still very rudimentary,” Lutteroth said when talking about the Oculus Quest’s finger tracking. “When you come to hand tracking, there’s quite a lot of error involved with machine learning… That’s very often data-driven.” Due to the varied nature of human fingers (that’s before mentioning those with disabilities) hand tracking technology is dominated by research into what an average hand is. Unfortunately, with the way that research works, it often gets caught up in implicit biases.

One very highly publicized case of these forms of bias is Microsoft’s AI chatbot, Tay. It was designed to pick up on speech and emulate it to make Tay’s speech sound authentic. Within a day, it was virulently bigoted. This is an interesting microcosm of how these biases set in. If the people you test are racist, your chat bot will be. If the people you test have all ten fingers, your hand designs will be.

This is why Davis and Reidford were so outspoken in our interview about the power of playtesting. Reidford spoke of finger tracking and the unique hurdles in making your movement feel both organic, yet slick.

“There’s this sliding scale where, on one side, it’s fully finger tacking and then, on the other side, 100% animation,” Reidford said. ”We had to find the balance there… as soon you put the player under any kind of duress…They just want to slam a new magazine in.”

Surpassing Limitations

There’s creativity to just existing in VR. Davis mentioned that testers told him “‘Yeah, I’m playing this. I don’t feel powerful… I feel like my normal everyday self… that’s not why I go into games,’” Davis said. “‘I go into games to feel powerful and skilled.’” Even though it emulates your actions, VR is so captivating due to its ability to emulate the wonderful and powerful. That uncanny valley is less prevalent when the situation itself is one that you choose to put yourself into. When you’re aware of your world and place yourself in there, you can forget all about the gear you’re wearing.

A fantastic example of this is Half-Life: Alyx’s gravity gloves. “In Half-Life: Alyx it was about having the hands feel so natural you don’t really think about them anymore,” Reidford said.

You hold your hands up, grab an item and pull it towards you, and hope it lands. As long as you’re close to where you should be, it will always land. The same design philosophy is at work with the doors in Alyx. They don’t function like a normal door. You put your hand up to the doorknob and your character just turns it automatically.

Half-Life: Alyx Combine Elevator

“The player can still turn the handle themselves if they want to but they don’t have to, all they have to do is reach out, make a fist, and the door is open,” Reidford said. “Over time, it looks so correct and it’s what they expect to happen that the player actually believes that they’ve done it. They think that they reached out and turned the handle themselves when really they didn’t. The game did it for them”

The genius of Half-Life: Alyx is that this notion of feeling like “the action hero” is deployed so effectively without making you overpowered. You can simultaneously get crushed by creatures, cower away from Jeff, and giggle at the falling physics of a head crab—yet you still get out there, load your weapon, and take down the bad guys. This is a testament to VR as a whole. There’s a spectacle to it that can only be accessed via your hands. From its early days and crude movements to the beginning signs of significant hand tracking, there’s this bustling sense of creativity that keeps pushing the industry forward.

When you stare into the dark lenses of a VR headset and find yourself staring back, you look around your environment, look down at your hands, then squeeze closed your fists and you become something grander than the every day. You become your own version of an action hero.

March 28, 2021

The VR Job Hub: Cosm, Immersion & StrikerVR

Every weekend VRFocus gathers together vacancies from across the virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR) and mixed reality (MR) industry, in locations around the globe to help make finding that ideal job easier. Below is a selection of roles that are currently accepting applications across a number of disciplines, all within departments and companies that focus on immersive entertainment.

Location	Company	Role	Link
Los Angeles, CA	Cosm	Game Designer/ Engineer	Click Here to Apply
Los Angeles, CA	Cosm	Motion Graphics Designer	Click Here to Apply
Los Angeles, CA	Cosm	Sr. Product Manager, Growth	Click Here to Apply
Los Angeles, CA	Cosm	UX/UI Designer	Click Here to Apply
Salt Lake City, UT	Cosm	VP, Information Technology	Click Here to Apply
Gurugram, Haryana, India	Cosm	Associate Software Engineer	Click Here to Apply
Gurugram, Haryana, India	Cosm	Backend Engineer	Click Here to Apply
Gurugram, Haryana, India	Cosm	QA Engineer, Automation & Manual	Click Here to Apply
Gurugram, Haryana, India	Cosm	QA Engineering Lead, Automation & Manual	Click Here to Apply
Gurugram, Haryana, India	Cosm	Senior Developer – Unity	Click Here to Apply
New York, NY	Cosm	Manager, Community	Click Here to Apply
Los Angeles, CA	Cosm	Manager, Digital Marketing	Click Here to Apply
New York, NY	Cosm	Senior Manager, Studios Development	Click Here to Apply
Warsaw, Poland	Immersion	Immersion Games – Game Designer	Click Here to Apply
Warsaw, Poland	Immersion	Immersion Real Estate – Sales Manager	Click Here to Apply
Warsaw, Poland	Immersion	2D Games UI Artist	Click Here to Apply
Warsaw, Poland	Immersion	UE4 Developer	Click Here to Apply
Warsaw, Poland	Immersion	IT Help Desk Professional	Click Here to Apply
Warsaw, Poland	Immersion	3D Artist – Immersion	Click Here to Apply
Warsaw, Poland	Immersion	3D Artist – Real estate	Click Here to Apply
Warsaw, Poland	Immersion	Unity Developer	Click Here to Apply
New Orleans, LA	StrikerVR	Administrative Coordinator	Click Here to Apply

Don’t forget, if there wasn’t anything that took your fancy this week there’s always last week’s listings on The VR Job Hub to check as well.

If you are an employer looking for someone to fill an immersive technology related role – regardless of the industry – don’t forget you can send us the lowdown on the position and we’ll be sure to feature it in that following week’s feature. Details should be sent to Peter Graham (pgraham@vrfocus.com).

We’ll see you next week on VRFocus at the usual time of 3PM (UK) for another selection of jobs from around the world.

December 20, 2020

The VR Job Hub: Vertigo Games, Wevr & Immersion

Location	Company	Role	Link
Rotterdam, The Netherlands	Vertigo Games	Senior Gameplay Engineer	Click Here to Apply
Rotterdam, The Netherlands	Vertigo Games	Gameplay Engineer	Click Here to Apply
Rotterdam, The Netherlands	Vertigo Games	Senior Software Engineer .NET	Click Here to Apply
Rotterdam, The Netherlands	Vertigo Games	Graphics Engineer	Click Here to Apply
Rotterdam, The Netherlands	Vertigo Games	VR Interaction Gameplay Engineer	Click Here to Apply
Rotterdam, The Netherlands	Vertigo Games	Audio Engineer	Click Here to Apply
Rotterdam, The Netherlands	Vertigo Games	Networking Engineer	Click Here to Apply
Rotterdam, The Netherlands	Vertigo Games	Senior Networking Engineer	Click Here to Apply
Rotterdam, The Netherlands	Vertigo Games	Senior Automation Engineer	Click Here to Apply
Rotterdam, The Netherlands	Vertigo Games	Senior AI Engineer	Click Here to Apply
Rotterdam, The Netherlands	Vertigo Games	Software Quality Engineer	Click Here to Apply
Rotterdam, The Netherlands	Vertigo Games	Performance Engineer	Click Here to Apply
Rotterdam, The Netherlands	Vertigo Games	Senior Physics Engineer	Click Here to Apply
Rotterdam, The Netherlands	Vertigo Games	Technical Artist	Click Here to Apply
Rotterdam, The Netherlands	Vertigo Games	VFX Artist	Click Here to Apply
Rotterdam, The Netherlands	Vertigo Games	Senior Animator	Click Here to Apply
Los Angeles, CA	WeVR	Senior Technical Designer (UE4)	Click Here to Apply
Los Angeles, CA	WeVR	Senior Software Engineer	Click Here to Apply
Warsaw, Poland	Immersion	Game UI Artist	Click Here to Apply
Warsaw, Poland	Immersion	Graphic Designer	Click Here to Apply

Don’t forget, if there wasn’t anything that took your fancy this week there’s always last week’s listings on The VR Job Hub to check as well.

We’ll see you next week on VRFocus at the usual time of 3PM (UK) for another selection of jobs from around the world.

May 18, 2020

Community Download: What’s The Worst Injury You’ve Had From VR?

Community Download is a weekly discussion-focused articles series published (usually) every Monday in which we pose a single, core question to you all, our readers, in the spirit of fostering discussion and debate. For today’s Community Download, we want to know what your worst VR injury is or what the worst VR injury is that you’ve seen?

Over the weekend a video of a man playing Richie’s Plank Experience on the Oculus Quest went viral when he decided to fully commit and leap into the air off the plank in VR. Unfortunately that meant he dove head first into a large TV in the living room, in real life. Presumably the man is okay, but the TV certainly is not.

Original video embedded below:

absolutely no one:
my dad doing virtual reality: pic.twitter.com/nkLmtEJlZj

— Ashley🦋 (@ashleycacioppo) May 16, 2020

I’ve never done anything quite so dramatic in a VR headset, even when feeling completely immersed. That being said, when playing Blade & Sorcery I did slash the wall once, cracking the ring of an old Oculus Rift controller. I’ve also slammed my knuckles into my office TV, into walls, and onto the edge of my desk which always hurts. That’s about it.

Have you experienced anything more dramatic? Have you seen anyone run head first into something or get so immersed you feel like you could actually jump off the side of a building? Share with us some of your craziest and most intense moments of VR immersion-laden injuries down in the comments below.

And if you want to read up on some people that may have experience something similar, you can always visit the VRtoER subreddit.

The post Community Download: What’s The Worst Injury You’ve Had From VR? appeared first on UploadVR.

April 4, 2019

Why it’s Time to Reinvent the Vocabulary of Virtual Reality

The way an emerging technology articulates itself often plays a much larger role in its uptake than the quality and utility of the technology itself. This is the power of language, and of marketing. It’s also often the case that the terminology used to describe a technology when it first erupts onto the scene sticks with it for good. Once branded, it’s branded for life.

Oculus Quest - Hero / Lifestyle Image We’ve been using the same language to describe the virtual reality (VR) experience since it became available to the consumer. We talk about VR as immersive, interactive, transformational, groundbreaking, innovative. We also talk about the universe virtual reality (VR) unlocks, our presence within it, and the state of flow it induces in us.

These terms share a very distinct set of qualities. They are all grandiose, romantic and superlative, and they all lack specificity. What these words fail to provide is space to accommodate for any of VR’s imperfections, and this might prove an issue in years to come.

Words like immersive and innovative have started to sound like hollow – even desperate – jargon, and may well start to have the opposite of their desired effect. It’s as if we’re using them time and again in the hope that their repeated utterance will somehow magically bring them to fruition. Instead, this process has driven out any meaning the terms once had.

The VR lexicon is due a considerable overhaul. It’s high time the industry found more expressive and particular ways to discuss the phenomenon of virtual reality because the current vocabulary is doing it a disservice.

Reinvention

Reinvention is much more difficult than the title of this article makes it sound. The terminology that attaches itself to any new technology at the outset has a distinct stickiness.

We’ve seen this phenomenon play out in the blockchain industry over the past year or so. Some companies entering the scene have attempted to distance themselves from the word blockchain, due to its association with cryptocurrency and the orbiting controversies. Some are choosing to use Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) as a kind of sanitized synonym.

The unique responsibility – you might even say burden – of a brand-new technology is that it must describe itself accurately and convincingly to an audience without a frame of reference. For this reason, the temptation is to describe an infant technology, before anyone quite knows what it’s capable of or what it will become, in flowery and unspecific ways.

Enter immersive, the go-to term for describing a VR experience that’s in any way pleasing or remarkable.

As Emily Brown and Paul Cairns of UCL’s Interaction Centre point out in their paper, A Grounded Investigation of Game Immersion, “it is very difficult to find out what exactly is meant by immersion and indeed even whether the different research on immersion is talking about the same concept.”

This slippery quality is precisely what made the term perfect for the early VR marketeers, but it’s also what’s now limiting discussion of the VR experience. The vocabulary of virtual reality is built upon the word immersion, a foundation that no one can pin down, qualify or interpret convincingly.

Brown and Cairns conclude their paper by stating: “Immersion is an intense experience that we have begun to clearly describe…this study has only scratched the surface”. It’s not quite an acknowledgement of defeat, but it’s not far off one either.

Moving beyond immersion

Perhaps instead of attempting to retrospectively apply meaning to a word as elusive as immersion, as Brown and Cairns attempt to do, we should look to unshackle virtual reality from the term entirely.

The onus is on the industry to somehow find a way to communicate the nuanced qualities of the VR experience in a way that both emphasizes its considerable merits, but also leaves room for its deficiencies.

If marketeers and industry professionals hold aloft the ill-defined concept of immersion as the immovable goalposts for VR, it’s going to continue to disappoint and to underperform.

The current popular vocabulary implies that VR is capable of inducing both the place illusion, the feeling of actually existing in a non-existent place, and the plausibility illusion, the genuine belief that a simulation is reality.

In truth, VR is currently only able to provoke glimmers of these sensations. For a flickering moment, the player might mistake the unreal for the real, or briefly forget their geographical location, but only ever for a moment. This in itself is remarkable enough.

Perhaps the state of immersion isn’t even what developers should be aspiring towards. Surely fun is a much more appropriate and rewarding goal. There’s plenty of time for the illusions of place and plausibility to be realised, but for now they are still ultimately a thing of (perhaps dystopian) fiction.

Immersion doesn’t necessarily equate to fun. It’s actually quite a serious term, when you consider the implications of becoming convinced that you’re somewhere you’re not, in a reality that’s not your own.

For now, I’d like to see virtual reality understood for what it is: a striking sensory experience, and a brand new artistic medium – but, most importantly, an imperfect one.

March 6, 2019July 22, 2019

American Museum of Natural History’s T. Rex VR Experience Comes to Viveport

HTC and the American Museum of Natural History announced early this year that the Manhattan-based institution’s ‘T. rex: The Ultimate Predator’ exhibit was getting a VR experience that would let museum-goers collaborate to build a Tyrannosaurus rex bone-by-bone in virtual reality. Starting today, you can now jump into the app with your VR headset at home.

Update (July 22nd, 2019): Vive Studios and Vive Arts released their educational title, ‘T. Rex: Skeleton Crew’, to at-home Viveport members.

The app is available either through Viveport Infinity, the Netflix-style subscription service, or on the Viveport store for $5. The app is specifically targeted towards HTC Vive and Vive Pro headsets.

Original Article (March 6th, 2019): The experience, dubbed T. rex: Skeleton Crew, was created by the Museum’s Science Visualization team, Vive Studios, and Warsaw-based AR/VR studio Immersion. The project was also undersigned by Vive Arts, HTC’s program to help cultural institutions fund and develop VR installations.

T. rex: Skeleton Crew takes up to three visitors and places them in a virtual re-imagining of the Museum’s Hall of Saurischian Dinosaurs, where they will work together to build a T. rex skeleton bone-by-bone. Completing the dinosaur skeleton transforms it into a walking, breathing beast, while simultaneously the Hall transforms into T. rex’s Montana home circa 66 million years ago during the Late Cretaceous Period.

In addition to the multiplayer VR experience, the museum will also be showing off life-sized reconstructions of T. rex at various life stages, which includes “the most scientifically accurate representation of T. rex to date, fossils and casts, large-scale projections and hands-on interactives to tell the amazing story of the iconic dinosaur,” HTC says in a blog post.

Now celebrating its 150th anniversary, T rex: The Ultimate Predator will be this year’s first major exhibition at the American Museum of Natural History.

“Virtual reality is a magical realm in which our human perceptions of time and space are suspended,” said Vivian Trakinski, the Museum’s director of science visualization. “In virtual reality, nothing is too small, too big, too fast, too slow, too distant, or too long ago to be appreciated. We hope this technology will let our visitors experience the most fantastic and inaccessible realms of nature.”

Enlist The Power Of The Ancients In The Ancients AR, Now Available

You may have heard about a n augmented reality (AR) title by the name of The Ancients AR, being developed by Warsaw based studio Immersion, which promises to give players the thrill of intense battles on the ocean complete with giants. The title has now released onto iOS devices thanks to Apple’s ARKit meaning players can become immersive in gigantic battles featuring just as big creatures.

The Ancients AR

In this real-time strategy title, players will need to command their fleet to ensure victory in some grand scale battles. Of course, should you need the extra firepower you can summon a fire-spitting dragon, or use other gigantic creatures to cast lighting bolts, fireballs, and so much more. With a number of different ships to command, how you prepare your fleet and magical powers of the Ancients will be key to ensuring victory in this action packed mobile title.

“I’ll never forget the first time I saw Jakub Różalski’s artwork. The powerful imagery in each of Jakub’s paintings moved us beyond our comfort zone – inspiring us to create the dangerous, uncharted world of The Ancients. It’s the perfect setting for a strategy game: a place where both traditional naval warfare and magic exist – and where these almost god-like creatures can turn the tide of battle in a split second!” Said Piotr Baczyński, CEO, Immersion.

The Ancients AR

Immersion are also currently working on a version of The Ancients AR in cooperation with HTC Vive. This virtual reality (VR) version will offer the same experience but also allow players to take on the point-of-view of the Ancients themselves, unleashing their powerful attacks for yourself. When this version of the title releases it will mark one of the first franchises with titles available for both AR and VR. More details on this version in the future.

The Ancients AR is available now on the App Store for supported iOS devices for $6.99 (USD). Immersion are working on an Android release of the title which is planned to release sometime later this year. VRFocus will be sure to bring you all the latest on The Ancients AR in the future so make sure to keep reading. You can see a trailer for the title below as well.

January 29, 2018

Unabomber: The Virtual Reality Experience Comes to Viveport

Last year Immersion teamed up with The Newseum to create a virtual reality (VR) experience based on the 20-year case of the Unabomber, a US domestic terrorist who terrorised universities, airlines and computer stores with mailed bombs. Originally shown at The Newseum, Unabomber: The Virtual Reality Experience is now available on Viveport for HTC Vive.

Unabomber: The VR Experience screenshot1

Unabomber: The Virtual Reality Experience allows users to join the FBI Task Force in charge of investigating one of the most challenging domestic terrorist cases in US history. Starting in 1978, the Unabomber waged a 17-year campaign of terror with lethal, homemade bombs, injuring 23 people and killing three by 1995.

Spanning eight states, the FBI investigation involved around 500 agents with educational narrative featuring insight from FBI agents Terry Turchie (Assistant Special Agent in Charge of the UNABOM investigation from 1994 to 1998) and Max Noel (FBI agent during the investigation). It explores the challenges of fighting crime in the age of terrorism, journalistic ethics, and the role of the press and the public in working with the law enforcement community.

The experience will allow players to investigate and interact with the evidence that helped solve the case and explore the primitive cabin where the Unabomber, Ted Kaczynski was captured. The at-home experience also includes additional interviews, videos, and evidence to review to gain a deeper understanding of the decades long case.

Unabomber: The VR Experience screenshot2

Vive Studios teamed up with The Newseum to bring Unabomber: The Virtual Reality Experience to Viveport, with the content marking the first in a series of similar educational experiences that the pair will bring to the platform. Future content will include Nellie Bly’s trip around the world, due to be showcased to Newseum visitors in Washington and available for download on Viveport.

Unabomber: The Virtual Reality Experience is now available on Viveport for $4.99 USD/ £3.77 GBP and will be available on Steam at a later date. For any further updates from Vive Studios or The Newseum, keep reading VRFocus.

January 6, 2018

Renault Trucks Integrates Mixed Reality into Production Process

Augmented reality (AR) and mixed reality (MR) have already proven their worth when it comes to productivity in busy environments with complex machinery, small, complicated devices or even the surgery room, and Renault Trucks have been working with virtual reality (VR) technology in its design and production process for years, but now they’re looking to integrate AR and MR technologies into its production process and quality control processes.

A Eureka Magazine report tells us that a team of 20 employees at Renault Trucks’ Lyon engine site in France have been working to make a prototype for using MR to help control engine quality. Using Immersion and supported by the company, the team created a mixed reality application which takes them over the process of designing a car, from inception to prototype.

Bertrand Félix is the Renault Trucks engineer leading the project, and he hopes the new technology will modernise and simplify the jobs employees at the Lyon site do every day; “In practice, quality control operators will wear Microsoft HoloLens smartglasses in which all the digitalised engine parts will be integrated. [Using] the glasses and mixed reality interface, operators will see decision-making instructions that will guide them through the most complex control operations. At the moment, operators working on control points are still using paper instructions.”

The technology is particularly helpful with complicated engines, allowing users to “look through” the engines, identify each part, and navigate their way through the complicated machinery. Each part has a digital user interface (UI) superimposed over it, so they can all be viewable individually in MR, allowing users to identify issues in the quality control stages much more easily.

“In addition to the expertise we have been acquiring in virtual reality since 1994, our added value lies in our multi-disciplinary team that really understands needs and uses in order to offer our customers a global experience”, explained Jean-Baptiste de la Rivière, R&D and innovation director at Immersion. “With Renault Trucks, we have designed and developed a tool that is perfectly suited to the requirements of the factory, which can be integrated into the manufacturer’s industrial processes.”

MR, AR and VR are all finding new ways to automate and simplify complex tasks like this, and for all of the latest of new and interesting ways these technologies are being used, make sure to keep reading VRFocus.