We’re on the cusp of major breakthroughs in the metaverse, that collective world of new augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) experiences that is gaining steam. The new meta modality will not only be a huge new source of user and behavioral data for enterprises, but it will be a fertile ground for deploying rapidly maturing AI technologies like NLP and computer vision.
AR and VR technologies have been simmering on the backburner for years. Up to this point, VR has primarily been used for immersive video games, although a few enterprise software companies have dabbled in AR and VR interfaces, including Looker before it was snapped up by Google Cloud.
But Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg put the collective worlds of AR and VR, i.e. the metaverse, firmly on the front burner last month when he announced Facebook was changing its name to Meta. The metaverse, it turns out, is a lot closer than many of us expected–perhaps as close as that sword in your Oculus-enabled hands.
This is great news for gamers, of course, but enterprises should also take notice, according to Dan Eckert, PwC’s resident AR and VR expert. “It’s getting significantly better,” he says. “There’s more users. There’s more interactivity. The environments are significantly more immersive.”
According to Eckert, the accelerated rollout is the result of a confluence of events. For starters, on the VR side (which is tracking ahead of AR) the technology for creating VR experiences has gotten significantly better in a short period of time.
“It used to take us six to nine months to build an interactive training simulation in VR. I’d have to have developers, and I have creatives and I would have artists and scriptwriters, and it was like producing a little movie or game,” Eckert says. “What used to take us nine months-plus I can now do in less than a week.”
The hardware has dramatically improved, too. Just a few years ago, a quality VR experience would have required a high performance gaming system, which would be tethered via a cable to the head mounted display (HMD). But today, users can pick up a quality, wireless HMDs for $200.
Lastly, the management tools have improved. “[Before] I pretty much need to go to MIT or Caltech to be able to keep it maintained and up to date,” Eckert says. “To manage 25 headsets, is not a big deal. But if I’m going to manage 2,500 or 5,000 or 10,000 or 80,000 headsets–now it goes into a wholly different world. I couldn’t do that a few years ago. I can do it now, and do it securely and do it cost effectively.”
Eckert sees enterprises adopting VR for training in the near future. PwC has purchased thousands of VR headsets and uses them to train PwC employees and clients. It uses VR headsets for sales meetings, even for traditional PwC services like auditing and consulting. It has even held a VR event for clients, which was very well received, he says.
“On the VR side, this is where we’re seeing an explosion, and it’s most of it is focused on training,” he says. “We did a study back in 2018 looking at the efficacy of using VR for training in the enterprise and the results were pretty spectacular. And they’ve only gotten better overtime because the cost create content is significantly dropping.”
The secret to VR’s success for training is deceptive simply, according to Eckert.
“In VR, you can’t multitask,” he says. “You’re completely enveloped in the environment. So what used to take us an hour to train in the classroom I can do in 20 minutes in VR because I’m not distracted.
