So virtual reality is the technology that
has been around for serval decades in areas
like the military and academia.
But it's now finally ready for prime time.
You can now purchase them in regular electronics
stores, and they're just ripe for mass market
now.
What they allow you to do is step into another
world.
So it gives you the sense of presence.
It's more than just immersion, but a true
sense of presence of actually being in another
place, and even being in another body of another
person.
So the opportunities in learning and development
are for obviously any type of skill-based
training, that has some type of spatial aspect,
three D aspect to it where you can practice
and rehearse over and over.
It's a flight simulator for just about any
task if you want.
But also for soft skills training to step
into the shoes of a customer, of an employee,
of someone of a different gender, or ethnicity,
or age even to experience what the world is
from that point of view, and develop better
empathies, the ultimate empathy machine.
So that's virtual reality.
It's sort of a box, you strap it on, and you're
stepping into another world.
Augmented reality is see through so it can
be headsets, although the headsets are still
about three to four years away from mass market.
What is available though are phone-based augmented
reality.
And Apple just made a huge announcement here
followed by Google's Android, that they're
now going to make it available on pretty much
all phones.
So within the next year here we can have billions
of phones, that can work as augmented reality
lenses to the world.
You hold it up, and you can superimpose simple
things like wayfinding.
How can I find something?
You can have arrows in the floor, that will
direct you in the store, or at a hospital
to where you want to go, to any type of instructions,
maintenance, how to install something you
can just hold up the phone, it will show you
that.
It can take you on a scavenger hunt, and a
learning scavenger hunt.
You can visualize things in three D right
in front of your eyes with your phone.
So the mass market of augmented reality, granted
it's fairly simple you're holding up your
phone, and looking through your camera lens,
but that might have even bigger potential
because of just the sheer scale of it.
