Greater Immersion May Mean Greater Monetization, But Virtual Reality (VR) Isn’t Quite Ready for Prime Time

The phenomenal growth in Virtual Reality solutions has made us amply aware of the concept of immersion. Immersive VR implies the presence of an artificial environment where a user's real-world surroundings are replaced with such authenticity that they engage with the simulated environment fully, with the suspension of disbelief at its fullest. In short, the more immersive the quality, the more effective VR will be. 

Why is Immersion so Valued?

In its efforts to create a 360-degree experience by transporting users into digital, three-dimensional environments, immersive VR ties the physical world with the virtual. In the future, this bridging of realities is expected to become so omnipresent and seamless that it would be hard to distinguish these two spaces in a few years, especially the transition from one to another.

Reflecting on its broader implications, it would impact the way we operate and function in our everyday lives, resulting in tremendous economic impact. According to stats presented by the PWC, the number of jobs that will be positively impacted by augmented and virtual reality in 2030 will be as high as 23 million, a stupendous increase from around 824,000 jobs in 2019. The estimated impact on the global economy could be US$1.5 trillion.

Research and evidence also show that the more immersion, the higher the monetization. According to studies conducted on this aspect, the arrival of computer graphics helped the gaming market expand beyond text-based adventure games in the 1980s, resulting in an annual growth of 19% in gaming revenue. What was US$6 billion in 1985 became US$24 billion in 1993. With multimodal AI-text, images, audio, and videos have become more immersive and interactive. Net monetization per hour is the maximum for text-based AI, followed by streamed audio, video games, streamed video, and dating apps.

Even after topping the charts, the research indicates the possibilities we see with VR are only the tip of the iceberg. It can still be called a nascent field.

If we consider the case of VR headsets, the real numbers are yet to be achieved despite significant technological improvements made in this area. Meta Quest, the VR headset by Meta, for example, offers only 2,200 apps, while the Apple iPhone was ready to offer 553,000 apps within five years of its launch. Meta Quest could sell only 27 million units, less than 20% of the 146 million units of Apple iPhones that were sold in the same period of five years after launch. 

Click here for a list of maverick companies revolutionizing augmented reality and virtual reality. 

Why is Immersive VR Yet to Meet and Leverage its Full Potential?

Altogether, immersion is something that helps VR race ahead of its peers. But VR solutions in this aspect are not ready yet for prime time. 

Immersive VR may find its application in a range of industries. Apart from gaming, which is the most obvious use case, immersive VR has and may have, at far increased levels, a game-changing impact on many industries, including gaming, healthcare, education, manufacturing, workforce, marketing, live events, military, retail, and real estate. But to achieve increased levels of adoption, there are several improvement areas that immersive VR would have to work on. 

First and foremost, it would have to better its user experience standards. Content offerings would have to be improved. It would have to become equally attractive and useful for retail and enterprise users. Moreover, the bottlenecks present in the areas of government oversight and legal & regulatory technicalities have to be removed. And finally, the cost to consumers has to be brought down. 

The lowering of these barriers to entry would result in greater adoption. Even during its growth, the providers of services would have to be mindful of consumer privacy and data security, health and safety issues, licensing and copyright infringement, and stuff like that. 

Some companies have been working consistently towards improving the maturity level of VR solutions. These companies becoming more and more efficient in their delivery would help increase the footprints of VR and cover much more ground than what it does today. 

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Leading Players in Helping VR Mature

#1. Facebook Reality Labs by Meta

Facebook Reality Labs intends to put together the best global team possible, consisting of researchers, developers, and engineers, who would build the future of connection within virtual and augmented reality spaces. 

In simpler terms, it intends to build the ideal cross-disciplinary team that develops tools for people to feel connected anytime, anywhere. 

The two major technology paradigms that Facebook Reality Labs is engaged with are Oculus and Spark AR. While Oculus aims to create new and superior ways for people to defy distance and connect with the world around them, the Spark AR studio tool allows anyone to create AR at any level. 

The most successful and well-known output of the Oculus technology paradigm is Oculus Quest, which has been rebranded as Meta Quest. The Meta Quest headsets promise to make one fully absorbed in immersive experiences by blending digital content most efficiently with the physical space that we live within. 

According to Meta, its Quest 3 headsets ‘unleash breakthrough mixed reality – from virtual reality to augmented reality, and everything in-between.' The application areas of Meta Quest headsets include gaming, entertainment, fitness and wellness, travel, design, or hanging out and playing virtually with friends. These headsets are known for their high-resolution infinite display, pancake lens, and counter-balanced ergonomics that come with the most premium design possible. 

For the three months ending on December 31, 2023, Facebook Reality Labs recorded a revenue of more than US$ 1 billion, a notable increase from US$727 million recorded for the same period the previous year, 2022. 

For the twelve months ending on December 31, 2023, Facebook Reality Labs registered a revenue close to US$1.9 billion, a slight decrease from more than US$2.1 billion registered for the same period the previous year. 

#2. Unity Technologies

Another company that has been traveling to great lengths to make VR meaningful and mature is Unity Technologies. The VR vision of Unity is to offer access to flexible tools that help one bring immersive VR experiences to life. These immersive VR experiences could be engaging games, interactive stories brought to life, or ways to transport people to new worlds by helping them create the most real virtual simulations. 

With Unity's solutions, one can reach most headsets with multiplatform support, achieve best-in-class graphics, and build complex multiplayer experiences with advanced performance tools. 

Among Platforms, Unity allows building for SteamVR, Meta Quest, Playstation VR, and more, with optimized graphics and profiling tools. The XR interaction toolkit helps streamline development while reducing cross-platform coding requirements. 

The creative graphics support that Unity offers helps build cutting-edge VR games that remain valid and useful across different hardware setups. Unity claims that its Universal Render Pipeline (URP) allows for smooth VR games that hit 90hz.

Overall, the Unity solutions are accessible for beginners even if they are built for professionals. The Unity real-time development platform helps one get started with VR templates, with reduced coding needs and visual scripting. For advanced developers, there exists the scope of leveraging Unity DOTS, addressables, and customized graphics. 

Some of Unity's significant and revolutionizing contributions in the field of VR are as follows:

Universal Render Pipeline

Providing the performance needed for the demanding nature of VR development, URP allows creators at all levels to express their vision with the same degree of extensibility and customization capabilities. 

XR Interaction Toolkit

It is a high-level, component-based interaction system for creating VR and AR experiences. It is empowered with a framework that makes 3D and UI interactions available from input events, cross-platform XR controller inputs, haptics, visual feedback, basic canvas UI, and more.

Visual Scripting

To reduce manual coding needs, the visual scripting feature allows the creation of scripting logic with drag-and-drop graphs. This way, it enables seamless collaboration between programmers, artists, and designers so that they can prototype and iterate faster, accelerating the speed of the VR game and app development process.  

Plastic SCM

A version control and source code management tool, Unity Plastic SCM helps improve team collaboration and scalability when building for VR. The artists and programmers get to access more optimized workflows and improved speeds while working with large files and binaries. 

The revenue of Unity Technologies has been on a consistent rise. It registered a revenue of US$544 million in Q3 2023, a significant increase from US$323 million recorded in Q3 2022. 

#3. NVIDIA

When it comes to building an efficient ecosystem for VR to mature, very few companies have achieved what NVIDIA has. It delivers the most efficient GPUs, drivers, and SDKs to meet the needs of professionals, gamers, and VR developers. 

NVIDIA VR Ready Programme

NVIDIA realizes that for VR to deliver the most immersive experience possible, it requires the highest-performance graphics. And that's what the VR Ready program is for. The VR Ready program components include the most sophisticated set of GPU, CPU, and HMD solutions from the house of NVIDIA.

NVIDIA VR Capture and Replay

This solution helps make VR more user-friendly by enabling developers and users to accurately capture and replay VR sessions for performance testing, scene troubleshooting, and more. 

NVIDIA CloudXR™ Suite

Leveraging NVIDIA's groundbreaking GPU and Virtual Workstation solutions, this solution suite helps dynamically adjust to network conditions and maximize image quality and frame rates so that next-level AR and VR experiences can be powered. 

NVIDIA VRWorks Graphics

Through this solution, NVIDIA offers the most comprehensive suite of APIs, libraries, and engines that enable application and headset developers to create cutting-edge VR experiences. 

The solution suite comes with multiple benefits. It enhances the application rendering performance and image quality with variable rate shading and foveated rendering. It comes with easy integration and unlimited configurability, resulting in extended support for application developers to deliver the best VR performance and image quality. 

Finally, its optimized HMD support makes it possible for headset manufacturers to access the latest NVIDIA hardware technologies through an extensive plug-and-play collection of APIs. The result is a more performant, immersive, and responsive virtual reality. 

For VR developers, the NVIDIA VRWorks Graphics SDK comes with a set of versatile tools that makes integration easy for application developers. It further helps in delivering the best possible VR performance and image quality, which is optimally configurable and has the lowest latency. The SDK helps improve the performance of all sorts of VR development for end users in the enterprise, creative, and gaming markets. 

On November 21, 2023, NVIDIA reported revenue for the third quarter ended October 29, 2023, of $18.12 billion, up 206% from a year ago and up 34% from the previous quarter.

The Road Ahead for Virtual Reality

Large tech giants are actively involved in making VR more immersive. They are investing in hardware, user experience parameters, and related R&D. These investments will show results by making VR more real in the days to come. 

While it is true that VR is not quite ready for prime time yet, it can become one of the most groundbreaking tools in the future. Immersive VR, by allowing seamless interaction with simulated environments, is becoming a crucial instrument in clinical research. A recent research showed its usability in assessing older adults and people with Alzheimer's Disease. 

Immersive VR is becoming a tool to impart training in aviation and disaster management, which were areas considered critical for training, without allowing access to expensive and hard-to-access real-life scenarios.

Additionally, it helps train surgeons by creating simulated surgery scenarios where the risks are mitigated to zero. It further aids in delivering critical medical interventions to patients situated in remote locations.

Immersive VR is even finding usage in areas that could not be thought conducive for VR integration even a few years back. For instance, it is helping settle insurance claims. 

Solera, a well-known provider of risk and asset management services for the automotive industry, has developed an Intelligent Repair Estimator tool using immersive technology to generate 3D car models. Due to the availability of this tool, it is possible for repair services and insurance appraisers to visualize the car and determine the severity of the damage and the cost to repair.

However, much work still needs to be done to encourage mass demand, accelerate adoption, and create a streamlined, well-regulated market. Many of the prototyped technologies remain untested. These innovations need to become feasible for adoption at a mass scale. The technology has to be made more secure, user-friendly, and low-cost. 

With efforts underway in all these directions, that day is not far when immersive VR will make our experiences more real and our applications more effective.

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