Carnegie Mellon — Tech & Entrepreneurship in the Bay Area Speaker Series: Trends in AR & VR
“What if this room you’re in was a virtual one? What if everyone in here wasn’t really here? Would it be any better?” — Shanna Tellerman, Modsy CEO
This was one of the key questions asked of the audience at the inaugural Carnegie Mellon Tech & Entrepreneurship in the Bay Area (CMU TEBA) Event, which invited CMU alumni from the SF Bay Area to hear about the future of virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR).
Modsy Founder/CEO Shanna Tellerman was joined by VERA Cofounder Chuck Tsung-Han Lee to answer a number of questions about the current state of augmented reality and virtual reality, and explain how they are trying to push the industry forward with their own companies.
In particular, Shanna emphasized her vision for a world of XR — were augmented, virtual, and “mixed reality” are more converged into everyday life. She explained that one of the main difficulties in widespread adoption comes from some of the divides between AR and VR.
While AR and VR have made a lot of progress in recent years, there is still a lot of room for the technology to grow.
AR, VR, and XR Hardware
It may come as a surprise, but while VR is often treated as cutting edge, the fundamental experience hasn’t changed very much for the past 20 years. Virtual reality continues to be restricted by the form factor of wearing a cumbersome headset and plugging into a computer.
While augmented reality is now starting to circumvent this barrier by being offered in modern mobile devices, it has the awkward issue of being required to use a handheld device as a lens to view an augmented world, and the development of AR-glass technology is still in its infancy.
But despite the hardware restrictions, the computer processing technology behind VR has improved exponentially and the cost of development and customer adoption have rapidly decreased.
Because the software has rapidly improved, more companies are now starting to experiment and come up with reasons for using AR and VR. And as more AR & VR content is created, the hardware behind it will begin to evolve.
AR and VR Content Development
The next topic of discussion was about the types of content created with AR and VR technologies, with VR being primarily associated and used for entertainment, and AR is more common in retail and informational situations.
Over the past few years, virtual reality has seen something of a renaissance in gaming, with more people adopting the technology as the prices decrease and publishers offer developers more support.
With the massive success of Beat Saber, Chuck believes that virtual reality might finally have discovered its first “killer app” — and a variety of new games will soon follow in the coming years.
He also discussed the growth of virtual reality in the cinematic arts as more and more filmmakers are examining the novelty of interactive storytelling within the medium, with programs such as New Frontiers at the Sundance Film Festival and the VR Experience Lounge at San Jose’s own Cinequest.
Ethics and the Future of VR
Over the past few years, industries such as retail, real estate, and healthcare have been working hard to adopt AR and VR. Through the power of machine learning, customers can now view 3D renderings of different products superimposed in the real world, and even take a virtual tour of a home rendered with artificial intelligence. Instead of conducting costly training exercises, surgeons can now utilize virtual reality to learn new procedures. Experienced surgeons can even combine VR with robotics to conduct surgeries remotely.
Refreshingly, the chat didn’t shy away from discussing some of the current and future pratfalls of VR — chief among them being the difficulty in creating positive communities in the virtual world. They didn’t sugarcoat this issue: in social VR games like Rec Room, there has been an overwhelming amount of harassment of all kinds taking place in the community, with many women being pushed away from the experience entirely, despite rave reviews from male gamers. While gaming (and tech) may also face this issue, the vulnerabilities present in virtual reality make it feel especially intrusive.
And while safety and privacy remain a sore spot for the future of social VR, AR has also started to steer towards a future where everyone’s social profile might be seen on a virtual display, with a number of companies, policy-makers, and researchers exploring how advanced technology like facial recognition might be incorporated into our lives through the power of XR.
As the technology matures, these issues are coming to the forefront, and better solutions and policies will need to be developed in order for people to adopt the use of AR and VR in everyday life.
So regardless of how the technology continues to evolve, we’ll need to remember to ask: is this really better, and what can we do in order to create a better virtual world, before it starts blending into our own?
