Companies across the virtual, augmented, mixed, and extended reality (VR/AR/MR/XR) industry have begun focusing on the future of industrial XR. Many hardware manufacturers are removing the barriers to successful XR experiences with innovative headsets and solutions aimed the enterprise market.
Organisations have launched numerous platforms to facilitate dialogue on the future of spatial communications, namely as businesses hope to reach their highest potential with immersive tech.
The ongoing Immerse Global Summit (IGS) 2022 is taking place 5-7 December in Miami, Florida. Scores of companies, thought leaders, and experts across the global tech industry have attended the gathering to share their knowledge on the future of Web3 technologies.
At the event, XR Today spoke to Jason McGuigan, Head of Commercial Virtual Reality, on his company’s latest product lineup, his views on the Summit, and thoughts on the industrial metaverse.
XR Today: What are your thoughts on the IGS 2022 Miami, and what have you learned and accomplished so far?
Jason McGuigan: There has been a lot of great energy in the crowd during the keynote. We’re seeing a lot of movement in the industry right now, but despite this, everyone at the event still carries an impressive amount of energy and excitement.
Regarding the enterprise metaverse, I gave an interactive conversation where people could choose their direction and what they wanted to hear about from a customer perspective.
We want to show how to bring XR technologies to the enterprise, and we’re currently at the spot where we need to prove the technology and its effectiveness to people outside of the industry. We need to also prove return on investment (ROI) as we can’t get people to invest in what’s possible for tomorrow if we do not show them ROI today.
I discussed in my morning keynote about how to prove ROI and getting the next level of the Metaverse, as well as some topics on futurism, generative artificial intelligence (AI), and others. We also mentioned our new ThinkReality VRX headset, which is coming out early next year.
XR Today: Can you provide any updates on the ThinkReality VRX and what you hope it will accomplish?
Jason McGuigan: Currently, we’re walking into a very mature landscape and are not generating something from the ground up. While organisations are discovering use cases for XR, the technology still has a lot of proven ROI.
Head of Commercial Virtual Reality at Lenovo
Many business use cases already show XR’s effectiveness and how it saves enterprises significant amounts of money. From this perspective, organisations believe it makes a lot of sense to invest in VR and AR. They are going to see that return in a very short period of time while saving money and lives, and protecting the legacy of an organisation.
Today, VR and AR are enhancing employees’ skills, decreasing error rates, and reducing the risks of having accidents or injuries on the job.
We focus our attention on these things and that is our big push for the next few months: to work with major independent software vendors (ISVs) in VR. This ensures that those bringing their software to our headsets are ready to go on day one.
We’ve got great partners at Qualcomm assisting in this, and we’re also excited to bring this out to market soon. Regarding AR, the ThinkReality A3 is a fantastic product. We’re consistently updating the device via the Snapdragon Spaces software development kit (SDK), so it has new and better features all the time.
It’s a device that, even a few months back, had already significantly evolved in just a few short months, and we’ll see that constant evolution of that technology. This is because the software is constantly being updated and improved to enhance features dramatically.
XR Today: What do you think industrial XR will look like in the near future, and will the enterprise drive the creation of the Metaverse?
Jason McGuigan: I think the enterprise will open the doors to industrial metaverse. I’ve consistently talked about the enterprise leading the way as it has the most money to spend. Furthermore, it also has many people managing a lot of devices for multiple use cases.
This also improves the consumer space as well with a cascading effect as the enterprise space develops and grows the market. These technologies will eventually move from the enterprise to the consumer, but I think the consumer market could plateau temporarily as more people adopt XR.
Many people realise that when they try the device for the first time at work, they will eventually buy a consumer device. Using these tools on the job becomes the first encounter with XR for many people, giving them a taste of the technology that leads to its adoption in their personal lives.
XR Today: What are your concluding thoughts on the conference and what do you expect from it in the near future?
There are so many conferences for technology that are generalised for tech. The IGS 2022 is one of the few specifically centred around immersive content. I see a lot of enthusiasm with this group and the market overall.
Although the event is a lot of fun, there’s also a lot of business getting done, people are making great connections, and it takes place at amazing destinations. The previous one was in Madeira and this one is taking place in Miami, allowing people to attend places they want to visit and experience beautiful locales with the people they enjoy spending time with.
This helps inject creativity and liveliness into conversations that I don’t think you get at some of the other major conferences. I’m looking forward to seeing the continued success, and as we meet many of the same people here, it grows into a really strong community that builds upon itself.
