2024 was another busy year for XR. While the mainstream rise of Apple Vision Pro, Meta Quest 3S, and Ray Ban smart glasses took centre stage for dedicated audiences, profound market shifts behind the scenes may shape the future of XR potentially towards mainstream AR wearable technology.
That future is not yet set in stone, and while AR tools are accessible via most smartphones today, increased adoption of immersive hardware and software may be years away for consumers. On the other hand, business sectors like healthcare, heavy industries, and energy are already deploying XR through digital twins, simulation technology, and immersive training. However, undercovering these innovations can be challenging if one doesn’t know where to look.
Leading technology and XR events like CES, MWC, AWE, AES, and others are incredible ways to learn about immersive technology; several other revolutionary AR/VR/MR innovations are on show at industry-focused events, which broader audiences and enthusiasts may miss.
To understand the value of industry-focused events and the maturity of XR in various enterprise sectors, XR Today spoke with Kevin O’Donovan, Co-Chair of the Industrial Metaverse & Digital Twin Committee at VRARA, and Jennifer Rogers, Executive Officer of the Learning Technology Standards Committee at the IEEE, during the latest edition of the Big XR News Show.
The Shape of XR to Come
As 2025 approaches, the mainstream XR space is quickly evolving from being primarily focused on fully immersive VR solutions for businesses and gamers. With the rise of AR and AI, the XR market is growing beyond the offerings seen earlier in the decade. Rogers noted, “There have been a lot of events going on, whether they’re industry-specific or more general,” that have showcased the possibilities of AR/VR/MR solutions in recent years, months, and even weeks; she explained:
Thinking about some of the events that maybe not all of our colleagues end up attending, but have had amazing pieces of information emerge that I can reflect upon. We’ve certainly had a few events here in Houston focused on the energy space, a few events around digital technology, and the use of not only XR but also AI and digital twins in the energy space. Those have been very well attended and quite a few great conversations coming out of those.
Rogers continued by noting that experts are exploring existing XR opportunities and the challenges within ecosystems in terms of different technologies working together to solve deployment hurdles such as data sharing or bandwidth issues.
Observing Industry-Focused Events
Industry-focused events provide core insight into how businesses use XR tools to solve niche use cases while also understanding the hurdles facing widespread adoption.
Speaking on other insightful events, Rogers highlighted October’s International Symposium on Mixed and Augmented Reality, “an inaugural event” the IEEE Metaverse Group hosted in Seattle, where “lots of amazing research” came to the surface covering what businesses “are working on from a spatial computing perspective and a hardware perspective,” helping the XR community at large understand how XR enhances the workplace.
Moreover, Rogers noted that at other industry-specific events, such as the upcoming I/ITSEC event in December, people start talking about XR, simulation, AI, and how it all “comes together.”
Rogers continued:
That’s really interesting, because I/ITSEC is a great event that’s gone on for quite some time and is really a great collaboration between the defence community and heavy industrial. That’s usually very well attended once again, primarily from people who are working in the heavy industrial or defence spaces who want to collaborate around how we use technology in service of humanity and align to specific business cases. All those things that we keep talking about.
Rogers noted that in the new year, events such as Industrial Immersive will bring together industry experts, such as herself and O’Donovan, “focusing on heavy industrial use cases and the ways in which we can utilize extended reality to solve problems for business.”
“So, all great events, and maybe not those bigger shows, but certainly, events where they’re amazingly talented people coming together trying to solve real challenges from the perspective of heavy industry,” Rogers added.
The Evolution of Enterprise XR Solutions
Speaking on overlooked XR-facing events, O’Donovan noted that overarching technology events such as Mobile World Congress, NVIDIA GTC, and Microsoft Ignite provide vital insight into the broader evolution of the XR market overall and even towards specific sectors.
On the other hand, industry-specific events that cover sectors like energy, manufacturing, healthcare, and education highlight valuable efforts of AR/VR/MR firms that are deploying targeted immersive solutions to businesses at scale today, which may not get the limelight at broader overarching events.
Despite various sectors having dedicated emerging technology showcases throughout the year, the general public is waiting for the next mainstream XR success story. However, events like Distributech and ADIPEC show how enterprise success stories and investments exist today as the consumer market waits for more affordable XR products and applicable services.
While the XR industry is growing in influence and has seen massive success via products like the Meta Quest, a new promise overtakes the sector at large every year. In 2024, auidences thought “the Apple Vision Pro was going to be the answer for everything, and it wasn’t despite it being a great piece of tech,” remarked O’Donovan. However, by turning optics away from the mainstream and towards the enterprise, newfound success stories are sitting and waiting, painting a picture of the shape of XR to come.
O’Donovan explained:
When I was off at ADIPEC, I came across a bunch of companies with very good XR training platforms aimed at oil and gas. A lot of people there were using Mata Quest 3, Pico, HTC, or Varjo headsets to train workers on oil rigs and tankers. Now, that’s not a volume business for the general public, but it’s a very useful solution for those industries. What we’re seeing is, obviously, there are different use cases and different industries, but we’re finding niche solutions. Depending on your industry, you have niche solutions. There are many different niches in different industries. Now, that doesn’t mean AR, VR, MR is going to break through to the general public in the morning, but it’s creating value in those industries today.
Advancing from One-Off Packaged Silo Apps
While the XR community had similar discussions “two or three years ago,” O’Donovan stated, the industry was experiencing the same thing: having “niche solutions.” Still, the difference today is how XR firms offer enterprise-ready solutions that package several moving parts into one product, allowing for enhanced deployment and scalability. O’Donovan noted how in the past, XR enterprise solutions were “very much one-off packaged silo apps.”
“Somebody went out with a camera that did a reality capture, created a digital twin, then they created training, they rolled it out, and it was six months after they started,” O’Donovan remarked, “by the time they rolled it out, normally it was out of date because everything had changed.”
O’Donovan continued by stating that many more companies are working at a foundational level, putting all of their XR data in one place, such as combining XR, training, and AI data to achieve the scalability of modern immersive solutions; he added:
There are a lot more people who, instead of designing everything themselves, they’re using foundational products to build specific use cases rather than the entire stack. I think that can only help the wider adoption later.
“The same is true for headsets; no one’s building apps for specific headsets; they’re building them for all headsets, so again, common standards are a good thing now, but it’s still a slow burn,” said O’Donovan.
Addressing Today’s Bussiness Challenges
Rogers remarked how she is “encouraged in the sense that as we start to look at some of these more niche use cases, one of the things that we are seeing is a direct connection between the technology in the use of advancing humanity.“
“In every case, we’re looking at real-world challenges that exist in the industry and the ways in which we can explore those or approach those in fundamentally different ways and in ways that benefit not only the organization from an enterprise perspective, but from a career development perspective of the people who actually engage in the experiences,” Rogers also added.
Rogers noted that “one of the things that’s really encouraging” is that as the XR industry and its leaders are “fundamentally transforming” the success of AR/VR/MR solutions in various workplaces, “the more we actually build a case whereby executives can look at XR and understand the value of the investment, we get beyond the area we’ve been stuck in for some time where it feels like everything is a pilot.”
Creating Connections Between Technology and Workers
“If you’re looking at this and really investing large scale from an organizational standpoint, it’s important to see proof that it actually solves business problems,” Rogers added. At industry-focused events, XR’s success is far more transparent, showing audiences, industry leaders, and vendors alike how to drive success with XR today.
Rogers explained that interest in XR exists in enterprise spaces such as heavy industry because there is a “clear connection between operations and even the way that work is planned, managed, and executed within those organizations, that ties directly to the XR space.”
Rogers added
The other encouraging thing is that we’re starting to see more and more of XR not just at its own event but also in events that are maybe a little bit broader. That’s encouraging to me, too, because as we’re starting to talk about the ways in which these industries are looking towards the future and the ways in which they will automate and/or utilize data, XR is coming into that conversation naturally.
In closing, Rogers said, “We’re starting to see it [XR], find a home and for it just to be something that comes up every time you talk about digital transformation or anytime you talk about automation, which I think is really exciting too.”
