What is Immersive Technology?

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Immersive Technology Guide

What is Immersive Technology?

Immersive Technology is any technology that extends reality or creates a new reality by leveraging the 360 space. Because Immersive Technology leverages the 360 space/sphere, users can look in any direction and see content. Some types of Immersive Technology extend reality by overlaying digital images on a user’s environment. Others create a new reality by completely shutting a user out from the rest of the world and immersing them in a digital environment.

The Different Types of Immersive Technology

The different types of Immersive Technology are 360, VR, AR, MR, and XR:

360

360 is the most basic and probably the most familiar immersive technology out there. These days, 360 content can be seen practically anywhere online – especially on YouTube and Facebook. Most modern smartphones will also enable you to create a 360 image by using the “photo sphere” feature so citizen creators also have the ability to relatively quickly create 360 degree images of wherever you are or whatever you want to show people! Similarly, the cost of the equipment to create 360 imagery has also gone down considerably. The 360 content found in on social platforms like You Tube and Facebook range from user-generated to brand-sponsored content. No surprise there as this new format gives content creators more space to work with and allows users to explore content by looking in any direction.

VR

Virtual Reality is another very familiar type of immersive technology, especially because it has been quite the buzzword for the last couple of years. With VR, a user is completely shut out from the rest of the world while being surrounded by content. Through a head mounted display (HMD), whatever content the user experiences in the headset becomes their “reality” – allowing users to experience real and imagined worlds as if they are really there.

Different VR Terms

The world of Immersive Technology can be confusing because of all the terms involved. You might have heard terms like 360 VR, True VR, Mobile VR, and wonder if there’s really a difference between all of them.

  1. 360 vs 360 VR
    While essentially the same thing, 360 VR content is 360 content with VR mode. When in VR mode, users are able to view the 360 content in a cardboard headset, or sometimes even a mobile 360 VR headset. By itself (without VR mode), 360 content can be experienced without the help of an HMD and is best experienced on mobile.
Experiential Virtual Reality
  1. Mobile VR
    Mobile VR leverages HMDs that are connected to smartphones. Examples of these are the now discontinued Samsung Gear VR or even Google’s Daydream headset. Some might even consider Google Cardboard as Mobile VR as well. We’ve even seen cheap mobile VR headsets in retail office supply stores and even in clothing stores!
  2. True VR
    Because of all the terms that are connected to VR, the term True VR was coined to refer to the “real” Virtual Reality. Why “real” or “true”? True VR uses headsets that require very powerful computers or consoles. Examples of these are the Oculus Quest 2, HTC Vive, Oculus Rift, Playstation VR, etc. These HMDs are so powerful they also leverage sensors (separate from the HMD) that keep track of a person’s movement and their surroundings. The sensors would then adjust the VR content to whatever is within a user’s environment.
    Because True VR uses powerful computers and sensors it primarily uses CGI and 3D modeling for content (more below). Most of these VR experiences are tethered (cables connecting HMD to computer) but the Oculus Quest 2 offers an all-in-on VR experience that’s wire-free! How’s that for innovation.
  3. 360 VR vs In-VR
    360 VR content is VR at its most basic. This means that users can use their device to explore content by looking in any direction but the content merely surrounds them. It doesn’t take into consideration depth.In-VR content, on the other hand, does take depth into consideration (it’s stereoscopic).
    This means that when a person is viewing something “in-VR”, they can move closer to an object or move further away and the content adjusts to that. This is why In-VR experiences typically use CGI and 3D modeling.
AR

Augmented Reality (AR) is a different type of Immersive Technology where digital images are presented on top of the real world. This means that users who leverage AR aren’t completely shut off from the world. Instead, AR extends their reality.

A great example of AR is Snapchat Filters. With Snapchat Filters you can overlay digital images of a puppy, cat, movie star, etc. onto your face. You can even move your phone around and see clouds around you or stars. Another familiar example is Pokemon Go where users can walk around their neighborhood with their mobile phones and find Pokemon that are overlaid on the environment around the user.

Even stores like Target and Ikea have their own AR apps where users can choose a product (like a piece of furniture) and place it virtually in their homes. This enables them to test out how products look with their other furniture or even provide an idea of how big the piece of furniture is going to be. Essentially, it allows consumers to “try out” a product before even buying it.fk richard mille rm27 04 rm27 04 002 men unknown stainless steel good experience at any given time is was similar to.find the perfect chopard happy sport replica watches for your style from our wide range of luxury.

Pokemon Go Augmented Reality

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MR

Mixed Reality (MR) is somewhat a combination of AR and VR. Like VR, MR also uses an HMD. Unlike VR, however, a user is not shut out from the rest of the world. Instead, the HMD is more like a pair of glasses that overlays digital images on top of your environment (just like AR). Because of this, MR is sometimes called AR 2.0.

An MR headset that is currently available to the market is the Microsoft Hololens. There’s also the recently launched Magic Leap.

The question is: is MR “better” than the rest? Some say yes as MR takes Immersive Technology to the next level because it basically serves as the computer of the future. On their website for the HoloLens, Microsoft describes it best by saying it is a “holographic computer.” This takes “extending reality” to the next level and as Mixed Reality continues to evolve, we might just be looking into a future where desktops and laptops are no longer a thing and all of our computer work is done with the help of an MR headset.

XR

Extended Reality (XR) is the term used to describe the full spectrum of Immersive Technology (VR, AR, MR).

Ways to Use Immersive Technology

Immersive Technology used to be something you would read about in Sci-Fi books or watch in Sci-Fi movies. Today, Immersive Technology has many different applications and can be used by brands and consumers alike in countless ways:

Exploration of Physical Locations

Immersive Technology gives travel brands the opportunity to tap into consumers’ emotions in a way they never could before, while still being able to showcase the amenities and benefits available in their destination. It takes the travel shopping experience to a whole new level and also gives consumers a chance to tour a destination before actually booking a reservation. It’s the perfect sales tool for travel advertisers.

Another way that travel brands can use Immersive Technology is by leveraging AR or even MR to highlight certain spots of a destination while people are physically at a destination. For example, tourists could be walking around while wearing Immersive Glasses and the glasses point out different historical events or fun facts related to that particular spot – kind of like a virtual tour guide, if you will.

Travel brands can even use Immersive Technology to help those who are afraid of riding an airplane or even a boat by using the technology to immerse them in an environment that would calm them down or allow them to think of something else.

Virtual tours can also be applied to other industries like real estate, engineering, construction, etc. A company called Matterport does this with their technology where they create detailed immersive experiences of properties that people can view in VR headsets.

Immersive Technology for physical locations doesn’t have to be limited to virtual tours. It can also be used as an ecommerce/shopping tool for real estate and travel (which we will touch on later).

Enjoying Immersive Ads

Marketing & Advertising

  1. Immersive Advertising – It’s been a while since there has been a major technological shift in the ad industry, but the coming of Immersive Advertising has changed that. But what is Immersive Advertising? Immersive Advertising is an entirely new ad format that leverages Immersive Technology while still being able to use today’s current ad channels and ecosystems. This new ad technology takes advantage of a mobile https://www.high-endrolex.com/20 phone’s sensory inputs (like its gyroscope, magnetometer, accelerometer). These sensory inputs allow the immersive ad to respond to device motion, which makes it very effective for mobile advertising.Because Immersive Ads are very interactive, they are able to initiate and sustain ad engagement. They also elevate the ad experience for the consumer – a very important factor considering the ad industry has been getting a bad rep for intrusive and irrelevant experiences.

The immersive display ad below for Air France (what we call “deep display” at ADVRTAS), is a great example of how brands can start playing with immersive tech today. The imagery used was ordinary pngs and jpgs that the team at ADVRTAS was able to combine together to build this display ad that ran across Google. The results of the campaign blow the socks off rich media display and video with 45% of consumers engaging with the ad. As for click throughs, those too were well beyond anything seen with other digital ad formats. 

2. Experiential Marketing – Experiential marketing is one of the most common implementations of Immersive Technology in business where brands can set up interactive booths in trade shows, county fairs, malls or even sporting events where people can try promotional VR experiences. These promotional experiences can be based on an upcoming movie or show or they can even be a promotional experience for a product.For example, to promote the first season of Stranger Things, Netflix created an immersive experience that put the consumer in a scene of the show where they get to watch the scene unfold in first person perspective. Other more recent examples are movies like Mission Impossible, The Meg, or The First Purge.Another example of experiential marketing can be found in travel trade shows. During events, travel brands & tourism boards would hand out cardboard headsets and encourage people to try them out with a 360 video of the tourist spot they’re promoting.

Some of these Experiential Marketing installations are so incredibly detailed that brands have even created sets and included props that would help elevate the immersive experience.

3. Immersive Web Apps – As mentioned previously, Immersive Ads work best in mobile and it can be flexible as it works either in mobile web or in-app. Immersive Ads allow consumers to explore a brand within an ad unit seamlessly while browsing the internet – all without having to be redirected into a page. What’s great about Immersive Technology is that brands don’t just have to stop reaching out to their consumers with Immersive Ads. They can provide bigger and deeper implementations of Immersive Ads through Immersive Web apps.For example, if a consumer is exploring an Immersive Ad and is interested to learn more, the consumer can click on a CTA inside the Immersive Ad that will redirect them to an Immersive Web App (IWA). An IWA is a bigger and deeper implementation of an Immersive Ad. Because it works as some sort of landing page, it gives brands an opportunity to further expose consumers to their messaging and target those who are deeper in the sales cycle.

Immersive Technology Shopping
  1. Ecommerce & Shopping Tools – Immersive Technology has put new meaning to the term “online shopping.” As mentioned earlier, more and more stores are using AR apps to allow users to test out their products beforehand. Even with VR, brands like those within the car industry are using virtual showrooms where consumers can look at cars, take virtual test drives and even “sit inside” them. The experience is made even more immersive by letting users sit in actual car seats to make them feel like they’re actually inside a car.Other examples of Immersive Ecommerce & Shopping Tools are the Target and Ikea AR apps mentioned before where users can try and see how a product would look like in their homes. This also works for real estate where people looking for homes can decide which homes are worth visiting in person and which homes are not, by taking a virtual tour of the home first. By allowing consumers to “try before they buy”, immersive technology makes the online shopping experience much more seamless and interactive.Notice that with these three examples in marketing & advertising, Immersive Technology allows brands to reach consumers in every stage of the consumer purchasing funnel.

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Healthcare

The Healthcare Sector has always benefited from the advancement of technology and the coming of Immersive Technology is no different. Doctors and healthcare providers have discovered that Immersive Technology helps with relieving a patient’s pain as immersing them in an experience distracts them from what’s going on. For example, in a university in Canada, students developed a VR game that would immerse cancer patients during chemotherapy and thus, distract them from their pain.

Another benefit (which ties in with Education) is that Immersive Technology allows medical students and doctors to do surgery simulations. Immersive Technology can help doctors watch other surgeons perform operations remotely – maybe even from a first person perspective.

Immersive Technology improves the healthcare sector because it is a really good tool that promotes empathy as well. Doctors and healthcare providers would better understand their patients by immersing them in experiences that allow them to walk in their patients’ shoes and see what they experience.

To read more about VR in Healthcare, click here for an article from UploadVR.

Education

Education has and can greatly benefit from Immersive Technology as it taps into the different senses of a human being. For example, a few years ago at CES, one of our team members was able to try out a VR simulation used to train firefighters. In this simulation, a user is given an actual firefighting coat and a VR controller shaped like a water hose. The coat would heat up depending on the temperature of the fire in the simulation and the water hose would vibrate due to the pressure of the water. In this simulation, the user’s sense of sight, hearing, and touch are being tapped into. If a scent generator was added to the simulation, even a user’s sense of smell could be used.

Because it taps into the different senses of a person, immersive content allows a person to learn from the best method that works for them – whether they’re a visual learner, an auditory learner, or even a haptic learner – Immersive Technology makes it possible.

With Immersive Technology, students can even have field trips in VR all from their classroom. Learning about the Roman Colosseum? Pop on a VR headset and tour the actual Colosseum and see historical events unfold as if you’re really there!

Immersive Technology like AR or even MR can even help students learn about the human body and how each part functions by overlaying digital images on an actual person and highlighting where the different parts are located.

Gaming with Virtual Reality

Art

Many museums are finding that using Immersive Technologies allows visitors to engage with pieces and “feel a connection with the artist”. By revitalizing old works of art in the museum into virtual spaces, visitors no longer have to stand in line among large crowds in order to stare at a painting from 5 feet away. Now they can be immersed within a classic painters studio or find themselves placed in the landscape of the painting. And with the ability to download immersive technology apps, those who are unable to travel to popular museums are now given an opportunity to view rare works of art and limited run collections.

Immersive Technology is also giving artists a new canvas of creativity to reach younger audiences who have grown up only using screens. With the help of AR, brands like Remy Martin are using virtual art and immersive technologies to create a stronger brand image. Therefore allowing audiences to feel a deeper emotional connection to the brand and artworks.

Gaming

The gaming industry has been one of the first movers of Immersive Technology. Because of this, Gaming and Immersive Technology have become almost synonymous to each other – causing a barrier for brands to leverage this technology. Thankfully, this misconception has slowly been debunked as people are beginning to realize the many different benefits of Immersive Technology. Even so, the Gaming Industry has been going strong with Immersive Technology. The launch of the Playstation VR and even Pokemon Go has definitely helped in this aspect. Not to mention that these days, VR arcades are becoming more and more common.

With all these benefits, we can definitely see that Immersive Technology is here to stay and is ushering in the next Industrial Revolution. This new technology is opening up a realm of possibilities that the world has never seen before and is making improvements in industries that have not had a major technological shift in a long time. As time passes, it will be exciting to see how Immersive Technology will continue to develop and progress and what other emerging technologies will come out of it.

 

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