Enterprise VR: Will it Happen?
Since Facebook/Meta started to invest massively into Virtual Reality (VR) technology, the topic has received much attention, especially in the context of recreational use.
While I enjoy VR for gaming, my main interest is in the potential of VR-based work environments. Instead of jumping on the hype train, I intend to approach the topic with sober enthusiasm. Sober insofar as I realize that none of the many companies offering VR collaboration spaces have given us a compelling reason to put on a clunky headset so far.
Using VR equipment for work results in a clumsy interaction and hence in low efficiency, and in some cases in nausea. The inability to see one’s keyboard makes it hard to do anything that requires text input. Even whiteboarding is awkward due to the lower precision of hand tracking compared to a real pen. When it comes to collaboration with avatars, the lack of facial expressions (not to mention half of people’s bodies) is a showstopper in my opinion.
And yet. There is something there… as I learned rather recently. I have been working on highly advanced UIs since 2010, in particular zoomable applications for the visualization and analysis of large amounts of complex data (some of my prototypes have been compared to the gesture-based UI Tom Cruise uses in the movie “Minority Report”). Yet, I never saw value in going 3D.
That changed in 2019, when I had the opportunity (and the privilege) to work with Splunk’s VR team on some early concepts for data analysis in VR. What started with the question “How do we create a compelling VR demo for our customer fair?” soon evolved into the concept of a full-blown 3D workspace, which included the representation of a complex system landscape as a cityscape with a circular control room hovering above (US Patent US-20220191105).
For me, it was an epiphany — for one thing, the sheer amount of space and different ways to organize and visualize information was amazing. I had already enjoyed the benefits of unlimited screen real estate in zoomable UIs, yet this went far beyond. But the real eye-opener was my failed attempt (later that year) to recreate the unique qualities of the 3D prototype — which had received overwhelmingly positive feedback from customers — in a two-dimensional interface. Most important among these qualities is awareness: An immersive 3D environment allows users to focus on something close to them while still being aware of what is happening in the background, farther away.
Having thus explained why I am at the same time sober and enthusiastic about enterprise VR, let me address the question posed in the title of this post:
Will it happen?
For a disruptive innovation to take off, it must be both desirable and viable (the latter including being feasible in the first place). Let’s start with the first criterion:
Assuming that the required technology is advanced enough to become wholly imperceptible (or transparent, in a manner of speaking), is working in VR truly desirable?
In my opinion, the answer is a resounding “yes”, and nobody has made that point better than the glass manufacturer Corning in their awesome and inspiring videos
“A Day Made of Glass”:
and “A Day Made of Glass 2”:
The irony of it is, of course, that they are selling a physical product (glass for interactive displays), yet the value proposition in the videos — vast screen real estate and pervasive interaction capabilities in an everyday environment — can be achieved with much less effort by means of VR.
In addition to these two advantages, there is the already mentioned quality of enabling awareness and the fact that orientation in spatial environments is easier for humans than hyperlinks and folder structures (after all, spatial environments are what our brains evolved to understand).
In today’s world of mostly remote office work, there is also value in the social interaction in a virtual space (as opposed to video calls), especially the potential of serendipitous encounters and unscheduled water cooler chats.
Furthermore — and this is obvious given that there is already a lot of investment here — there is enormous value in the creation of digital twins of existing shop floors, chemical plants, airports etc., which allow both real-time tracking and simulation. An inherent advantage of digital twins of complex systems — compared to more conventional representations such as dashboards — is that they take away the abstraction and can thus be processed much faster by the human brain.
And then there is the potential of creating entirely new kinds of user interfaces, such as interactive holograms — although I don’t hold my breath for that since we already have a lot of untapped potential and UI designers generally prefer to stick to the proven typewriter-and-paper metaphors of the 20th century.
Coming to the second question:
Is enterprise VR already viable or will it be in the near future?
As far as the present is concerned, the answer is probably no. But things are changing fast, driven by the massive investment by Meta and others.
Being viable means that enough of the advantages of the ideal (fully transparent) VR can be realized to outweigh the downsides, so that a significant net benefit is created. The downsides, as far as current VR equipment is concerned, are:
The headsets are too heavy, uncomfortable (especially the Quest, which is terribly front-heavy), and still have a slightly inferior resolution compared to conventional displays. The hand-held controllers may be great for gaming, but are inferior to keyboard and mouse in terms of interaction efficiency when applied to work scenarios.
However, we only need this equipment for two capabilities: stereoscopic vision and head/hand tracking. If you take a close look at the list of desirable qualities above, you’ll realize that they don’t inherently require these capabilities. Just as developers haven’t waited for VR to create 3D video games, 3D enterprise applications can already be built right now.
The 3D prototype I built at Splunk was realized in WebGL so that it could run both in a conventional browser and in a VR environment. In the browser, plain old mouse and keyboard were used to interact with the content. The result was a surprisingly practical UI, and although it didn’t offer the mind-blowing spatial immersion that you get with a VR headset, there was actually a net benefit in going 3D.
So where’s the catch?
3D on conventional hardware adds complexity to the user interaction: the unlimited screen real estate is paid for by the need for additional controls for camera movement (and, possibly, locomotion). The established solution in gaming (aiming the camera with the mouse) conflicts with the need to point at and click interactive objects in the current field of view.
That can be solved, but requires users to adopt new habits. The second aspect of the necessary paradigm shift is that 3D can’t live up to its full potential if such an application lives in yet another browser tab. It requires a natively spatial, immersive work platform that gradually replaces the browser itself.
And that platform can’t be just a fancy 3D room with avatars and hovering virtual browser windows… there is not enough added value in that. The integration with content must be much deeper, which means that there must be APIs for vertical applications to plug into. And the developers of these verticals must have an incentive to use the platform… such as a huge user base — which, you guessed it, would require a significant incentive to bring users onto the platform in the first place.
The first company that comes up with a use case and value proposition good enough to lure millions of users into a 3D environment for office work and which has the strategic foresight to turn it into a general work platform will end up owning the virtual workplace. IMHO it’s not going to be one of the many companies going after the low-hanging fruit — adapting the technology of multi-user 3D games for real-time communication and collaboration.
The steady evolution of headsets and controllers (mostly driven by the recreational market) will sooner or later make their use painless enough to unlock stereoscopic vision and head tracking for work purposes. These two capabilities can amplify the initial value proposition of a 3D work environment dramatically.
Summing up, I think that the question is merely when, not if, enterprise VR will be a thing. I also think that it will be initially driven by a use case for which the unique qualities of a 3D UI are particularly valuable and then extend into other domains.
There remains much more to be said about the ergonomics, addressable market and technical aspects of 3D work environments. I will share my thoughts on these topics in future posts, so stay tuned!
