Immersive Tech Trends for 2021
How Immersive Technologies are helping us reimagine personal interactions in a post-COVID world.
At the start of 2020 (remember those giddy, carefree times before the pandemic struck?) Unity asked more than a dozen industry experts — including yours truly — to share their thoughts on how immersive technologies would be embraced for a report entitled Top 2020 Trends: Enterprise AR & VR.
All signs were pointing to 2020 being a breakout year for immersive tech, and, as it turned out, this was one of the few things not to have been derailed by COVID-19.
With the widespread need for social distancing and shift towards remote work, companies turned to immersive technology tools such as real-time 3D, AR, and VR to connect employees for remote collaboration, replace events and exhibitions, and allow teams to work in offices, labs, and sites from afar. As the need to support employees remotely grew more urgent, this was reflected in the accelerated adoption of XR across the board.
Microsoft, for example, has seen a 13x increase in remote assistance usage over the past 12 months, and Unity believes that this general trend is likely to continue in 2021.
