State of the Sector — AR/VR/XR

Immersive Media (AR/VR/XR) for Transformation

The ​Virtual Reality (VR) and Augmented Reality (AR)​ industry (together ​XR ​as the broad spectrum) is a global industry, divided into location-based entertainment, applications and home device markets. This technology-driven industry saw more than $1 billion of investments in 2017 because of its immense potential to transform the way we experience our world today. The XR market includes significant contributions to create transformative products and applications borrowing from the existing worlds of video games, movies, television, live events, medicine and marketing, all of which fall under the Immersive Industry domain. The VR market was valued at $1.2 billion in 2018 while the XR home device market was valued at $1.8 billion in 2018​, a combined $3 billion market. The big question here is, how can such an impactful technology be used for psychological transformation?

What is Virtual Reality anyway?

To answer this question for VR/AR/XR, we need to go back to the early 90s when Brenda Laurel, renowned Human Computer Interaction scholar and games theorist, defined Virtual Reality.

Laurel wrote, “Virtual Reality is everywhere again today, and that’s a problem. Almost immediately after the new trend began, people started shopping 360° immersive video as VR. It is not. “Surround” movies are marketed as VR. They are not. “VR Storytelling” is a misnomer, it is not structurally VR. “Second Life” is described as VR. It is not. When the term is appropriated, its meaning disintegrates. Last time around, the same effect spread out across media types that are not VR. There is no such thing as “desktop VR.” Application of the term “VR” to a CAVE experience is questionable. When we use the term just because it’s sexy, its meaning spreads like an oil slick over our media”

In recent times, with the development of biometric sensing devices, virtual reality and other immersive technologies can now provide many types of sensory feedback retraining and education relevant to treating psychiatric illnesses. The merging of immersive technology with the biology of sensation allows behavioral shaping and conditioning procedures specifically targeting symptoms unique to each patient.

The Virtual Reality and Immersive Technology (VR-IT) Clinic at the distinguished Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University, for example, bridges evidenced-based behavioral psychotherapies, clinical research, and medical technologies to treat a varying spectrum of psychiatric conditions. The VR-IT Clinic incorporates the most current and emerging methods of virtual and augmented reality treatments into traditional cognitive behavior and mindfulness-based therapies, taking a holistic, customized, and personal approach to each patient.

The Immersive Industry

In parallel, the Immersive Industry is comprised of many sub-industries​ but primarily encompasses works that allow audiences to feel as if they are part of the story being told, as if they are immersed. For example, Immersive VR systems like the Oculus Rift and HTC Vive track a user’s physical body movement in real-time and utilize this data to drive the corresponding behavior of an avatar. Facebook Reality Labs’s “Immersive VR Self” is a transformative piece of research to identify the factors that make VR a unique construct of online self-presentation. Immersive entertainment both by way of AR applications and VR experiences overlaps with the traditional definition of the immersive industry, including what are generally considered commercially popular entertainment forms including performing arts, theatre, film, music, and video games. Immersive technology has frequently been used to affect audiences on a more personal level in many fields, including art, video games, interactive storytelling, military, education, medicine, and the adult entertainment industry.

No matter whether a passive or active participant, immersive media offers audiences a chance to feel like they belong within the work and are truly part of whatever world it creates, rather than simply acting as an outside viewer. One of the most impressive VR applications in recent times, Healium is the world’s first virtual and augmented reality platform powered by brainwaves and heart rate via consumer wearables. Healium is a biometrically-controlled, drugless solution for stress. These story-driven escapes create a sense of embodiment and are powered by the user’s feelings of positivity and calm via their wearables the transformative technology of AR/VR and its potential for healing.Healium stories, packaged in a portable, digital kit, allowing users to see their feelings heal virtual worlds and thereby healing their real worlds.

Where is the Transformation?

So far, the number of companies, individuals or organizations who have consistently and sustainably achieved both are few, but there is great potential for widespread impact as the industry matures. The problem we face is:

1) how to measure the impact of an industry that serves as the meeting point of many different, but related disciplines and 2) timing widespread audience adoption.

Across the verticals within immersion, you see clustering in healthcare, workforce training, and marketing while immersive entertainment and art struggle as small to mid-sized businesses.

Just as immersive media has the power to create meaningful relationships with brands through experiential marketing activations, it has equal power to create visceral messages and therefore has the power to heal.

Installed Base Growth

As ​Oculus​ and ​HTC​ refine their groundbreaking headsets to be lighter and accessible to use, Virtual Reality has become easy to use and adapt. Augmented Reality has been a hot topic with smartphones as a technology of utility, but it remains to be seen if innovation-leaders can make it happen. ​Magic Leap​ can back up the $2.3 billion they’ve received in investments, especially following Microsoft’s lackluster launch of their HoloLens​ device with a mere 50,000 units sold to date.

The ​Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality​ (XR) markets are less clear, with recent industry projections for VR Location-Based Entertainment widely ranging from becoming an $800 million market in 2022 (which by some estimates it already surpassed) to a massive $12 billion market in 2023. Either way, growth is in the future of the XR industry. Regardless, it’s a certainty that XR continues to be a hot offering for new experience seekers, particularly those who are intrigued by new technologies.

Measuring what Matters

Beyond quantitatively observing the successes of companies, it’s also equally important to look at the capability XR Industry has to form deep empathetic connections and its capacity for healing and emotional change. ​While previous research has established that virtual reality (VR) can be successfully used in the treatment of anxiety disorders, including phobias and PTSD, in the current study, Neuro Meditation Institute in Oregon, United States observed that a brief nature-based mindfulness VR experience to a resting control condition on anxious participants created a transformative experience in their lives. Self-reported anxiety symptoms and resting-state EEG were recorded across intervals containing quiet rest or the VR intervention. EEG activity was analyzed as a function of global power shifts and current source density estimates of cingulate cortex regions of interest were observed. Results demonstrated that both a quiet rest control condition and the VR meditation significantly reduced subjective reports of anxiety. This pilot study provides preliminary evidence supporting the therapeutic potential of VR for anxiety management and stress reduction programs. There are several self-sustaining VR apps available to try mindful meditation. Flow VR, for example, is an application which allows users to meditate whenever, wherever by being transported to a world of wonder. VR users can tap into meditation’s infinite benefits through a virtual reality experience of unparalleled quality with 4K 360°video, amazing music and quality guided meditation.

More than simple entertainment, immersive works possess the ​power to develop an audience’s understanding of social and psychological issues​, so they may become better equipped to be catalysts of change for the betterment of society by “stepping into the shoes” of the other.

User experience research has shown that while audiences increasingly wish for more direct engagement in their entertainment with increased active participation and immersion, this opens the door to the possibilities of impacting audiences more deeply, offering ​new perspectives.

Ethics

This dialectic is in keeping with the larger history of ethics in the face of diverse forms of development, including technological development, and it is increasingly important for companies and organizations to consider especially working with such technologies.

But just as there is a desire for positive social change through immersive media, there are potential negative effects. Kamal Sinclair, the director of the Sundance Institute’s New Frontiers Lab, goes a step further to define that as the “new reality”. She says that makers and users of XR must begin listening to create this new reality: “What might it look like to adjust the design of our media and tech spaces so they center the needs of those historically marginalized in those spaces?” This is a crucial first step towards equity, perhaps: deep, active listening to those most impacted by the conditions that many of us are critically resisting.

It’s potentially an endless spiral but a hopeful one that requires creators of XR experiences to take greater care and be mindful of the ethics while crafting such experiences with immersive technologies.