Team Trivver hopes that everyone is having a stellar holiday season! This year we are grateful for all of the amazing advancements that have come to the XR industry, and we are looking forward to 2019 and all of the amazing things to come. Here are some of the team’s favorite stories from December, with a focus on some new VR technology, the continued growth of the VR landscape, and a new LA-based experience!
Cool New Tech
LooxidVR is a virtual reality headset that aims at analyzing your emotions
LooxidVR won an innovation award at CES 2018, and it is totally understandable why. The company created a headset that use EEG sensors and eye tracking to collect biometric data of the user, and the analyzed data also clients to see where the users looked and how they felt while they are experiencing VR contents.
Some ways this technology has been used: in healthcare, to collect data during VR based therapy, for education/training, to provide valuable insights on the effectiveness of the training, for marketing and consumer research as a way to collect valuable insights through emotional responses of consumers to a new product, and more.
LooxidVR’s longterm vision is to be the leading authority on HMD-user emotion recognition and analysis based on human data, and they seem well on the way. We can’t wait to see their positive impact on the XR community as their technology is used to understand, refine, and improve a variety of immersive experiences.
ViewR gives friends a window into what you are doing in VR
VR can be an isolating experience if you don’t have a headset on. For friends watching their friends play games in VR, the experience can be pretty lackluster. Enter ViewR, a new product from the Australian company #inculde that gives friends a peek into what VR players are experiencing. ViewR aims to make the VR gameplay more sociable and shareable by allowing bystanders to use their phones to see what is happening, and itis available today for everyone as a mod for games written in Unity. So play VR and share the action with your friends!
New LA Based Experience
Spielberg-Backed Dreamscape Opens First Permanent VR Storefront
Dreamscape Immersive has opened their first permanent VR storefront in Westfield Century Mall, their first of many locations to come in the future. The storefront is contained three different experiences, Alien Zoo, the undersea adventure theBlu: Deep Rescue, and the Indiana Jones-style Lavan’s Magic Projector: The Lost Pearl.
Dreamscape offers a more story-oriented experience that allows users a totally immersive experience in a whole other universe. Tickets cost $20, and by locating the storefronts in upscale malls, they are hoping to make the Dreamscape experience apart of a broader night out for a family or friends. Our team got a chance to experience Dreamscape, and we can definitely recommend it.
VR Continues to Grow
Mozilla is extending its VR web browser to global audiences
Mozilla expanded their audience for Firefox Reality as they now support Mandarin, French, Italian, German, Japanese, Spanish and Korean through an update earlier this month. The update also improved more aspects of the VR web browsing experience, including 360-degree video playback support, a new theater mode for a more enjoyable viewing experience, and improved voice search compatibility. Mozilla is positioning itself as the go-to VR web browser early on by supporting many different people and platforms.
VR isn’t just for gamers — here’s how Audi, Lowe’s and Macy’s are using it to boost sales and employee training
Over the past year, VR has been gaining ground in the enterprise realm with companies such as Macy’s, Lowe’s, Walmart, UPS, and more launching new VR programs. VR is an area many businesses will grow into in the near future, which will drive enterprise VR hardware and software revenue to jump 587% to $5.5 billion in 2023, up from $800 million in 2018.
There are three key areas of VR implementation, sales, employee training, and product development. This new report looks at how VR can increase product sales, improve employee training, and make product development more efficient. 2019 will bring even more competition to the enterprise VR landscape, so interested businesses should aim to integrate sooner rather than later.
Virtual reality gaming and the pursuit of ‘flow state’
In the strive to be more productive and reach that elusive, perfect focus — aka flow state, an hour a day in a VR video game experience may help us get there. Rave Runner, from Orpheus Self-Care Entertainment, is a rhythm game that you can get lost it. The game has you moving your whole body to the rhythm of the music by using your controllers to touch blue and orange glowing circles, and by stimulating so many senses, it allows you to zone out into a pure reactionary state.
Orpheus also has rolled out two other experiences — MicrodoseVR and SoundSelf. The company has a mission of combine gaming with traditional self-care practices, like meditation, dance/exercise, listening to music and creating art, creating unique experiences that are only possible in VR. By bringing a self-care focus to VR, Orpheus is giving users a way to use VR to enhance their lives, rather than as a distraction.
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