Still Kicking: AR Breaking Through in 2020, VR Awaiting Chance to Shine

摘要

It’s been a few years since futurists and technology companies alike claimed that the age of VR was upon us, but it is still far from the norm to own a headset or device capable of transporting folks to other worlds or environments. It’s clear from a handful of CES 2020 panels on the subject that the technology is far from dead. Advertisers, brands and content creators are finding ways to utilize mixed reality experiences in ways that feel intuitive and accessible to general audiences. For Jeff Lucas, Verizon Media’s head of North American sales and global client solutions, extended reality (a combination of VR/AR technologies that the company has dubbed XR) opens up a world of possibilities by allowing a static ad to come alive. Lucas is nothing short of a mixed reality expert, serving as Snap’s vp/global head of sales before coming to Verizon Media. “It allows you to enhance an image and a product and bring it to life for a user, and allow them to interact with it in one form or another,” Lucas said. “It enhances the physical environment, adding a thin digital layer to let consumers see something new, something different, a different version of things.” Lucas also has been working to introduce various publishers to the technology and the ways in which it can bring stories to life. The advent of 5G has only expanded the opportunity that comes with mixed reality technologies. “It opens up the pipe and there’s more ability for a creator to drive more creativity through that pipe because they can carry more data,” Lucas said, adding that the lower latency to come with 5G will also play an important role. “In a sense, it makes it seamless between content and an AR advertisement.” For those still looking for the best way to enter the mixed reality space, Lucas said it’s best to set out with clear goals and a good understanding of what is actually achievable. “You can’t expect it to be the end all of everything,” he said. He also advised teaming up with someone that already has experience in the space. On the programming side, The Weather Channel has fully embraced what it calls immersive mixed reality, a type of augmented reality technology that allows it to bring storm systems to life in a studio environment. It does so using a platform powered by the Unreal Engine, a suite of tools that is widely used in the design and production of video games. “Our success is based off our total and complete buy-in that this is a platform for storytelling, that the Unreal Engine can visualize and show a narrative that really makes the unimaginable real,” Weather’s vp, design Michael Potts said. This year, Weather will be opening a studio built for use with IMR technology and is promising to integrate IMR into 80% of its programming. That will mean finding the right daily hooks for IMR implementation, and you may be hearing less out of the meteorologists themselves as they let the technology do the talking. “We’re going to show more and say less with our presentations,” Potts said. For Weather, meeting its 80/20 goal for 2020 would not have been possible without complete commitment from the top down, and that’s something Potts is hoping to see from other programmers. When asked about why standalone VR technologies have struggled to take off in the way that AR-based ones have, Potts said the price point and difficulty that comes with setting up headsets have proven to be huge hurdles. “Once that becomes more mainstream and it becomes as easy to use as your phone and as accessible as a gaming console as far as price, that adoption point might allow for more content creation and consumer experiences,” he said.