Three things stand out in my mind.

1) It’s still kinda hard

Even though the modern version of the VR headsets have been out 7 years (Facebook’s purchase of Oculus in 2014 started the VR headset race), the initial setup of a VR headset is still a heavy lift compared with initial setup of a laptop or a phone, no matter who makes the headset. Some of the challenge is unavoidable because there are brand new ideas and ways of doing things that don’t exist anywhere else in technology. You need to create a boundary inside your room so you don’t run into things, and there are unfamiliar controllers you use to interact with the virtual world. But some things seem needlessly complex (Meta – why do you have to create two accounts just to be part of the business environment, and then account-like things if you want to use the Meta business app?).

None of that really concerns me, though. It’s just the way technology develops. At first, everything is manual and requires input from the user. Gradually, much of it is automated and streamlined, and initial configurations are quicker and more accurate. Configuring a VR headset today is much, much easier than it was even just 12 months ago. Meantime, I still suggest you phone a VR friend if you’re a consumer putting on a headset for the first time. And if you’re a business dipping your toes into the VR waters, I highly recommend you hire a really good VR services and consulting business to help you adopt the technology in a way that will work for you. If you’re in need of a recommendation, I know a good one (Bernoullium Services). 🙂

2) VR for Business is Awesome

In spite of the initial configuration work, VR remains awesome. Even though I’ve spent what has to be thousands of hours now in virtual reality, I am always struck by how really cool and game changing it is.

As we were configuring all those headsets and installing applications, I couldn’t help but look around every time I stepped into the Workrooms VR conference room. It’s just cool. And it’s compelling for business. If you have a business where travel is a major expense, VR for Business is for you. You can have effective and productive meetings in virtual reality at a small fraction of the cost of in-person meetings (Cost of in-person vs VR meetings). You can have your team from London, Atlanta, Singapore, the countryside in Nebraska, the desert of Dubai, or wherever they may be, gather in a conference room and share directly from their laptops and collaborate around a whiteboard. It is so realistic that you can actually feel crowded sometimes – think about that.

3) GenZ can bring it.

Last thing is a shout-out to the GenZ’ers. Last week, working with our Bernoullium GenZ team, I was struck by the swirl of new ideas they bring to the table, their endless energy and enthusiasm, and the easy camaraderie and acceptance these young professionals extend to everyone.

It put a huge smile on my face and made me proud. GenZ’ers configuring virtual reality headsets – I mean, that’s like seeing wildlife in it’s native habitat, right? Our GenZ team is a tremendous benefit to Bernoullium and I look forward to the continuing impact they’ll have.

So, yeah, if you have to spend hours configuring things, it’s better if you can do it with cutting edge technology like VR, and it’s best when you can configure VR with GenZ’ers.

There are some elements of doing business that have nothing to do with business at all but are in fact so fundamental to success that it’s folly to attempt business transactions without addressing these fundamentals.

I’d like to talk about one of these fundamentals. This fundamental has nothing to do with how well you can present, or how much knowledge you have about your technology or product, or how well you can manage your balance sheet, or inspire your team, or capture hearts and minds, or even how well you can spin a vision. No, it has nothing at all to do with those things and I’ll go so far as to say none of those things matter if you don’t have a plan for this fundamental.

The fundamental I’m talking about is simply this: Being Present. Being with other people.

To be successful in any business venture you must have a plan on how you are going to be with people who are important to your business. Plans to physically go meet your customers, have off-site meetings with your team, actually visit key internal stakeholders. Business fades without the ability to meet with key people in person from time to time. It’s a fundamental aspect of human nature that we need to be present with each other in order for relationships to move forward, business relationships included.

As the world comes through covid we’ve had a long time of being apart, more than two years. Now we are trying to figure out how to get back together – how to be present with each other – again. But not everything is working the way it used to: flying remains expensive and not as reliable as it was, there are lockdowns that continue to pop up in various places. And it seems the world is now heading in an economically challenging direction. The costs of most things are going up significantly while budgets remain depressed.

To sum it up: the need to be present with customers, partners, team members, after being apart has never been more important, while the cost of being present has never been higher.

So do you travel and pay a ridiculously high price in order to meet in person with people, or do you stay home, attempt to continue video conferencing and pay an even higher price in lost influence and declining business?

It’s a dilemma that VR for Business provides an intriguing solution to. There are many compelling reasons VR for Business is a great solution for this cost vs presence dilemma (you can find my thoughts on that here), but in my opinion the leading reason is a powerful sense of presence. VR for Business lets you BE PRESENT with customers, partners, team members without having to pay the travel and personal absence costs.

Businesses can leverage the presence of VR as a way of being present while at the same time realizing significant cost reductions even below the already downsized post covid travel and expense budgets. It’s possible to save money even with minuscule T&E budgets most companies have these days. Think what it would mean to your business if you had 25% or even 50% of your travel budget still in your pocket at the end of every quarter AND you were able to connect in a meaningful way with all of your customers and stakeholders. And btw, you actually ended up having more time available for work…….and for your friends & family. That would have a tremendous impact. A more detailed cost/benefit analysis is here.

All of that may seem like pretty big words and more than a little exaggeration, but I don’t think so.

I don’t think so because VR for Business has a secret superpower. We call it “The Power of Being Present.” VR is able to achieve a sense of presence much like the sense of presence you have when you sit down in a conference room to discuss strategy with your team, or when you sit down with someone to have a cup of coffee. You are present with them. In that very same way you are present with someone in a VR for Business setting.

Here’s why VR is able to communicate a real sense of presence.

1) When you open up a VR for Business application you actually ENTER the application as opposed to simply opening up an app on your laptop. Though you know it is a fictional space, there is an undeniable sense of being INSIDE a three dimensional space; the same sense you have when you walk into a room in the real world. You can literally get up and physically walk around the space, for example, a conference room. You are able to interact with objects in the room: pick things up, look at them, move them around. You can stand, sit, make presentations from your laptop, draw on whiteboards – all things you are used to doing in a real world office setting. There are even laser pointers, different colored markers for the whiteboard, and sticky notes to jot things down on. The fact that this is all simply an application has disappeared from your mind. You are IN a conference room having a meeting, just like always.

2) Another key feature of VR for Business applications that gives a strong sense of being present with someone is spatial audio. Spatial audio is just a fancy way of saying what everyone knows: that sound sources are all around you and at different distances. That means some sounds are fainter/farther away than others, and can come from any and all directions. When I hear the birds in the trees I hear sounds above me and somewhat far away as compared with someone talking right next to me. If you think about how you hear conversations in a conference room, you hear and are focused on the person in front of you who is talking to you because it’s the loudest, but you also hear people conversing in the background who perhaps are behind you and in the far corner of the room. But their conversation is much quieter because it’s farther away. That is exactly how it is in VR for Business apps. It’s completely natural sounding. And……..you also hear the real voice of the person talking with you, as well as the real voices of everyone in the room. That lends significantly to the sense of being present with those particular people.

3) Avatars, though they are clearly not real, are surprisingly effective representations of the real “you”. I say this with the caveat that the current state of the art is some VR apps do avatars very well and some do not. But the applications that do avatars very well allow you to do detailed customizations of your avatar. Not only can you select highly specific attire (business casual, for example), you can also put on glasses, choose eye color, nose shape, skin tone, eyebrow shape, put on earrings, and more. The end result is you have an avatar that reminds people of the real “you”.

And here’s the really important thing about avatars – they mimic your actual gestures. You can wave, point, make a fist, fold your hands, and lots more. And your avatar does it when you actually make that gesture. Not to get too far into the technical weeds but there are small cameras on your VR headset that watch the gestures you are making and recreate those gestures in VR. The part that most people miss is that each person has unique gestures which people associate with you. The VR headset captures those unique gestures and recreates those unique gestures so when you see someone in a VR conference room pointing or moving their hands, it’s not just a generic gesture that every avatar makes, it’s a gesture that is specific to an actual person……to “you”, and recognizable as your gesture – just like in the real world. It’s shockingly realistic.

We all know intuitively that being with someone gives a sense of presence that isn’t possible on the phone or a video conference. And I believe it’s also self evident that the most effective connections and communication happen when you are with someone in person. In business we always strive to have the best communication experience, but we have to balance it with the cost of communicating. Being physically present is the most powerful way to communicate, but also the most expensive.

VR for Business introduces an intriguing alternative choice. A choice where you can be “present” with another person at a fraction of the cost of physically being there. It’s a powerful alternative. We call it “The Power of Being Present” because it really does give you the feeling you are WITH someone.

If you’ve never had the chance to experience VR for Business, please reach out – I absolutely love to introduce people to the world of VR and specifically VR for Business.

You can find me at: bruce.winters@bernoullium.com

As much as I wish it was, VR for Business is not all unicorns and rainbows. There are significant headwinds slowing down the adoption of VR for Business (btw, if you want unicorns and rainbows, go here: Pro’s of VR for Business). In this post I lay out the top challenges below but ultimately, I believe it’s going to be the big Tech companies who shape what VR looks like in the business world and will determine when it becomes mainstream.

The big Tech companies and world events, that is.

The global pandemic is a great example of how a world event can intervene and change everything about how and when a technology is adopted. In the case of VR, the pandemic has accelerated the case for effective ways of doing business from afar.

The main downside of VR for Business, if it can be called a downside, is that Virtual Reality will never be as effective as “Real Reality” for meetings. In other words, there is no substitute for meeting someone face-to-face. In my view this isn’t really a downside but rather a recognition that direct human contact is fundamental and irreplaceable. Once you acknowledge that fact, then you can build a sales campaign strategy which leverages all modes of meeting: face-to-face, VR, video conference, phone, text and email. As is often the case with new, industry-changing technologies, VR is saddled with the perception that it’s a panacea for all types of meetings. It simply isn’t. But it does have an important place and carries the potential to be a competitive advantage to those who know how to use it.

A big downside of VR right now is that the most comprehensive VR experiences require the clunkiest and heaviest gear. Fully immersive VR requires a heavy headset that is literally a computer strapped onto your face. Not only does it look odd, it gets uncomfortable after a while. Clearly, headsets will have to evolve dramatically for widespread VR for Business adoption.

Pricing and costs of VR for Business technology and software vary widely with unpredictable future changes. As an example, the cost of acquiring a headset today varies from $300USD to $1400USD for relatively similar levels of quality. VR for Business software is anywhere from $0USD to $400USD/year, again for similar levels of quality. The future cost of any given set of hardware or software is currently difficult to predict, making the adoption of VR for Business a risky proposition for core business processes.

Much of the technology is proprietary. Another way of saying it is there are not many standards defining how Virtual Reality hardware and software should share architecture, data and metadata across different manufacturer platforms. For there to be widespread adoption of VR for Business there must be agreed on standards for the underlying architectures. The current situation is similar to the the early Internet before TCP/IP became the standard networking protocol (anybody remember XNS, SNA, Appletalk, or Banyon and Vines? Nope.).

The standards work is ongoing in organizations such as the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) and the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), but there is a ways to go before common VR standards are agreed upon.

There is a perception that VR is primarily the domain of gamers, kids, and non-work activities. As a result, VR for Business doesn’t enter into the business calculus of most executives today. Strong marketing by companies with good VR for Business offerings and a focus on remote workers who stand to gain the most from effective use of VR for Business, will shift the “gamer” perception over time.

Another roadblock to widespread adoption is that many, if not most, VR for Business applications have a confusing set of configuration steps. While this isn’t a barrier to more technically minded people, it represents a significant roadblock for someone who is simply a user of the technology.

Lastly, all of the major technology companies have recognized the future VR will play in their businesses and are actively positioning themselves to be significant players in VR. Some are pushing for VR adoption as fast as they can, such as Meta, who has bet their entire future on VR. Others who are further behind on VR innovation, such as Microsoft, are working quickly to catch up, as evidenced by their recent massive $69B purchase of game maker Activision (the company’s statement referenced VR as a key element in the purchase), seem to be attempting to stake out their VR for Business territory by marketing their sub-par AltSpace VR application to businesses.

Apple and Google are of course in the mix to varying degrees with planned VR hardware and software releases in the near future. In my view, all of this jockeying for position is likely to slow down the adoption of VR for Business overall as these major players will do everything they can to slow each other down in favor of their own offerings.

So…….it’s not all unicorns and rainbows, but truthfully, it never is. VR for Business is moving ahead just like any other revolutionary technology: innovation followed by standardization, alongside the rough and tumble competition for corporate and consumer attention. And we get to watch it all happen.

Almost invariably, the second thing someone says to me about Virtual Reality (VR) is: “Am I going to get seasick/motion sickness when I put the headsets on?” The first thing people say, by the way, is usually a comment about how cool, or exciting, or capable of dramatically changing the digital world VR is.

But to answer the question of seasickness in a classic, frustrating way, the answer is – it depends. And the reason it depends is because the world of VR applications is vast and encompasses such a wide variety of user experiences. So with some applications you may indeed get that queasy feeling and need to take your headset off. With other applications, it never crosses your mind. In order to know if you’re likely to feel queasy or not, I’ve learned to identify VR applications by their level of depicted motion plus the amount of actual physical movement from the user. It’s pretty simple to understand and once you do, by reading the app description, you’ll know whether or not you’re heading for an unpleasant experience even before you start.

I’ve made three tongue-in-cheek “queasy” rankings: Queasy Rank 1 = grab the nearest bucket and get ready to hurl, Queasy Rank 2 = move close to a bathroom just in case, Queasy Rank 3 = find your favorite recliner chair, relax, and enjoy the show.

Queasy Rank 1. The application depicts a high level of motion, but I am not physically moving. There are lots of examples of VR apps that use 360 degree cameras to capture adventure activity and then project that into a VR headset. Flying over a jungle, climbing Mt Everest, and Formula 1 racing are some examples. In all of these apps you feel like you are right there fully engaged in whatever extreme adventure is being shown. But your body is not moving. VR gives a strong sensation of moving to your eyes in your headset but there is no accompanying feeling of movement in your body. This creates a very strong disconnect where it all comes together in your mind and can easily make you feel queasy. It does for me most times. A lot of the VR gaming apps and Adventure and Discovery apps fall into this category.

Surprisingly, quite a few of the Social Space apps are this way, too, at the moment. In these Social Spaces apps you move around by “teleporting” or jumping from one location to another location. The constant flash-cut of perspective caused by jumping is hard to adjust to, especially when your body is telling you that you haven’t moved. Combined with a number of people around you who are also teleporting, the constantly shifting perspective can be unpleasant for some people and make you feel nauseous. A tip is to make small movements with your head. That doesn’t fix it, it just makes it slightly less nauseating. My recommendation for these kind of apps: when you start to feel uneasy, take the headset off.

Queasy Rank 2. The application depicts a moderate level of motion, and you are physically moving in the VR space. These are kind of hybrid apps, where there is a moderate level of motion being depicted, but you are also physically interacting with objects in the app. A simple example is an app called “First Steps”. It gets you used to moving around and manipulating objects with controllers: picking things up, controlling moving objects, walking around (I once made a gigantic space that matched the VR space just so I could physically walk across the entire space). In apps like these, while there is a moderate level of motion being depicted, you are creating the motion by physically moving and manipulating things. It feels more natural to your senses and reduces the chances of feeling nauseated. I’ve not felt queasy in any of these type of apps so far but I can see where it might make someone slightly nauseated, especially if it’s one of your first VR experiences.

Queasy Rank 3. The application depicts little or no motion, and you are physically sitting down. I wish I had a less boring description for this category of apps because these apps have, in my view, the most potential to change how we all live and work. Broadly, these are the Productivity VR apps. Apps that represent an office space, a conference room space or some other work-related environment. In these apps, much like in a real office setting, there is no movement of the space you are in – the walls and floor aren’t constantly changing. You are generally sitting down, as you would be when you’re working on your computer. At times you may stand up and make a presentation to a room of people or draw on a whiteboard, just like you would in a conference room. But you don’t get a queasy feeling. The motions you see match the motions you feel. It’s completely natural.

If you’re still apprehensive about putting on the headset and entering one of these kind of VR spaces, ask yourself if you’ve ever gotten motion sickness or felt queasy sitting in a conference room. If the answer is “no” then you’re not likely to feel queasy sitting in a VR conference room or office space. One of my favorite examples of these kind of apps is Horizon Workrooms. It is quite amazing how realistic and effective and intuitive it is to work in these environments (I’m a big fan and I’ve written about some of the biggest benefits to these kind of apps here).

So there you have it. A simple way to know if you’re going to feel queasy before you even put on a VR headset. Just read the app description and ask yourself what level of motion is likely to be shown and what level of physical motion you are going to be doing, and do they match. If the motion is moderate and it matches what you are physically doing in the app, then chances are you won’t even think about being queasy when you’ve got the headset on.