Virtual Reality for Enterprise: What We Need
In the Beginning
Over three years ago, I was fortunate to get my hands on an Oculus DK2 kit. After playing around with it a bit, I was one hundred percent sure that it was a transformative technology. Even though I’m an avid gamer, my mind didn’t even go there first — my mind went straight to how this technology could be used to benefit society. That this technology would allow access to the most immersive, experiential training available to the public and with this access, it would make healthcare professionals better at what they do and, in fact, save lives.
That’s when my two partners and I decided to form BioflightVR. With our team of Emmy Award winning CGI artists and producer, as well as some great connections in the medical industry, we set out to create a platform for high-quality training experiences for healthcare professionals using virtual reality.
Trending AR VR Articles:
1. Ready Player One : How Close Are We?
Current State
That was three years ago. Since our start, we have had some phenomenal opportunities to work with healthcare professionals and really tune the way that we create our training experiences.
But here’s the problem. The delivery of those experiences is not at all what I had imagined in the beginning. I have been in product development for many years, so I was picturing creating a very slick experience for people to find, pay for, download and use our VR training experiences. Unfortunately, you can’t create a platform on top of a platform, so we are stuck with side-loading and bypassing the various delivery platforms that are currently in place for the two major players in the market: Oculus and HTC Vive.
Side-loading on the Oculus Go is pretty bad. The user needs to go to “Unknown Sources” then sift through the various APKs and finally select the correct executable from a long list of possibilities. Or you can choose to upload the app in “Preview Mode,” then send out an email invite to everyone that you want to allow to use it as a “tester,” …not very slick. For the HTC Vive and full Oculus setup with Touch, it’s a slightly better experience, but you’re still working with an executable buried in a folder system that (if you’re lucky) is linked to from a shortcut on the desktop. There’s no way to update the app and remotely push new code, just like any other standard app, so everything needs to be done manually by someone who is technologically savvy. That’s not always easy to come by in the medical world.
Market Validation
So here we are now, with some incredible market validation by Walmart. They order up 17,000 Oculus Go’s and use a solution from STRIVR to better train their employees. That’s great! But, I can’t imagine how that is all going to go down, “in the real world.” Does STRIVR have a team of people to take care of updating 17,000 units? (Seriously curious here. @Michael Casale, I’ve met you and spoken with you on a panel before, would love to discuss this, let’s talk!) Maybe there’s some other piece to this puzzle that I’m not privy to, but either way, I’m going to chime in on my thoughts for a potential solution.
Proposed solution
I’m going to direct this part to Oculus, because we have partnered with them in the past and I have not, as yet, tried the HTC Vive Focus. Since I feel the industry is moving towards standalone headsets, this is also more directed at the Go for now and the Quest for the future. I propose that an Enterprise edition of the Oculus Go (and Quest) be released to support the current and ever growing needs of companies that are creating and using VR for custom, standalone training apps for a multitude of industries.
The Enterprise edition would offer the ability to take over the “home” screen with a custom screen and menu selection — essentially a “Kiosk Mode.” No need to have the headset tied in with a specific account or force the user to log in. This alone would be a huge improvement on user experience — just throw on the headset, find the relevant training module in a visually appealing menu and pull the trigger to start! No sifting through “Unknown Sources” or resisting the temptation to just fire up Bait! and catch some virtual fish instead. With the addition of being able to update the Home and App binaries on our own servers and having those automatically pulled and updated on each device, we are most of the way there.
Of course, I realize that the reason Oculus apps are currently distributed through their own app store, is so that Oculus can make money on those apps (and to ensure at least some modicum of quality, I would think.) That’s totally fair and makes sense for entertainment and game apps, but for enterprise apps, there needs to be another solution. Whether that is just a one-time, upfront fee for the Enterprise Edition ($399 instead of $199 for the Oculus Go?), or there is a per-app fee for distributed Enterprise Edition apps, or some other method. I’m sure Oculus can do the math and figure out what their average (or median) per-user, per-headset profit is and work their way into a number there…
In Conclusion
I don’t know the exact solution, but that’s why I’m writing this. My company and I are happy to work with any company that is willing to address and tackle the increasingly larger needs of the “VR for Enterprise” community. We’ll be your guinea pigs and help you work out the kinks to find the best solution for all parties. Feel free to contact me at randy@bioflightvr.com!
Extra
With all that said, if you came here looking for more analysis of various headsets for enterprise or at least a temporary solution for distributing the Oculus Go with enterprise apps installed, then head over to this excellent article on Tales From The Rift here: http://talesfromtherift.com/is-oculus-go-ready-for-enterprise-and-education/
