Takeaways from VRDays Europe: Virtual reality enters the mainstream
“Our future is phygital!”
These were the words of Michel Reilhac, Curator at Venice VR and speaker at VRDays Europe, the conference that aimed to be “the most immersive event of 2020”.
While “phygital” is perhaps not the most elegant of neologisms, we understand what Reilhac was getting at. More and more of our daily lives are now hybrid (both physical and digital) and the trend is proving to be popular across European events as well.
Our own attendance at VRDays, an EU project we helped get funded, was exactly such an experience. Over the course of three days (4-6 November), we took part in surprisingly diverse ways.
Live-streaming, which is fast becoming a standard feature of conferences, was of course available for all the conference talks and presentations through the gated digital environment of the Imagina app.
Meanwhile, Laval Virtual World opened up a whole new dimension of conference attendance: the app presented a gamified virtual island where, as attendees, we could create avatars, connect with others, check out company exhibits and, just for fun, ride around in a speedboat.
Most exciting of all, the Church of VR offered 30 virtual experiences for free via Oculus TV. As avid fans of VR, we were well-prepared to take advantage of the opportunity: we brought along our own Oculus Quest 2 headset! Interacting with VR projects like these was a truly special experience. We have no doubt that, as the technology becomes more widely available, people will jump at the opportunity to give it a go.
As you can tell, it was easy to get swept up by the enthusiasm and boundless innovation on display around us at VRDays, but the conference did not shy away from highlighting the more problematic aspects of integrating this new technology in our day-to-day lives.
We came away with mixed feelings about this complex technological domain, which is reflected in our main takeaways from the VRDays conference: the good, the bad, and the ugly.
“It was easy to get swept up by the enthusiasm and boundless innovation on display around us at VRDays, but the conference did not shy away from highlighting the more problematic aspects of [VR].”
The good
XR, or eXtended Reality—the umbrella term for Virtual, Augmented and Mixed Reality—is set to become a household feature for many of us in the (very near) future.
The 10-20 million headsets available on the market right now will rise to at least 50 million in the next four years. Wider availability is already projected to drive prices down, leading to large-scale adoption of XR technology. This means millions of us will be able to take advantage of the benefits XR can bring into our everyday lives.
The most immediate and obvious area where XR can help is in the ongoing crisis still dominating our lives: the COVID-19 pandemic. Even if a vaccine is soon released to help mitigate the worst of the pandemic, Europeans might still be faced with long-term distancing measures, prolonging our feelings of loneliness and isolation. But with VR programmes like VRChat or Venues, the prospect of ‘getting together’ could become much more fun and easy.
Great news for socialising, but what about remote working? XR can contribute there too. A recent study by HTC found that 81% of people who use video-based collaboration platforms are unsatisfied with 2D video experiences. In other words, we are all experiencing “Zoom fatigue”.
XR is a fresh alternative that can combat this phenomenon by virtue of being more immersive. This is already reflected in the increased uptake of VR during the pandemic (64% of the study’s respondents used VR to play games, watch films and work out), which hints that professionals might prefer training, collaborating, designing and visualising in a VR environment over plain video.
“We are all experiencing Zoom fatigue.”
Museum curators, for example, can unlock the potential of VR to simulate different settings for arranging and displaying artworks. Elsewhere in the cultural and creative sector (CCS), XR can go beyond facilitating work tasks, to become a tool pushing the boundaries of creativity.
As Eric Joris—Artistic Director of the groundbreaking CREW company and long-time VR expert—put it, creating works specifically for and in virtual spaces is a completely different ballgame. It’s therefore essential to drive forward art’s mission “to explore the uncharted territories of being, emotions, beauty and ethics”.
Virtual reality is also revolutionising how we care for patients. XR is already being used for therapeutic purposes to comfort and ease pain, including groundbreaking methods such as drug-free digital sedation and interventions designed to support mental health through VR.
But for the world of good it clearly offers, XR also comes with a significant amount of disadvantages that we must be aware of and think about how to tackle.
The bad
For one, the adoption of XR technologies has not been even (with wealthier, developed countries naturally enjoying privileged access), nor has it been seamless.
From downloading, to registration, to grappling with a headset, the process can cause anxiety in users. It also takes a while for familiar tasks to come as second nature in virtual environments, which can create a measure of distress for those using XR for work purposes.
The advice from VRDays was relatively straightforward on this front: Keep communicating, give it time, and restrict the duration of initial sessions (around 30 mins).
On the other end of the spectrum, once XR has become integrated into a person’s work and social life, there is the real danger of addiction. As Reilhac stressed, the boundless possibilities that XR offers—alter egos, avatars, and even alternative lives—can cause some users to want to ‘disappear’ into a VR existence. It seems that the adoption of XR technologies will deeply challenge our concepts of identity, authenticity and reality.
Without a doubt, as societies we will need to find a balance between our physical and digital selves. But these are not the only pitfalls that await us as we increasingly integrate XR into our lives.
The ugly
VRDays speakers covered a good deal of the near-dystopian consequences that come hand-in-hand with the wider adoption of XR.
Much like the technologies and algorithms that govern the Internet, those that are behind XR are also biased by design, and so have the potential to further hinder us as a society by confirming and magnifying our prejudices and worldviews.
An even more urgent concern is how these technologies handle and protect our data. We are already at risk of data-driven surveillance: the more data collected about our behaviour through the use of XR, the more control the companies behind them can eventually exert on our lives and our freedoms.
“VRDays speakers covered a good deal of the near-dystopian consequences that come hand-in-hand with the wider adoption of XR.”
And unlike our regular web activity, where mechanisms like GDPR give us a measure of control over our personal data, XR tends to harvest information about its users far more aggressively.
For example, Oculus Quest requires full access to a Facebook account, which means a user’s data is forcibly shared across platforms. Once a user is logged on, the technology has access to immense amounts of previously inherently private information: Think beyond the usual time-spent online and where you’ve clicked, and more in terms of tracking your gaze and movements, measuring your pulse, rate of perspiration, etc.
Going even further, an emerging wave of Brain Computer Interface (BCI) technologies are forging ahead with development of technologies linking users’ very thoughts to computers, paying little mind to ethical considerations around people’s privacy. BCIs like the Russian Impulse Neiry not only have the ability to log your brain activity, they can also transmit them to others—for example, your employer.
Scary stuff. And even more so when we think about how it’s all just around the corner.
The takeaway
VRDays is part of a series of post-COVID events reinventing the very concept of conferences. While we enjoyed the diversity of ways to access conference events and facilities, we look forward to the 2021 edition where we’ll hopefully get to mingle with the vibrant XR community in person.
More importantly, we came away with a glimpse into the boundless world of possibilities but also the pitfalls virtual reality has to offer.
As XR technology becomes increasingly popular and accessible, and remote living and working conditions due to the ongoing pandemic encourage us to seek alternative ways of connecting, new technologies like XR are likely to become a larger part of our lives in the near future.
As we take in the myriad of benefits XR can provide, we must also be aware of and think about dealing with the serious privacy and ethical issues that come along with it.
Arne van Vliet is the founder and director of BECCA Europe. He’s passionate about the creative arts and specialises in finding funding for innovative creative projects that are reshaping the arts landscape in Europe. Need some advice or direction on your next creative project? Contact Arne here.