VR / AR or Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality have seen rise in their popularity during last 2-3 years. When it comes to VR we could see lots of start-ups showing on the market with really innovative ideas. In this post I would like to show my view on VR / AR and softwares which can be used to create such interfaces.

Three usages of AR / VR in different fields

Therapy

In my opinion VR could be used in many therapies. However, what I find is interesting, is using VR in therapy for stressed people like: businessmen, teachers or anyone who discovers lots of stress during his job. I thought about this because in 2017/2018 we saw a great success of Calm App. It uses really simple technology however with AR we can go much deeper.

My idea is that person would put on VR glasses and would find himslef in calm place with relaxing sounds like Rain Forest or Waterfall. We see that it works with simply smartphone so extending this experience would work beneficial. For businessman this would be great stress reliever after long day at work!

Art and / or museums

Problem with art and museums is that art pieces are located all over the world. Some of them are not even possible to be transported. With usage of VR we could see and explore any art piece we find interesting in minutes. Watching painting on smartphone does not really bring any emotions.

My idea is that after putting on VR glasses, person would find himself in museum, for example, Louvre in Paris and could admire beautiful painting of Mona Lisa. Being inside the room where Mona Lisa is, would definitely bring better experience than simply watching the painting on the screen.

Cars

Supercars are being admired by millions of people around the world. They are colorful and loud! However, even if we would go to car exhibition, nobody will really allows us to see any car from inside. There are supercars which were produced only in couple of pieces, and even finding them is impossible.

With VR we could fix this problem. Person could simply put his VR glasses on and feel like his sitting in Bugatti Chiron - car for millions of euros.

Research

In my research I was looking for Polish projects/start-ups using VR as I know this field is really growing in Poland. One project that I found really interesting is RemmedVR. It's relatively new start-up that produces software and hardware to help people with vision therapy.

Product is aimed to clinics, as the idea is that doctors can easily adjust software for any kind of vision problems. Hence, the product is really bespoke as patients with different disabilities can benefit it.

Start-up created special software and glasses in order to help people with vision disabilities. Product is being developed by two entrepreneurs from Poland. They state that they have only one competitors from USA, however they use standard VR glasses while RemmedVR is developing not only software but also hardware.

Links:

Website: http://www.remmed.vision
Blog post (polish): https://mamstartup.pl/zdrowie/11660/polski-startup-wykorzysta-vr-do-leczenia-wad-wzroku-juz-30-klinik-czeka-na-jego-rozwiazanie

MadMapper

MadMapper is software used mostly for mapping image on different objects/surfaces. For designers it means that they can prepare design/animation and make it look good, for example on building or some 3D object.

Good thing with MadMapper is that it is compatible with Syphon. Moreover, Processing App, which we used on different workshop can output Syphon. This means that we can create any interactive environment in Processing and map it on physical objects using MadMapper.

Below you can see the video in which I show how I use MadMapper with Processing. As an example I took assignment 3 from Processing Workshop and adjusted the code.

Unity

To create VR / AR interfaces programmers use software called Unity. It is very popular software when it comes to game development, however can also be used for different purposes, including VR / AR,

During workshop we created a game using Unity software, which involved one trigger. Especially for this assignment I added another trigger. The purpose of my virtual world is that everyone can walk free and fire up things. He/she can discover which things do fire themselves and which do not.

For the purpose of this assignment I added trees and one extra trigger. When someone approaches trees one of them will start to burn. For this trigger I did not use Flames, as we had in example but Flare.

Reflection

I see a huge potential in AR/VR! I believe that it will change many sphere of our daily lives. We can see so any usages in e-commerce, education, sport, house decoration and the list can go on without finishing. It was great that we could learn just a bit of Unity as a couple of years ago I wanted to learn it from online tutorials but it seemed to hard. After almost 2 years of UX studies and being acquainted with so many new softwares it turned out to be not that complicated, however teachers could have provided us with better knowledge than just PDF.