XR — The 4th wave: extended-reality (XR) has opened-up limitless possibilities and real benefits for both businesses and consumers since 2013. Immersive technologies such as virtual-reality (VR), augmented reality (AR) and mixed-reality (MR) are the three major variants of XR. Unique offerings from these three technologies pose evident potentials to become mainstream in the next three to five years.
Adoption of XR in Gaming
Even though these technologies been around for the past five years and easily accessible for every industry, only the gaming industry has become the key adopter. This might be because the companies who developed initial XR applications were originally gaming companies. The learning curve was relatively easier for the game developers since they just needed to understand the XR concepts on top of their existing skill with the game development tools such as Unity-3D.
Causes for the Slowdown in XR-Gaming
Even XR-gaming didn’t grow as per initial predictions mainly because of two reasons. Firstly, the cost of hardware such as HMDs and VR-PCs were out-of-reach for most gamers followed by the nauseating amateur VR-Contents which made the users uncomfortable. So, the user base for XR-games didn’t grow as exponential as expected. The core human-factors behind VR is being consistently ignored by the developers across the globe.
Adoption of XR in Industries
On the other side, considering XR as an entertainment tool, other industries didn’t pay much attention in the past years and missed out the potential benefits they might have enjoyed otherwise. Apart from the lack of general awareness, the practical reasons for the slowdown of XR adoption in the industry (4.0) were data readiness, inability to identify the use cases and to understand the potential for the very quick return-on-investment. But, after seeing the real case-studies on proven benefits from the early XR-adopters (like Boeing, Airbus, Ford, Siemens, GE, Volkswagen), now every industry is revisiting these technologies with a new perspective.
The Hypes Vs Realities
In 2017 Gartner’s Hype-cycle for Emerging technologies placed VR in the slope of enlightenment predicting to reach the Plateau of Productivity in the next two to five years and AR got its place in the trough of disillusionment. For the Indian scenario, VR is still undeniably in its infant stage. As per the 2018 research by Capgemini, companies in the US and China are currently leading the AR/VR implementation race.
XR in Indian Scenario
The reasons behind India’s lagging in the race are such as lack of supportive infrastructure, difficulties in accessing the latest hardware and the conventional/cultural Indian mindset. However, things are changing with startups and more affordable mobile VR and standalone 6DOF VR/AR headsets expected to expand adoption in 2019.
Industry 4.0 & India
Reports state that Industry 4.0 is poised to touch $215 billion by 2025 and most of the major economies in the world are adopting it. According to an analysis by McKinsey, “If Indian companies adopt Industry 4.0 across functions such as manufacturing, supply chain, logistics and procurement, they can enhance their operating profits by 40% at less than 10% of the planned capital expenditure.” The market for immersive technologies is expected to grow exponentially and become unavoidable.
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