Monthly Archives: May 2021

Ant Middleton, who is best known for his role in the military training show SAS, is working with MR glasses company PhotonLens to create a virtual reality experience inspired by his Mount Everest climb.

They will also donate 70 mixed reality headsets to universities, all of which come pre-loaded with the immersive experience. In doing so, they hope to encourage innovation and promote mental resilience, particularly among younger generations.

See Also: Competition in MR Glasses Market to Heat Up With PhotonLens

Middleton summited the worlds highest mountain after a grueling five-week expedition along with Ed Wardle. An hour-long documentary called Extreme Everest on Channel 4 captured his death-defying climb in 2018.

The following year, he penned The Fear Bubble: Harness Fear and Live Without Limits, which describes his harrowing climb to the summit. It also details the mental and physical challenges he faced along the way.

By partnering with PhotonLens and digital agency Be-Hookd, he hopes to share the lessons from Mount Everest. The pandemic has been very taxing for everyone. Its taking a toll on everyones mental health and wellbeing.

Through this immersive project, Middleton hopes to make a difference in the lives of many, particularly the youth.

Together, they will be creating an intimate 360-degree immersive experience. The virtual expedition will unveil Middletons unique mindset, which helped him summit and survive Everest. Moreover, it will show VR users how to harness the power of fears amid challenging situations.

See Also: National Geographic Takes Users to Mt. Everest in New Instagram AR Experience

According to George James, CEO of Be-Hookd, they are working closely with Middleton to make the immersive experience as true to his climb as possible. It will contain anecdotes, as well as several personal stories.

Aside from the virtual reality experience, Middleton will donate 70 mixed reality headsets to universities. He is pleased to have this opportunity to support students who have been struggling to cope over the last year. At the same time, he hopes his lessons of resilience can help students, especially amid this global health crisis.

See Also: VR Deep Therapy: How Virtual Reality Can Help Improve Mental Health

By partnering with universities, PhotonLens is looking forward to inspiring the next generation of innovators, says co-founder Lisa Pan. They hope that this opportunity can give students positive learning experiences despite the disruption caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Moreover, theyre hoping that immersive tech continues to fill the voids across industries, from education to travel and entertainment.

Middleton and PhotonLens will be giving away 40 mixed reality headsets via a social media competition in June. All the giveaways will come pre-loaded with the VR experience. Later on, Be-Hookd will roll out the digital experience, which virtual reality users can partake in from the comfort of their home.

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Ant Middleton Is Sharing Lessons From Climbing Mt. Everest In Virtual Reality | ARPost - ARPost

In Virtual Reality News

May 6, 2021 Arthur, a virtual reality (VR) office space provider that enables businesses to create virtual offices and hold fully immersive collaborative meetings, has today announced major product updates that are now live on its platform for users. The updates include photorealistic avatars with lip-syncing, audio zones for private conversations in subgroups of people, a breakthrough in increased VR room capacity, as well as speech-to-text capabilities.

As a VR solution used by Fortune 500 companies and organizations in a variety of industries, including the United Nations, Arthur enables large-scale immersive collaborative sessions in a remote environment, allowing users to build virtual office spaces with permanency features. As the need for remote connectivity solutions has increased over the last year as a result of the pandemic, and as companies rethink their collaboration models, Arthurs offerings have become a must-have for many businesses, particularly global companies that are geographically dispersed.

While most VR platforms offer simple meetings with a few people, Arthur is mainly used for large-scale brainstorming sessions with whiteboards, flow charts and other complex meetings in real-time. We are making the virtual office a highly sought-after solution for the enterprise space, combining a collaborative and highly productive meeting environment with realistic settings to meet with colleagues and coworkers, such as a coffee bar, said Christoph Fleischmann, Founder and CEO of Arthur. Since our launch in December 2020, weve received great feedback from our professional users on how theyre currently using the platform, and how theyd like to use it for virtual collaboration going forward. Were continuously finding ways to adapt to the evolving needs of our clients and are looking forward to whats next for Arthur.

The Arthur platform has two models Professional (currently in beta) and Consumer (intended for startups and individual professionals), both of which are currently available on Oculus devices. The updates for each model include:

Professional

Consumer

Both models will be receiving updates to room capacity and photo realistic avatars, allowing them to be built from an image of the user.

Audio zones are also being introduced in this update to the Professional model. This new feature allows people to hold private conversations with a subgroup of people within a meeting, serving as a privacy bubble.

Additionally, this update unlocks speech-to-text capabilities in the Professional model, allowing users to simply record their voice to generate written text labels or private notes, helping to increase the speed in which they can work and reducing the need for VR controllers or a Bluetooth keyboard to type.

Finally, in addition to the user-facing feature updates, Arthur has also focused on further expanding the scalability of its virtual office. With efficiency increases in the new avatar system, Arthurs professional model can now hold more than 50 people in the same room simultaneously, while still ensuring a high-quality meeting without glitches.

Arthur recently announced the launch of its platform on the Oculus store. For more information on Arthur, please visit the companys website. For a demonstration of the virtual reality collaboration platform, please contact(Replace this parenthesis with the @ sign)auganix.org.

Image credit: Arthur

About the author

Sam Sprigg

Sam is the Founder and Managing Editor of Auganix. With a background in research and report writing, he covers news articles on both the AR and VR industries. He also has an interest in human augmentation technology as a whole, and does not just limit his learning specifically to the visual experience side of things.

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Arthur announces major updates to its collaborative Virtual Reality platform, including expanded room capacity of 50+ participants - Auganix

Gabby Gutierrez (left), a video editor in the Online and Digital Learning Department at Fox School of Business, uses the Oculus headset while Philadelphia freelance reporter Zoe Rosenberg (right) participates in a virtual walkthrough of Fintech Blockchain and Digital Disruption on April 13. | JOSEPH V. LABOLITO / COURTESY

As Divya Pawar sat in her Fintech, Blockchain and Digital Disruption class listening to the lecture, she was able to get a good view of Pollet Walk from her seat. When class ended, she took off her Oculus Quest Virtual Reality headset and continued working at home in her off-campus apartment.

Its like youre in a Temple classroom, like youre sitting with your classmates, said Pawar, a masters of business administration student. It was an amazing experience, it kind of transforms your space.

In March 2020, the Fox School of Business first held Fintech, Blockchain and Digital Disruption, a graduate-level course that is offered once per year and is among the first MBA-level courses to feature a VR format among colleges and universities in the United States. Although the course operates virtually, it incorporates classroom discussions along with virtual visual elements from Temples Main Campus that create an environment comparable to the traditional, on-campus experience.

Students in the class learn about the ways advancements in technology affect financial services and other industries. Planning for the course began in 2018.

To keep students active in their classes, Fox has held only synchronous online classes since Temple primarily transitioned to online learning in March 2020, said Ronald Anderson, the dean of the Fox School of Business. However, he believes that once students get past initial feelings of Zoom fatigue, they enjoy the convenience of online learning despite wanting the traditional college experience even after the pandemic ends.

I think the students want to be on campus, Anderson said. But I think its alright, for some courses, if they take their classes in their apartment or in their dorm room.

Fox partnered with The Glimpse Group, a virtual reality platform company, and designed the virtual experience to resemble a traditional classroom setting.

Students can participate in Fintech, Blockchain and Digital Disruption remotely by wearing Oculus Quest VR headsets. With the headsets on, students sit at virtual seats in a lecture hall, surrounded by avatars of other members of the class, and can talk to one another through the headsets as they get views of Temples Main Campus outside the lecture halls windows.

Pawar enjoys feeling a part of a nearly traditional classroom experience while taking her class at an off-campus apartment.

It kind of bridges the gap that has been missing due to the pandemic, Pawar said. You can see classmates sitting around desks and you can look over and talk to them how youd talk to them in real class.

Students receive the Oculus Headsets in the mail and return them to the Fox School of Business after they complete the course.

Bora Ozkan, a finance professor, teaches Fintech, Blockchain and Digital Disruption and appears in the center of the virtual lecture hall as an avatar where he can see students raise their hands and actively engage with one another.

Despite the class operating virtually, Ozkan made efforts to simulate in-person learning to make the experience more realistic for students, he said.

We have a board in the classroom that we type on as we go along and we have a [teaching assistant] in the classroom, Ozkan said. They take notes and we upload it to Canvas so students actually have a reference about what we talked about in class.

Anderson enjoys how the course allows students to engage as the would in a traditional classroom setting, despite being in different locations.

I could have a kid thats sitting in South Africa and a kid sitting in California, and Im the professor in Philadelphia, and were all in the same classroom, Anderson said.

Anderson believes using VR will allow universities to offer more experimental programs and cut costs for students as they wont have to pay to live on campus. He acknowledged VR courses may have limitations for classes that require less classroom discussion.

I dont think this lends itself to a math course for instance, Anderson said. Because if youre one of these people who learn a lot from note taking exactly, its not going to work very well, unless its a discussion course.

Fintech, Blockchain and Digital Disruption is only offered once per year, but Tom Lennon, Foxs senior video production specialist, hopes to see the course grow going forward as improvements are made to the VR experience, he said.

Lennon, who helped design the course, hopes the technology of VR continues to improve so they can avoid some of the difficulties with sound and avatar placement that have risen in some classes.

This is a model thats working, Lennon said. Theres a lot of nitty-gritty where like, something glitches and now everyones mute button doesnt work.

Lennon likes the flexibility of giving students headsets to learn and feels it is similar to some traditional aspects of borrowing university materials.

Its like renting a textbook, Lennon said. We send it out to the students and if they dont send it back theyre going to get charged.

Adding virtual forms of education might be valuable as students continue adapting to taking classes remotely, Anderson said.

I think that theres a really good chance that somewhere between 30 to 40 percent of our students are going to want a large portion, maybe not 100 percent, but a large portion of their classes in a virtual environment, because of its convenience, he added.

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Fox School of Business experiments with virtual reality learning amid pandemic - Temple News

Cops in California's capital are using technology to improve their training in the wake of several deadly police encounters across the country -- and the hope is virtual reality translates to the real world.

Sacramento Police Chief Daniel Hahn joined us Monday on "TMZ Live", and downloaded us on his department's new training tool ... a virtual reality headset capable of recreating real police encounters in different environments.

Hahn says the VR training blends hypothetical situations officers might face in Sacramento with lessons learned from the regular training program, like implicit bias and intervention ... telling us why it's proving to be an important training tool in the wake of George Floyd's murder.

The technology sounds incredible ... not only can instructors place officers in different parts of town, but they can also replay the virtual scenarios so other cops can see what worked and what didn't.

It's a pretty insightful conversation on what could be the future of police training after Derek Chauvin's murder conviction. You can see the full interview Monday on "TMZ Live."

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Sacramento PD Using Virtual Reality Training in Wake of Police Involved Shootings - TMZ

This article was originally published here

Trials. 2021 May 5;22(1):328. doi: 10.1186/s13063-021-05271-z.

ABSTRACT

BACKGROUND: The SARS-CoV-2 outbreak has resulted in a tremendous increase in hospital and intensive care unit (ICU) admissions all over the world. Patients with severe coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) warranting ICU treatment usually have prolonged mechanical ventilation and are expected to be prone to develop psychological impairments, such as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), anxiety and depression, which negatively impact quality of life. To date, no effective treatment strategy is available. In the current trial, we aim to assess the effect of an ICU-specific virtual reality (ICU-VR) intervention on psychological well-being and quality of life after COVID-19 ICU treatment.

METHODS: In this multicentre, randomized controlled trial, we aim to examine whether COVID-19-specific ICU-VR, offered 3 months after hospital discharge, improves psychological well-being and quality of life. Secondary objectives are, firstly, to examine the intra-group changes in psychological well-being and quality of life and the inter-group differences in psychological well-being and quality of life during follow-up, up to 12 months after hospital discharge, and secondly, to examine patients satisfaction with and rating of ICU care and aftercare and patients perspectives on ICU-VR. Eighty adult patients treated for COVID-19 in the mixed-surgical ICUs of four hospitals in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, will be included and randomized (1:1) to either early or late ICU-VR between June 29 and December 31, 2020. Patients randomized to early ICU-VR will receive the ICU-VR intervention during an outpatient clinic visit 3 months after hospital discharge, whereas patients randomized to late ICU-VR will receive ICU-VR 6 months after hospital discharge. Primary outcomes of this study are psychological well-being, assessed using the Impact of Event Scale-Revised (IES-R) and the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale (HADS), and quality of life, assessed using the European Quality of Life 5 Dimensions (EQ-5D) and RAND-36 questionnaires, up to 6 months after hospital discharge.

DISCUSSION: Currently, an effective treatment for psychological sequelae after ICU treatment for specific illnesses is unavailable. Results from this study will provide insight whether virtual reality is a modality that can be used in ICU aftercare to improve psychological well-being and quality of life, or satisfaction, after ICU treatment for specific illnesses such as COVID-19.

TRIAL REGISTRATION: This trial has been retrospectively registered on the Netherlands Trial Register on August 14, 2020 ( NL8835 ).

PMID:33952318 | DOI:10.1186/s13063-021-05271-z

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Effect of intensive care unit-specific virtual reality (ICU-VR) to improve psychological well-being and quality of life in COVID-19 ICU survivors: a...

Purdue University astronomy students are exploring the cosmos from the comfort of their dorm rooms, even amid coronavirus-related quarantines, thanks to virtual reality technology being tested by assistant professor Danny Milisavljevic and the schools simulation testing center.

Over the last year, Milisavljevic an astrophysicist at Purdue University who was formerly a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard University has taught the study of exploding stars with the aid of virtual reality. Exploding stars leave trails of fragments and other clues around them, much like the debris patterns of explosives. But rather than looking at photos or through a telescope, students in his class can walk around a virtual classroom and examine 3D models of supernovas from every direction by strapping on a VR headset. Milisavljevic said his students act like an astronomy-focused bomb squad, reviewing how different stars exploded and citing their previous astronomical classifications.

Its one thing to look at it from a direction, but when you change your head from side to side, it gives you the perspective you need, Milisavljevic told EdScoop.

The best part, he said, is that thanks to a National Science Foundation RAPID grant and the easy portability of VR headsets, Purdue students can participate from anywhere in the world that has a Wi-Fi connection.

Milisavljevic originally began working with the schools simulation research center, called the Envision Center, to study a better method of visualizing his work. At Harvard, he said he used web applications and movie production software to create 3D models of exploded stars, but technology limitations at the time forced him to share the majority of his work in 2D mediums, like video. By the time he arrived at Purdue U. in 2017, though, virtual reality technology had progressed enough to showcase his work.

[Virtual Reality] was very goofy and I remember all these people talking about getting sick when they put a headset on, he said of the technologys early days. But I started experimenting with the technology to visualize and provide an immersive virtual environment to explore the data sets I was creating.

The 3D models and the VR simulations were a perfect match, and Milisavljevic quickly realized there are two primary benefits of examining the models using virtual reality. One is the ability to study them with another researcher or student in the same room, who was also wearing a headset. The second is that a VR environment can host multiple models on the same program. Because students can walk back and forth between models, he said, it prompted more insightful questions and a more effective understanding of the complex detective work he was asking his students to perform.

It drove innovation in the analysis of the data and the presentation of it, Milisavljevic said.

When the COVID-19 pandemic hit, Milisavljevic said he realized that students would no longer be able to share their observations of the universe while physically standing in the same classroom. The universitys RAPID Grant, usually distributed by the National Science Foundation for immediate research needs, like COVID-19 vaccination and testing studies, was awarded to Milisavljevic for his work researching the wireless connectivity component of virtual reality, especially for academic purposes.

Though all Milisavljevics students were on-campus throughout the year, he said the idea of his research is to facilitate remote-learning through the headsets so they can be used if at any point students need to go home for the semester, or if professors and researchers from other parts of the world want to collaborate.

A trend of VR-based remote learning is growing elsewhere, as well: Temple University recently announced it would continue its VR-based curriculum for online MBA students.

We put on this headset, or even on a PC or Mac, and now we can all be in the same virtual environment, Milisavljevic said. The instructors and students have great control over what were seeing, and we can collaborate to understand the stellar dynamics happening in distant galaxies and nebulae.

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Purdue students are using VR to explore the cosmos, remotely - EdScoop

HTC is expected to reveal a pair of new virtual reality headsets at its first Vivecon event later this month.

But gamers and VR fans might be left disappointed, as it looks like both new products will be aimed at the enterprise market instead of consumers.

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HTC has teased new hardware for a little while now, as we wrote about last month, and the company's own blog has stated that a new VR headset is "confirmed". Company president Alvin Wan Graylin also tweeted, suggesting at least one new HTC product would use mixed reality, where both virtual and augmented reality are used.

Now, a fresh report by Protocol claims HTC is gearing up to reveal a pair of enterprise-focused VR headsets, called the Vive Focus 3 Business Edition and the Pro 2.

The former is said to be a new standalone device, where it has its own display (instead of using a smartphone) and works without being connected to a computer or game console. The latter is described as a high-end PC VR headset, where it is connected to a computer instead of having its own processor.

HTC published this photo on its company blog on April 9 HTC

Both are due to be revealed during the Vivecon event, and be commercially available before the end of May.

Precious little is known about the specifications and features of the headsets, but their prices may have leaked out in recent days. Protocol says both headsets briefly appeared on the website of Alzashop, a European retailer, with a release date of May 20. The site also stated European prices of 1,474 for the Vive Focus 3 Business Edition and 842 for the Pro 2. These convert to approximately $1,770 and $1,000 respectively.

For context, the HTC Vive currently costs around $780 and the Vive Cosmos Elite is $900. At almost $1,800, the claimed price of the upcoming Vice Focus 3 Business Edition is significantly more expensive than HTC's current offering. We will be interested to see if HTC does indeed aim these two headsets at the enterprise market, and what features are included to justify the price, especially of the Focus 3.

HTC Vive Cosmos Elite Virtual Reality System

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Two new VR headsets from HTC are expected at Vivecon event this month - Gearbrain

Virtual Reality Content Market Research Report by Component (Hardware and Software), by Content Type (360 Degree Photos, Games, and Videos), by Application - Global Forecast to 2025 - Cumulative Impact of COVID-19

New York, May 04, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Reportlinker.com announces the release of the report "Virtual Reality Content Market Research Report by Component, by Content Type, by Application - Global Forecast to 2025 - Cumulative Impact of COVID-19" - https://www.reportlinker.com/p05911877/?utm_source=GNW

Market Statistics:The report provides market sizing and forecast across five major currencies - USD, EUR GBP, JPY, and AUD. This helps organization leaders make better decisions when currency exchange data is readily available.

1. The Global Virtual Reality Content Market is expected to grow from USD 26,781.24 Million in 2020 to USD 37,392.24 Million by the end of 2025.2. The Global Virtual Reality Content Market is expected to grow from EUR 23,482.30 Million in 2020 to EUR 32,786.23 Million by the end of 2025.3. The Global Virtual Reality Content Market is expected to grow from GBP 20,875.81 Million in 2020 to GBP 29,147.03 Million by the end of 2025.4. The Global Virtual Reality Content Market is expected to grow from JPY 2,858,237.35 Million in 2020 to JPY 3,990,700.55 Million by the end of 2025.5. The Global Virtual Reality Content Market is expected to grow from AUD 38,889.92 Million in 2020 to AUD 54,298.51 Million by the end of 2025.

Market Segmentation & Coverage:This research report categorizes the Virtual Reality Content to forecast the revenues and analyze the trends in each of the following sub-markets:

Based on Component, the Virtual Reality Content Market studied across Hardware and Software.

Based on Content Type, the Virtual Reality Content Market studied across 360 Degree Photos, Games, and Videos.

Based on Application, the Virtual Reality Content Market studied across Automotive, Gaming, Media & Entertainment, and Retail.

Based on Geography, the Virtual Reality Content Market studied across Americas, Asia-Pacific, and Europe, Middle East & Africa. The Americas region surveyed across Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Mexico, and United States. The Asia-Pacific region surveyed across Australia, China, India, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, Philippines, South Korea, and Thailand. The Europe, Middle East & Africa region surveyed across France, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Qatar, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Spain, United Arab Emirates, and United Kingdom.

Company Usability Profiles:The report deeply explores the recent significant developments by the leading vendors and innovation profiles in the Global Virtual Reality Content Market including 360 Labs LLC, Alphabet, Inc., AltexSoft, CreativeDrive, Eon Reality, Inc., GoPro, Inc., HTC Corporation, KONCEPT VR LLC, Magic Leap, Inc., Matterport, Inc., Microsoft Corporation, Netflix, Oculus VR, LLC, Panedia Pty Ltd, Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd., Scapic Innovations Private Limited, Sony Corporation, Subvrsive, Inc., Ultraleap Limited, VIAR d.o.o., Vizor Ltd., WeMakeVR, and Wevr, Inc..

Cumulative Impact of COVID-19:COVID-19 is an incomparable global public health emergency that has affected almost every industry, so for and, the long-term effects projected to impact the industry growth during the forecast period. Our ongoing research amplifies our research framework to ensure the inclusion of underlaying COVID-19 issues and potential paths forward. The report is delivering insights on COVID-19 considering the changes in consumer behavior and demand, purchasing patterns, re-routing of the supply chain, dynamics of current market forces, and the significant interventions of governments. The updated study provides insights, analysis, estimations, and forecast, considering the COVID-19 impact on the market.

FPNV Positioning Matrix:The FPNV Positioning Matrix evaluates and categorizes the vendors in the Virtual Reality Content Market on the basis of Business Strategy (Business Growth, Industry Coverage, Financial Viability, and Channel Support) and Product Satisfaction (Value for Money, Ease of Use, Product Features, and Customer Support) that aids businesses in better decision making and understanding the competitive landscape.

Competitive Strategic Window:The Competitive Strategic Window analyses the competitive landscape in terms of markets, applications, and geographies. The Competitive Strategic Window helps the vendor define an alignment or fit between their capabilities and opportunities for future growth prospects. During a forecast period, it defines the optimal or favorable fit for the vendors to adopt successive merger and acquisition strategies, geography expansion, research & development, and new product introduction strategies to execute further business expansion and growth.

The report provides insights on the following pointers:1. Market Penetration: Provides comprehensive information on the market offered by the key players2. Market Development: Provides in-depth information about lucrative emerging markets and analyzes the markets3. Market Diversification: Provides detailed information about new product launches, untapped geographies, recent developments, and investments4. Competitive Assessment & Intelligence: Provides an exhaustive assessment of market shares, strategies, products, and manufacturing capabilities of the leading players5. Product Development & Innovation: Provides intelligent insights on future technologies, R&D activities, and new product developments

The report answers questions such as:1. What is the market size and forecast of the Global Virtual Reality Content Market?2. What are the inhibiting factors and impact of COVID-19 shaping the Global Virtual Reality Content Market during the forecast period?3. Which are the products/segments/applications/areas to invest in over the forecast period in the Global Virtual Reality Content Market?4. What is the competitive strategic window for opportunities in the Global Virtual Reality Content Market?5. What are the technology trends and regulatory frameworks in the Global Virtual Reality Content Market?6. What are the modes and strategic moves considered suitable for entering the Global Virtual Reality Content Market?Read the full report: https://www.reportlinker.com/p05911877/?utm_source=GNW

About ReportlinkerReportLinker is an award-winning market research solution. Reportlinker finds and organizes the latest industry data so you get all the market research you need - instantly, in one place.

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Virtual Reality Content Market Research Report by Component, by Content Type, by Application - Global Forecast to 2025 - Cumulative Impact of COVID-19...

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Over the last year, the pandemic upended many industries, prompting businesses to pivot quickly to enable a fully virtual everything, from workplace to marketplace to nearly every aspect of life. Even the legal profession, which historically has been slow to adopt technology, is now starting to catch up to other industries by embracing digital transformation. The results in the startup world have been similar to those seemingly everywhere else. In-person meetings have been scrapped in favor of virtual meetings. Travel has been replaced by videoconferencing. Paper has been replaced by bits and bytes. While the tech industry is starting to return to normal, how much the new normal will be like the old is still an open question. At the same time, increased reliance on technology is changing the trajectory of virtual deal-making.

The rapid virtualization of many business functions has had a number of unintended consequences. On the one hand, for startups and investors, virtual deal-making has become commonplace, which has changed the dynamics of raising capital and investing. One startup CEO noticed that compared to pitching in person, virtual deal-making had a heightened focus but found that it allowed for more robust conversations and data sharing over a shorter period of time. This pattern has been common since COVID-19 pushed so many meetings into cyberspace, but it also particularly complements high-resolution fundraising, allowing startups to connect quickly with more investors than ever before.

By driving faster connections and more pitches, these virtual meetings seem to be working well for the industry. Despite the pandemic, 2020 was a banner year for venture capitalists, with a record-setting $130 billion invested in over 6000 deals.

But on the other hand, virtual deal-making has some significant drawbacks. Many people across all industries are tired of videoconferencing. We even have a genericized term for that now: Zoom fatigue. As Stanford University noted, virtual meetings face significant challenges compared to in-person meetings, specifically relating to cognitive load, a lack of movement, and too much screen time.

Where will the industry go from here? As businesses open up more and travel becomes more normalized again, in-person deal-making will probably stage a staggered return. Many people prefer them, so they will always be good fits for some. But given the changes in the past year and the benefits that many saw from faster pitch cadences, startups and investors will probably continue making deals virtually, almost certainly more than they did back in 2019 and prior, which leaves a big question about addressing the challenges of virtual meetings.

Companies have delivered annual and quarterly financial returns with a largely steady topline and bottom line benefiting from elimination of the travel and entertainment budget. With the economy returning to work, spending on travel and entertainment will return, but at what pace and in what quantum? Will cost savings be retained when growing the topline with a workforce back at full capacity?

Ill end with one possible (and admittedly speculative) solution, at least in part. For many years, dating back at least to the 1990s and the early days of stereoscopic video games, virtual reality (VR) has been touted as the next big thing. And yet, even the 3D-television craze several years ago and the rampant interest in VR headsets has not led to significant adoption. While we may see VR find a place in high-level business meetings, augmented reality (AR) appears better positioned to make significant inroads.

New augmented reality technologies that enable meeting participants to not only see each other and share documents, but immersively view, manipulate and interpret data together in an augmented, three-dimensional or phygital world, could be a game changer. For a sneak view of what an augmented reality, augmented data analytical world would look like, check out what our friends at Flow Immersiveare buildinghere, or thephygital worldsbuilt for clients ofDouble-A Labs.

AR could enable virtual meetings while also providing more natural interactions than staring at a screen would allow. Maybe bridging the gap between the virtual and real worlds would be enough to address the fatigue that so many feel with virtual meetings.

The ability to have more natural interactions with clients, business partners, investors, and lawyers without the cost (or risk) of travel could be a major deciding factor to pushing AR meetings into the mainstream. A number of companies are working on related technologies, so the question is who will make it work first. Maybe someone will come up with an entirely different and vastly superior solution. Time will tell.

Louis Lehotis anemerging growth company, venture capital and M&A lawyeratFoley & Lardner in Silicon Valley. Louis spends his time providing entrepreneurs, innovative companies, and investors with practical and commercial legal strategies and solutions at all stages of growth, from garage to global. He focuses his efforts on technology, digital health, life science and clean energy innovation. Louiss clients are public and private companies, financial sponsors, venture capitalists, investors and investment banks, and he has helped hundreds of companies at formation, obtaining financing, solving governing challenges, going public and buying and selling.Louisispraisedby clients, colleagues and industry guides for his business acumen, legal expertise and leadership in Silicon Valley.

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The future of virtual deal-making and the return to work - VentureBeat

A new study published in the Journal of Abnormal Psychology suggests that virtual reality (VR) technology may serve as a useful intervention tool for patients with body dysmorphic disorder (BDD). A VR experience effectively revealed a bias toward negative interpretations of ambiguous social scenes among individuals with BDD.

People with body dysmorphia persistently fixate on one or more aspects of their appearance, perceiving it to be flawed. This fixation leads them to engage in compulsive behaviors to hide their appearance even though the flaw is often imagined or remains unnoticed by others.

Study authors Berta J. Summers and her team say that a key characteristic of BDD is a bias that leads sufferers to interpret ambiguous social situations as negative or threatening for example, interpreting a neutral facial expression as angry. Scholars have studied this bias by asking individuals with BDD to interpret hypothetical ambiguous situations. But Summers and her colleagues devised an experiment to capture these processes in a more real-world setting.

The researchers designed a virtual reality experiment among a sample of 50 subjects. The participants were 25 patients with BDD and 25 individuals with no psychiatric diagnoses. While wearing a VR headset, each participant experienced 13 scenarios that contained ambiguous social cues. For example, in one scenario, a stranger does a double take at the participant and then apologizes.

Each subject was then offered two explanations for the scene one was benign (e.g., She thought we may have known each other) and the other was appearance-related (e.g., She apologized for staring at me because of how I look). The subject rated how likely they would be to make each interpretation.

Compared to the control subjects, participants with BDD were much more likely to endorse an appearance-related explanation for the scenarios. The control group, on the other hand, selected more of the benign explanations for the scenes compared to the BDD group. When the researchers looked at within-group differences, they found that the BDD group was equally likely to interpret a scene with a threatening explanation as with a benign explanation. The control group was more likely to choose a benign explanation over a threatening one.

The subjects also completed two self-report measures that assessed their disposition toward threat biases. The overall responses followed a similar pattern as the responses to the VR scenes, with the BDD group choosing more negative interpretations of ambiguous scenarios compared to the control group. When faced with these same scenarios, the control group chose more benign interpretations. The researchers say this suggests that the VR paradigm was successful in eliciting the threat interpretation biases characteristic of BDD.

The authors note that with the dispositional assessments, the BDD group chose more threatening interpretations than benign ones. This was not the case in the VR scenarios, where the BDD group was equally likely to choose either interpretation. The researchers propose that during real-life scenarios, people with BDD are open to more than one interpretation of a scene. Perhaps there is a brief window of opportunity in which individuals with BDD have flexibility in their thinking that is not there when they are removed either hypothetically or temporally from a situation (in which case, they may be more likely to resolve ambiguity with negative/threat-related explanations), Summers and her team suggest.

The study participants largely rated the VR situation as acceptable, engaging, and akin to scenarios they experience in real life. Summers and her colleagues conclude that their findings suggest that VR technology may provide a realistic setting for measuring moment to moment threat interpretation biases among people with BDD.

The study, A Virtual Reality Study of Cognitive Biases in Body Dysmorphic Disorder, was authored by Berta J. Summers, Anna C. Schwartzberg, and Sabine Wilhelm.

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Virtual reality experiment captures threat interpretation bias among people with body dysmorphic disorder - PsyPost