After excellent events in France and Germany, I wanted to broaden my view on the market for augmented and virtual reality (XR). Here are some key take-aways.
After excellent events in France and Germany, I wanted to broaden my view on the market for augmented and virtual reality (XR). Here are some key take-aways.
It is still early in the game. This is particularly clear in consumer oriented XR. Yes, games are out there; lots of them. But the youth of the market can be seen in the fact that there were so many new, young companies exhibiting at the Augmented World Expo (AWE). New game development, avatar creation tools, API/SDK developers, and even relatively simple haptic feedback wearables for gaming.
On the professional side, in contrast, established companies showed well developed XR platforms for industrial uses. This includes network and cloud friendly environments which work out of the box as well as integrate custom tools, and high-end haptics for industrial design and training.
Augmented World Expo covers all of the XR bases for users and developers alike
The AWE exhibition was excellent
The AWE Expo and Playground was the real draw for my visit. Companies large and small from all over the world greeted visitors. The XR industry is vibrant and new companies enter the market with new ideas, tools, and products. Established and new players shared the large expo area.
Software developers pull together the hardware pieces and create solutions. This is always true, and it was evident at AWE.
One of the most interesting professional AR platforms at AWE is from Holo-Light. ISAR, named after the river flowing past their offices, combined with AR 3S, and XRnow, create a solution offering a complete, scalable, industrial XR environment. AR3S is an XR application for design and engineering. ISAR is rendering and streaming platform. XRnow is the cloud platform that pulls together data, applications, and devices to deploy augmented and virtual reality environments.
A visitor at the Holo-Light booth looks at the popup menu during an XR demo
Consumer apps covered the Expo floor. An interesting new company, MetaverseXR (Bangkok/San Francisco), demonstrated XR gaming with a haptic vest to enhance the fun. MetaverseXR. As a young company, MetaverseXR delivers a range of services from gaming to digital twin.
Another software area critical to XR developers is tools. MAXST AR helps developers jumpstart their AR development with their 6.0 SDK release. It provides normal functions like eyewear support and interesting features such as 3D scanning of spaces (like rooms) with import into Unity as well as an IoT interface to control real world appliances.
Professional haptics could be found, too. HaptX was at the entrance with their partner Lowes. They showed the current version of their haptic glove system. I call it a system, because the tactile feedback is significantly implemented through a pneumatic system. The next generation of HaptX gloves, the HaptX Gloves G1 will be shipping in 2024.
A full crowd gathers for the HaptX and Lowe's demonstration at the exhibit
SenseGlove is another professional Haptics company based in the Netherlands. Their Nova gloves combine force- and vibrotactile feedback. These gloves are destined for almost any industrial training application.
The design is lightweight and cost-effective. The haptic effect of the gloves provides a good sense of manipulating virtual objects. This is important in virtual training environments where the user develops realistic muscle memory from VR training which will be useful in real world environments.
bHaptics focuses on gaming but does so with a full set of tactile devices including two different vests, gloves, and tactile devices for arms and even feet. Destined for gaming, the devices provide sensory feedback through vibration. Not destined for professional applications, these products have the ability to enhance game-play.
This new generation of haptic gloves from SenseGlove will ship in the fourth quarter of 2023
A Final Perspective
Above are examples from the exhibition. The exhibition space was vast and full of interesting solutions. As for the XR market, AWE covers the market from both consumer gaming, retail, and professional design and manufacturing industries. While the conferences were not at a level of events like Laval Virtual in France, the perspective of the XR market that could be gained from the exhibition was broad.
