Where humans lack shared vision, VR has endless capabilities. This could be the key to bringing more ideas to life in 2018 if you have the vision to capitalize on the growth.
Stepping through the front door of your dream home, you can feel the excitement all the way to your fingertips. To the left, the library you always wanted, with shelf-lined walls, and oversized leather chairs. As you turn your head to the right, your focus is drawn up and around, as you admire the winding cherry staircase. Straight ahead sits the kitchen you helped design; double ovens, a beautiful granite island, and a wall of windows bringing the outside in. This house is stunning. It takes your breath away. It also isn’t real.
Welcome to Old Industries Becoming New Again
Real estate is a fun example of how companies like Outer Realm VR are making old markets seem very new with technology that helps bring visions to life. Outer Realm uses immersive, high quality virtual reality, augmented reality, and 360 video tools to showcase a project, product, or vision like never before.
Steve Kurz and David Gull are the dream team behind this market disruption and many others, as they present exciting new applications for VR and AR, bringing this high tech to ground level. They aren’t just talking shiny new tech, they begin with a deep fundamental understanding of where business is standing and how to bring the tech from that ground level to the heights of a shared vision of the future opportunity. Too often, disruptors and innovators just want to live in the excitement of the wave of their tech and leave too many (with great potential) behind in the wake.
Visionaries Are Rare
While we are witnessing an exponential acceleration of technological capabilities, we aren’t exactly keeping up and there are a few major contributing factors.
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Humans are not naturally visionaries. When one comes along, we put statues of their likeness everywhere, because we recognize the rarity in being able to take a long, broad, and expansive view that doesn’t exist in the minds of others.
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Humans don’t share in visions. When I have an amazing idea, if it is based in an area that is not common knowledge, it is very difficult to get others to share in my vision and excitement. And because humans aren’t naturally visionaries, getting them to be a visionary about an idea you are envisioning, not even one of their own, is a pretty impossible task. Which brings me to point #3.
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Our brains our designed for experience. A 2-dimensional medium or PowerPoint presentation can only do so much to convey an idea but if the viewers aren’t seeing your idea in their mind, they aren’t feeling any emotion attached to that idea, and they have no tangible attachment or buy-in. If they can’t experience your vision, it’s difficult for them to consider it as ‘real’. VR allows the experience the human brain needs to make something ‘real’.
The point is that it’s easier for an idea, product, project, or vision to die than it is for it to come to life. But we have major opportunities to take advantage of this acceleration, to bring more visions to life, to make the path to life easier than the path to death, and maybe 2018 will be the year we lean into tangible tech.
What Tech Page Are You On?
It’s just as easy for me to admit that VR and AR are not the answers to everything, as it is for me to admit that we are probably not on the same page. But what VR and AR allow us to do is get on the same page. This technology will allow us to see the same vision, to envision the same product, to exist in the same space for growth, and that is amazing. Your dream home, real estate, flight, architecture, nonprofits, retail, entertainment, healthcare, fitness, oceanography, the applications are endless, and this is only the beginning.
Building Bridges Into the Future
When technology is at the beginning stages of becoming tangible, there is a barrier to entry, as consumers struggle to understand the applications that make the technology viable. VR and AR has passed the initial hurdles but people are still skeptical. For this reason, Outer Realm and the others in this sector will have to build a bridge for their clients, meet them where they are, and walk each plank with them into the future.
Steve and David have lofty plans to evolve the VR & AR industries (visionary much?) and after talking to them, I am certain that the conversation we will be having in future years will be much different. If you’ve never experienced VR or AR, I recommend you put this on your list of resolutions because if anything is going to change your life in the New Year, it’s going to be technology.
Read the original INC article published on January 4, 2018.
