Virtual Reality for L&D: Part 1

Ahead of his presentation on Enhancing the learner experience at the World of Learning Conference in October, David Burden, MD of Daden Limited, offers in this two-part article an introduction to Virtual Reality and insights into how L&D professionals can approach it…

The hype over virtual reality (VR) in the last year has been immense, fuelled by the launch of the Oculus Rift consumer headset, the HTC Vive, Samsung Gear VR and headline grabbing initiatives such a Google Expeditions (virtual reality field trips for schools), and the New York Times giving away VR headsets free to over a million of its subscribers.

But in amongst all this hype what does virtual reality actually mean for L&D professionals, and what impact is it likely to have on training and education in the short, medium and long term?

“VR” as a term is being used in a very general way by marketeers – so it’s worth understanding the different forms that VR can currently take, considering both devices and content.

Device Options

In devices there are currently two different types available. The “tethered” or “integrated” headsets such as Oculus Rift and HTC Vive have a headset with built-in display, headphones and motion tracking. They then need to be connected by cable to a reasonably powerful PC which actually runs the VR application. Whilst they have the best performance it comes at a significant cost, £500-£750 for the headset, and £800-£1200 for a PC to run it. So it’s not going to be cheap to equip a training room or classroom with 30 VR stations!

The second device option is “mobileVR”, where a user slots an ordinary smartphone into a holder, and then either holds that to their eyes, or uses a head-strap for longer use. Although it can end up looking no different from an integrated headset all the smarts are derived from the smartphone; the smartphone runs the app and provides the display – the headset itself actually just contains a couple of lenses and a button mechanism. Whilst the quality is slightly inferior (but will most user’s notice the difference?) the big difference is in price,  £10-£20 for each headset – and the user often providing the smartphone. Distribution is also a lot easier as the user just downloads the app from their favourite app store, and the experience is more stable as it’s far less likely that a graphics driver update will upset the whole system.

Content Options

The second split is in style of content. The big difference here is between photospheres (and their 3D video equivalents), and 3D models. With a photosphere you are effectively standing in the middle of a big bubble photo (or video). You can look all around you, you may even be able to click on a few hotspots, but you can’t move around except by jumping from one photo to another. Great to give people a quick familiarisation with an environment (part of location specific on-boarder training perhaps), but otherwise fairly limited – although cheap to produce.

The other alternative is the 3D model. Here the user has almost complete freedom of movement around and through the model of a location (an office, factory, heritage site etc), will often have a high degree of interaction, and can be part of a multi-user experience being able to see and interact with other users. These experiences are typically more expensive to produce, but can be far more flexible, engaging and supportive of a richer variety of learning experiences.

From the media it would be easy to assume that mobileVR only runs photosphere experiences, and that tethered headsets only run 3D models – but that is definitely not the case – both devices will run both types of experience. The graphic below gives some idea though of how different use cases may have an optimal choice of device and content type.

The Challenges of VR

So if we can get a VR headset for just £10 to use with our smartphone it’s going to be a no-brainer isn’t it? Unfortunately not. Whilst VR does undoubtably provide a real wow factor, and a high level of engagement and immersion which can help to better understand, learn and remember information and skills, there are a number of down-sides.

First, safety. When you have the headset on you can’t see the real world. And since most VR experiences work best when stood up (as you’ll be looking all around you), then you are bound to start moving around a bit (even if this movement isn’t being tracked – HTC Vive being the only current solution to do whole room spatial tracking). That means there’s a high risk that you’ll bump into other things or people, or in the tethered case start tripping over cables. Almost every VR demo is currently accompanied by a minder, someone to make sure you’re safe – so factor that into your cost of training!

Then there is the much vaunted but little understood “VR sickness”. Whilst some of this is caused by latency – the lag between you moving and your eyes seeing movement on the screen, this doesn’t appear to be the whole story, and people have very different susceptibilities. From our users I’d say probably almost every other one everyone feels some unease the first time, and maybe 10% so much that they can’t go on. Many also find it disorientating when they come back to the physical world after only a few minutes in world. So VR at the moment appears to be best suited to short, sharp experiences, something that delivers a real wow to engage the student or as the culmination to a piece of learning, rather than as a class-long experience.

Finally there is the issue of input and output. In VR you can’t see your hands or keyboard – so typing stuff is near impossible. You can put a virtual keyboard in the space, and even virtual hands, but it’s not quick. Conversely text is really hard to read in VR – it needs to be big and bold, no longer than 1 or 2 sentences. So it’s no good trying to get learners to read explanatory notes, mock-up computer screens or clipboards of patient notes. The lesson is that VR works best where you interact with objects, not keyboards and screen, and ultimately speech-recognition and text-to-speech may offer a real benefit here.

So what is a pragmatic approach to VR for L&D professionals?

We want to get those benefits of engagement and immersion, but not at the expense of very high costs and our students feeling sick, frustrated, or both! There are probably two main strands to a strategy, and, as with all learning technology, it’s all about using the appropriate technology at the appropriate time.

Read all about the right approach to VR for L&D professionals here.