The Road to Mass Adoption: Content, Connectivity, and Consumer Confidence in XR

Extended Reality (XR) is a powerful tool that can maximise the work and play experience, but to be really effective it needs to be the go-to tool for the vast majority of users. We are now at a point where it could become central in the technology industry, or simply become just another development tool. We have seen the power of XR and plainly most of us are of the opinion that it – together with AI – needs to be elevated, but up until now, its adoption has been a bit uneven, and growth less than inspiring. 

In this article, we’ll look at the reasons why industry has been slow to fully embrace the power of XR, and why its adoption has been sketchy at best, and what can be done to ensure that it becomes the tool of choice.

XR’s Time to Grow

Since the early 2010s, there has been steady growth of interest in the progressive formats of virtual reality (VR), augmented reality, and mixed reality (MR), which collectively fall under the broader umbrella of XR. However, efforts to chart XR’s path to mass adoption along a predictable, linear trajectory have consistently fallen short of expected results. To be blunt, XR’s uneven uptake generally reflects the technology industry’s recurring cycles of initial enthusiasm followed by abject disillusionment when it didn’t work quite as expected, or lacked essential features.  

Before we deep-dive into the current state of the technology, and where it is likely to go, it’s worth understanding the recent evolution of VR to XR.

Key to the development to date and going forward with these kinds of devices is the passthrough feature, which allows AR content to be overlaid on the real world. The first really successful AR device in terms of massed-adoption was the Meta Quest 2, which allowed for excellent experiences but within an enclosed system. Everything on the screen was computer generated and could be interacted with via hand-held controllers.  

Other VR headsets were available – the PSVR unit had been out for a couple of years but was tethered, and the Valve Index was also on the market – but the Meta introduced powerful, untethered VR at a very affordable price. However even while the Quest 2 was shipping in big numbers, Meta was already planning the next iteration of the headset, and more importantly, so were their rivals. Apple, Google, and Samsung saw the strength of the market and realised that this was now a big thing. 

Developers saw passthrough – the ability to see the real world with a VR overlay – as being a key aspect of the next design of headsets. Once again, Meta hit the ground running with the Quest 3, which was only a tad more expensive than the Quest 2, but had much more in terms of features and display, and included passthrough. All of the other designers were playing catch-up once again.

XR thrives on the use of passthrough because it effectively connects the virtual world with the real one and can be used to create exceptional experiences. The latest iterations of headsets are starting to explore the bounds of XR, but beyond gaming, the tech industry hasn’t, rather disappointingly, embraced it as the go-to tool.  

Extended Reality is starting to become more mainstream, and we are seeing well-designed examples of it in many diverse areas of industry, healthcare, retail, and education, but despite its power, users seem reluctant to really get to grips with it. Why is that, and what can be done about it to ensure that it becomes an everyday tool?

The (Perceived) Problems with XR

Many people that I talk to about XR and what it can do are still unsure of how it differs from AR. It is almost as though they see it as being something perfectly suited to game development, and without much in terms of use in non-gaming environments. People who use AR as part of their design process just don’t see the benefits of XR. They reason that XR is just an attempt to fix something that isn’t broken in the first place, and possibly involves a learning curve that they really don’t need to negotiate. For many in the industry, AR works fine, so why bother with XR?

But there are other reasons why many developers choose not to get involved with XR tools, citing reasons like there is no standard tool to design with XR, or they are unsure about a return on their investment (ROI). Both of these arguments are easily debunked, because we have seen them before with technological advances. In the early days of computing, Thomas Watson- the then CEO of IBM – declared that the world would never need more than six computers.  

Of course, the notion that the house-sized devices of the time would ever become a personal-use product was ludicrous, but the advent of low-cost micro-electronics made them something for all. Today, there is almost no market sector that cannot benefit from computing in some form, so it continues to grow and dominate. 

The early days of the internet were greeted with disdain from business, because it had been seen as a scientific tool and of little use in commerce, and mobile phones were initially seen as a tool for bankers to yell in to and of little use to the general public. We have a grand tradition of dismissing transformative technologies before it gradually gets taken up, and the same is happening with XR. Companies that could be using and developing with XR aren’t taking it up, and are citing a number of reasons, including:

• High equipment costs. There is a perception that the development of XR experiences requires expensive hardware to build and test it on. This is a complete fallacy, since headsets like the relatively inexpensive Meta Quest 3 are easily capable of being used for developing complex XR experiences. A small team could be furnished with XR-ready headsets for under £2000, and that is pretty inexpensive in commercial terms. This also nullifies the much-quoted ROI argument which is frequently voiced as a reason for not adopting the appropriate tools. With low-cost tools readily available, the ROI of creating XR experiences is actually huge and highly economically viable. Payback can be enormous when compared to the comparative ease with which immersive experiences can be created, and that will be even more the case as AI starts to take control of experience development.
• Hardware impacts. One of the major reasons that companies cite for not adopting XR tools is the negative impacts of the actual hardware, including motion sickness, uncomfortable headsets, eye-strain and disorientation. The latest iteration of headsets have been designed for comfort and long-term use by the vast majority of people and those who suffer from motion sickness are always likely to do so and will always stay away from this market sector anyway. As headsets start to align more with Smart Glasses and become smaller and more lightweight, the negative effects of long-term wear will diminish even further. 
• Data security. While the risk of cyber-attacks and data hacking are very real, there is no reason to believe that XR hardware or Apps are more likely to be a target, or have more vulnerabilities than any other systems. Many people think that the cloud and online nature of XR makes it more of a target, but this is simply untrue.

XR is not being widely accepted for a variety of reasons, including, perceived high costs, a lack of apparent business benefit and the return on hardware and software investment, supposed health and safety concerns, privacy difficulties, and the technological challenges of integrating XR with existing systems. Many organisations continue to place more emphasis on the novelty of the technology than on the practical benefits it offers, which hinders them from investing in the widespread application of the technology.

All of these arguments can be easily countered and the sooner that developers understand the benefits of XR in business and commerce as well as gaming, the sooner it will become a massed-use tool.

Unity Developers are a skilled team who can help you understand how XR can benefit you and your business. Why not contact us and see how we can make your XR visions real.