Game over…

Immersive technology is not just for gamers. The ACE IT project, brainchild of London College of Communication and London Southbank University, proves that it has potential to change and influence industries far beyond entertainment.

I am not a techie person (despite what my mother said when I taught her how to hashtag) and, until recently, immersive technologies such as virtual (VR) and augmented reality (AR) were more science fiction than reality, relevant only to gamers and the technophiles.

It belonged to the realm of The Matrix, someone adorned with a large clumsy cyborg-like headset, their arms flailing around in mid-air,  trying to hit some imaginary enemy that is ‘right in front of them’. To me, they were futuristic and inaccessible. 

But VR and AR aren’t future techs, nor do they exclusively belong to the entertainment industry: they’re right now technology. Many are seeing the vast and varied potential of Virtual and Augmented Reality beyond the sphere of hardcore gamers, and beginning to implement and apply the technology to a broad range of sectors, including healthcare, education, training and development and news and journalism to name but a few.

“ACE IT put me in touch with all these innovative people who wanted to industrialise, work in different sectors and do cool new things.”

Nina Salomon

What was, until recently, a fantasy for technologists and gamers alike, is becoming an actual reality, one that if harnessed correctly, has huge potential. There has never been a better time for businesses to jump on the immersive tech bandwagon and, with the the UK’s world-leading immersive tech sector in London, there also seems like no better place.

I was made to see the error in my tech-illiterate ways at the launch of the ACE IT project. A collaboration between London College of Communication (LCC) and London Southbank University (LSBU), ACE IT (short for Accelerating the Creative Economy through Immersive Tech) aims to fuse together both universities’ extensive bank of expertise and facilities to support London’s small-to-medium enterprises (SMEs) and start-ups to conceptualise, research and develop their ideas into real immersive products and services.  

“We have done this because we know the potential for immersive experiences,” Lara Anderson, Dean of the Screen School at LCC enthuses at the the ACE IT launch, “and we know that they can be developed and adapted across a range of sectors as businesses innovate and fuse together skills in which to reach their audiences.”

After a couple of hours at the launch event, it became apparent just how broad the range of industries from which the SMEs, guest speakers and experts hailed; I still spotted the gamers, but they were easily matched if not outnumbered by start-ups looking to harness the technology for ideas worlds away from PlayStations and Xboxes.

One of these was Nina Salomon, founder of Women in VR, who not only was was a guest speaker at the launch but also a hopeful applicant for ACE IT support. “I thought ACE IT was interesting because one, it has got different universities that are a part of it so you have access to professionals, and two, it put me in touch with all these innovative people who wanted to industrialise, work in different sectors and do cool new things.”

With a background in film, Nina began delving into the world of immersive tech five years ago, with the intention of using Virtual Reality’s as a tool for social impact storytelling. Since then she has worked with Cornerstone – a partnership charity organisation which is using VR to train foster carers and social workers on how to look after children from broken homes.

She is currently at the forefront of a project using immersive technology for rehabilitation and education in prisons, using VR to incentivise the incarcerated by giving them “the opportunity for 10 minutes not to be in prison. You get to be in space, you get to be in a forest you get to be on the beach, you get to be somewhere else.” Her enthusiasm for the power of immersive tech in its new reimagined forms was inspiring.

“One of the things I find really really important for innovation is to have people come in from outside of that box of all the people who already work in technology and gaming and bring in new creative insights.” 

Nina Salomon

Finding these people that Nina refers to is exactly what ACE IT aims to do, whether they are already operating in or aspiring to operate in the immersive tech industry, and regardless of the industry their idea will contribute to, and as Danyl Bartlett, LCC’s lead academic on the project and Programme Director of LCC’s Moving Image and Digital Arts, put it so succinctly to the potential applicants, “We want to talk to you about your ideas. Which is a rare thing for most SMEs and start ups and small companies to hear. We actually want to talk to you about what you want to do and help you achieve it.”

How they plan to achieve it is by supporting 70 SMEs over the span of three years, with 35 of them working on one-to-one research collaborations with their teams. They expect 20 of these to add a new products and services to their own business or portfolio, and with their invaluable expertise and support, they hope that 10 of their applicants will develop and contribute with brand new products and services to market.

What would normally be exorbitantly expensive for the SMEs is being subsidised with £1.4m of funding for the project, including £721,589 from the European Regional Development Fund. 

Talking to the hopeful applicants, it became apparent that what ACE IT provides that is so vital to these startups and SMEs is support that would be next to impossible externally whether that be access to facilities or academic and professional expertise.

“I think a big part of it is the academic side because it’s really hard to find and work with academics, especially outside of an educational system. I’ve tried – not good. You feel like you’re on the outside climbing up.” George Taktak, one of the applicants for ACE IT, admits.

He shows me his app, called Feeliom, that uses haptics to allow the user to express their emotions more easily, whilst Artificial Intelligence provides continuous insights into the user’s well-being. “It’s about helping people to express emotions through technology. The idea came from my grandad, he had Alzheimer’s and eventually couldn’t speak anymore. It made me realise that actually there’s way more to our communication than just words.”

This struck a chord with me, as someone whose own grandfather’s communication has been affected by illness: the idea that immersive technologies could help someone so directly in such a profound way.

George is not alone in using immersive technologies for healthcare and well-being. Steve Dann, one of the guest speakers at the launch, and founder of Amplified Robot & Medical Realities, explains how immersive technologies can be used to train surgeons on massive scales across different countries all at once. “The great thing about virtual reality is we can transport people into the operating theatre and into the training room.” 

“VR started as a very niche technology and people are still figuring out how to use it, and it still comes with a lot of stereotyping, so having this kind of a project where SMEs find that they can use this technology and apply it to whatever project they want to do, I think it’s a great thing”

Anna Despina-Tudor, head of the MA Virtual Reality course at LCC 

These projects, and many of the other ideas that will be made a reality by ACE IT, are eye-opening in their innovativeness and creativity, and are using immersive technologies in ways that would be unbelievable to those, like me, who stereotyped VR and AR as gamer-only technologies. They focus on the power immersive technologies have to tell stories, to engage and create empathy, making narrative and interactive experiences, which reach audiences to change lives for the better, be that through art, culture, education or industry.

Not only am I fully converted, but through ACE IT I’ve realised immersive technologies are here to stay, and with projects like this, supported by universities like mine, they will be key to innovation within countless sectors and industries, and will change how we live our lives –  not just gamers, but everyone.