Restaurants and Metaverse Marketing

 Games and more envisioned.  

Virtual Stores Test Consumers’ Appetite for Metaverse Marketing

Wendy’s and Chipotle join a growing number of companies exploring the potential of virtual worlds

Restaurants' Virtual Stores Test Consumers' Appetite for Metaverse Marketing

The Wall Street Journal,  Ann-Marie Alcántara,  April 5, 2022

Fast-food chains are testing virtual stores to explore the metaverse's marketing potential. Wendy's opened a virtual restaurant in Meta's Horizon Worlds virtual reality game; visitors can engage in basketball-themed gameplay near the simulated establishment. Wendy's Carl Loredo said the chain will track engagement metrics, including how many people visit the virtual restaurant or post about it on social media, and how many interact with its food-ordering application. Chipotle Mexican Grill will unveil a virtual outlet simulating its original Denver restaurant on the Roblox gaming platform; players who successfully roll virtual burritos in the game will earn "Burrito Bucks" good for real-world items at Chipotle restaurants. Said Chipotle's Chris Brandt, "This promotion and this initiative that we have with Roblox really starts to separate itself from a lot of what other people are doing, and really blur that line between the real world and the metaverse."  .... '

Virtual Reality Is a Game-Changing Computing and Communication Platform

Very good piece on the topic from CACM.      With some useful examples of VR uses beyond games.  Have been skeptical about its general use, see key insights below for good overview.   Note mention of 'virtual worlds' below which we actively examined. 

Six Reasons Why Virtual Reality Is a Game-Changing Computing and Communication Platform for Organizations   By Osku Torro, Henri Jalo, Henri Pirkkalainen

Key Insights:

VR can solve many critical bottlenecks of conventional remote work while also enabling completely new business opportunities.

VR enables novel knowledge-management practices for organizations via enriched data and information, immersive workflows, and integration with appropriate IS and other emerging technologies.

VR enables high-performing remote communication and collaboration by simulating or transforming organizational communication, in which altered group dynamics and Al agents can also play an interesting role. ... 

Communications of the ACM, October 2021, Vol. 64 No. 10, Pages 48-55  10.1145/3440868

The COVID-19 pandemic created unprecedented disruptions to businesses, forcing them to take their activities into the virtual sphere. At the same time, the limitations of remote working tools have become painfully obvious, especially in terms of sustaining task-related focus, creativity, innovation, and social relations. Some researchers are predicting that the lack of face-to-face communication may lead to decreased economic growth and significant productivity pitfalls in many organizations for years to come.13

As the length and lasting effects of the COVID-19 pandemic cannot be reliably estimated, organizations will likely face mounting challenges in the ways they handle remote work practices. Therefore, it is important for organizations to examine which solutions provide the most value in these exceptional times. In this article, we propose virtual reality (VR) as a critical, novel technology that can transform how organizations conduct their operations.

VR technology provides "the effect of immersion in an interactive, three-dimensional, computer-generated environment in which virtual objects have spatial presence."5 VR's unique potential to foster human cognitive functions (that is, the ability to acquire and process information, focus attention, and perform tasks) in simulated environments has been known for decades.6,8,32 VR has, thus, long held promise for transforming how we work.33

Earlier organizational experiments with desktop-based virtual worlds (VWs)—3D worlds that are used via 2D displays—have mostly failed to attract participation and engagement.34,37 Increasing sensory immersion has been identified as necessary for mitigating these problems in the future.18 Therefore, sensory immersion in VR through the use of head-mounted displays (HMDs) can be seen as a significant step forward for organizations transferring their activities to virtual environments. In this regard, VR is now starting to fulfill the expectations that were placed upon VWs in the past decades, as per Benford et al, for instance.4

However, VR has only recently matured to a stage where it can truly be said to have significant potential for wider organizational use.17 In 2015, Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg described VR as "the next major computing and communication platform."38 Although VR has received this kind of significant commercial attention, its potential in organizational use remains largely scattered or unexplored in the extant scientific literature.

Drawing on contemporary research and practice-driven insights, this article provides six reasons why VR is a fundamentally unique and transformative computing and communication platform that extends the ways organizations use, process, and communicate information. We relate the first three reasons with VR as a computing platform and its potential to foster organizations' knowledge management processes and the last three reasons with VR as a communication platform and its potential to foster organizations' remote communication processes.  ... ' 

Betting on VR Conferencing

 Experience is still not complete.  But laptops can provide relatively good, portable and convenient alternatives.  And the entire workforce is now already trained.  So do we need full VR, except in the most complex examples? 

Facebook’s New Bet on Virtual Reality: Conference Rooms

By The New York Times, August 20, 2021

For years, the idea that virtual reality would go mainstream has remained exactly that: virtual.

Though tech giants like Facebook and Sony have spent billions of dollars trying to perfect the experience, virtual reality has stayed a niche plaything of hobbyists willing to pay thousands of dollars, often for a clunky VR headset tethered to a powerful gaming computer.

That changed last year in the pandemic. As people lived more of their lives digitally, they started buying more VR headsets. VR hardware sales shot up, led by Facebook's Oculus Quest 2, a headset that was introduced last fall, according to the research firm IDC.

To build on the momentum, Facebook on Thursday introduced a virtual-reality service called Horizon Workrooms. The product, which is free for Quest 2 owners to download, offers a virtual meeting room where people using the headsets can gather as if they were at an in-person work meeting. The participants join with a customizable cartoon avatar of themselves. Interactive virtual white boards line the walls so that people can write and draw things as in a physical conference room.

From The New York Times

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Haptics (Touch) Update from ACM

 A favorite topic, its part of how we understand reality, with good update here commissioned by ACM:

A Touch of Reality   By Samuel Greengard  Commissioned by CACM Staff

Haptics introduces ways to use virtual reality more effectively, to use robots for a wider array of tasks, and to produce biomechanical replacements for missing limbs that can replicate a sense of feel.

Imbuing robots and other machines with human-like sensory capabilities is an incredibly difficult task. In recent years, machine vision, hearing, and speech have advanced remarkably. Yet, the ability to building machines that can touch and feel the way people do has proven elusive.

All of this is about to change. Haptics—the use of technology to simulate touch, feeling, and motion—is finally hitting its stride. "A confluence of new actuator and sensor technology, along with ever increasing computing power, is pushing the technology into the mainstream," says Jake Rubin, founder and CEO of HaptX, a developer of haptics systems for robots and virtual reality (VR).

The technology introduces ways to use VR far more effectively—particularly for training in industrial settings. Yet haptics also makes it possible to use robots for a wider array of tasks, and to produce biomechanical limbs that replicate a sense of feel. "We are much closer to creating systems that talk to the brain or interact with nerves in ways that seems realistic," says Gregory A. Clark, director of the Center for Neural Interfaces at the University of Utah.

Out of the Body

Simulating human touch is an incredibly complex endeavor. It requires a deep understanding of physiology and neurobiology along with an ability to translate electrical signals into and out of binary code. Although VR, robotics, and biomechanical limbs incorporate and communicate touch in different ways, there's a common denominator, Clark says: a system ultimately must convince the brain that the signals flowing into it from machines are real.

HaptX, for example, has developed highly specialized gloves that use 130 tiny actuators and microfluidic air channels embedded in a fabric. The gloves displace the skin to 2 mm with no latency, producing ultrarealistic sensations; they also offer 6 degrees of freedom. "When you touch a virtual object, the pixel-like bubbles on this material inflate or deflate precisely to produce the same forces over the same area that that object would produce if it touched your hand in real life," Rubin explains.  ... ' 

360 Degree Virtual Tours

Been recently looking at various capabilities of producing 'Virtual tours' of various complexity.  And in particular how it can enhance experiences.    Most of my explorations have been simple ways to interact with physical tours, to provide basic experience to anyone .... but the capabilities are quickly expanding.   We examined some as they related to shelf experiences.   Still being done today.  Here an example of advances, will see if I can try:

360-degree virtual tours are easier to make with Insta360 and Matterport ... 

The Insta360 One R is the latest camera compatible with Matterport's Capture app.  By Richard Lai, @richardlai in   Engadget

As the world continues to battle COVID-19, the likes of realtors, museums and galleries have been seeking alternative ways to serve their clients or visitors remotely. Matterport even claims that its platform helped create more than twice as many 360-degree virtual tours weekly between early March and mid-August, and it’s hoping to continue this momentum by expanding its list of compatible 360 cameras.   ... " 

Digital Twins in Wargaming and Beyond

An example of 'Digital Twins' in wargaming.   In the DOD we used many forms where the twin was an enhanced image with underlying technical details to emulate its operation, on a large scale terminal.   Specifically agents usually in observable environments.   As the piece suggests these don't need to be military examples, but any operational, typically spatial simulation, that has many operating agents and parameters.     Operational disaster relief is another good example.   Good general description below.

Covid-19 Crisis Accelerates U.K. Military's Push Into Virtual War Gaming  By Financial Times

The U.K. Ministry of Defence is looking to fast-track new virtual reality technology from software developer Improbable that would create a digital replica of the country. The technology could be used to test resilience to future pandemics, natural disasters, and attacks by hostile states.

Known as a "single synthetic environment," the technology layers maps of geographical terrain and critical infrastructure with details of fuel, power, and water supplies, telecom networks, weather patterns, and more. This virtual "twin" uses artificial intelligence to simulate future scenarios and offers the ability to "war game" responses.

The Ministry of Defence hopes eventually to build simulations of likely conflict zones. "What we're aiming for in the longer term is . . . to enable governments to test ideas and test choices of action in a virtual world before implementing them in the real world," says Improbable's Chief Executive Joe Robinson.

From Financial Times  
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Replacing Screen by Realities?

Will every screen be replaced by a virtual reality experience?

In Smithsonian:
Alex Kipman on how it's "inevitable" that devices like the HoloLens will replace every screen. Reading a Clive Thompson interview with the HoloLens creator in his office at Microsoft's HQ, I get a distinct sense of deja vu, as he outlines much the same vision as when I met him in that very same room back in 2017. While a cynic might say that Kipman is a brilliant marketer who excels at staying on message, I can attest to the fact that when you meet him in person it is difficult to doubt the sincerity of his belief in that vision, and in the compelling picture he paints for how the technology will transform our lives. And I can also relate to Thompson in being impressed by how fun and empowering the experience of borrowing knowledge from a holographic guide to perform a task for which you're in no way qualified can feel .... " 

Space Captures 3D LED Models of Contents

A new kind of film capture or  cinema?

LED egg Room-Sized LED Egg Captures Amazing 3D Models of People Inside It
in TechCrunch
By Devin Coldewey

Google researchers have designed a prismatic light-emitting-diode (LED) "egg," to generate remarkable three-dimensional (3D) and relightable models of people within it. The egg uses volumetric capture, in which multiple cameras in a 360-degree arrangement render a photorealistic representation of a subject in motion, while also allowing the model to be realistically illuminated by virtual light sources. This enables the model's placement in any virtual environment where lighting can change. The egg contains 331 LED lights that can produce any hue, and that shift in a specific pattern during subject capture, creating a lighting-agnostic model. When placed in the virtual setting, the models reflect the setting's lighting, and not the lighting of the egg itself.  ... "

Evaluating the Use-ability of VR

Useful to see the proposal of a measure here, regarding usability. 

How Usable Is VR? 
University of Gottingen

Patrick Harms at the University of Gottingen in Germany has designed an automated process for evaluating the usability of virtual reality (VR). Harms' process, which can detect many issues with user friendliness and usability in the virtual environment, begins by recording testers' individual activities and movement, producing "activity lists." A program (MAUSI-VR) mines those lists for typical user behavioral patterns, then assesses this behavior as it relates to defined irregularities. Said Harms, "This makes it possible...to determine how well users of a specific VR are guided by it and whether they usually have to perform ergonomically inconvenient procedures during its operation." ... " 

China Pushes Use of VR

Playful use and experimentation can lead to new uses.  Considering aspects of technology use to be normal and part of a toolset to gather data, experience context and develop new methods.

China's Virtual Reality Arcades Aim for Real-World Success 
In South China Morning Post

China was home to an estimated 3,000 virtual reality (VR) arcades in 2016, when the market was forecast to grow 13-fold between then and 2021 to $782 million, according to a joint report by iResearch Consulting Group and Greenlight Insights. This market potential is why the VR and augmented reality (AR) industries are excited by China. A 2018 report from Digi-Capital said that Chinese growth in the next five years could see it dominate AR/VR long-term, and not by a small margin. A key factor in China's lead in the industry is its government. Beijing is pushing hard for China to become a world leader in next-generation technologies including artificial intelligence and autonomous vehicles. VR has been added into that group, benefiting from a range of preferential government policies. Several towns and cities in China have already declared themselves as incubator zones that are integrating VR into research, manufacturing, education, and other sectors. ... " 

Wired Guide to Virtual Reality

Nicely done, mostly up to date piece.    Non Technical, but good depth, with a mix of positive and negative.  Sure its a fun way to experience data and reality, but will it be used with most of your interactions with digital in the near feature?   Like the smartphone?  Still unclear.

The Wired Guide to Virtual Reality

ALL HAIL THE headset. Or, alternatively, all ignore the headset, because it’s gonna be a dismal failure anyway.

That’s pretty much the conversation around virtual reality, a technology by which computer-aided stimuli create the immersive illusion of being somewhere else—and a topic on which middle ground is about as scarce as affordable housing in Silicon Valley. VR is either going to upend our lives in a way nothing has since the smartphone, or it’s the technological equivalent of trying to make “fetch” happen. The poles of that debate were established in 2012, when VR first re-emerged from obscurity at a videogame trade show; they’ve persisted through Facebook’s $3 billion acquisition of headset maker Oculus in 2014, through years of refinement and improvement, and well into the first-and-a-half generation of consumer hardware.  .... "

L'Oreal Launches AR for Make Up

Again an area we experimented with for years, its seems to now be expanding.  Impressive and interesting details.  Makes a point that no App is required. This topic has been often mentioned here, tag below.  Lot of images at the

L’Oréal Paris Launches New AR Tool For Trying Out Make Up  in VRFocus
L'Oréal Paris and Modiface lets customers test make-up looks in AR with no additional apps required.

A number of companies and brands have begun using augmented reality to allow consumers to try out products and see how they might look in the home or about your person. There have even been a number of make up brands which have launched virtual try-on apps for testing out new looks, however most of them need the user to download a separate app. The new tool from L’Oréal Paris eliminates this requirement.

L’Oréal Paris have used facial recognition technology from ModiFace along with AR product simulation to allow users to discover and experiment with different make up and beauty products using only a web browser. ... " 

Shopping Virtual Wal-Marts

Wal-Mart takes you to the virtual edge.  Never thought of them doing this, but here they are.  How much will it entice, engage?  So is this meant to be a view of a real virtual Wal-mart, with all the intricacies, or some virtual representation that is more shop-able virtually?  A real distinction.

Walmart could have you shopping in The Matrix   by Matthew Stern in Retailwire,

While we’ve all gotten used to shopping from our living rooms, the experience lacks many of the advantages of being in-store. Some new patents from Walmart describe a VR experience that would address the shortfall by transporting a customer into a virtual, shoppable Walmart without ever leaving home.

Walmart’s patents describe a virtual showroom and fulfilment system which would allow shoppers wearing their VR headsets to move around in a 3-D virtual Walmart as if they were physically in the store, Bloomberg reported. Wearing gloves enhanced by VR sensors, customers would be able to take items off the virtual shelves, thereby triggering the items to be shipped from an automated distribution center. 

This isn’t the only sign of Walmart’s ambitions in VR. Earlier this year the retailer launched a virtual furniture showroom that depicts products in a staged, virtual home. The showroom can be viewed on-screen as well as through Google and Samsung’s VR headgear. ... " 

Blurring the Lines Between Virtual and Reality

In EPFL News.  Could be a way to transfer gaming, and thus gaming engagement to real spaces.  Say offices, but perhaps also to industrial spaces. Possible then also for use with data, or analytic  solutions to data.  We examined some possibilities related to this before tech existed.    Note also the real-time aspects of such interactions.
 
Blurring the Lines Between Virtual and Reality 

Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne

A next-generation virtual reality (VR) headset created by Hugo Hueber at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne, Switzerland (EPFL) enables wearers to manipulate both real and virtual objects with tactile sensations, using hand avatars that replicate even the slightest movements. Hueber says an enhanced VR video game he is designing "combines the latest technology with the [three-dimensional] interactive research we're carrying out at the lab. That will let video gamers interact physically with a virtual environment that can be transferred to any location—a living room, office, or even classroom—instantly." Real-world objects are modeled and calibrated in the game, and then players can use them at the same time they physically touch them. In addition, players can see and precisely move virtual versions of fingers, and wear bodily sensors to see themselves move within the game in real time.  ... "

Alibaba Looks at Shopping Experience with VR

Have been asked to take a closer look at this.   The extent to which it engages consumers,and the type of products being sold will be essential. Video at the link.

Alibaba Is Using AR To Change The Shopping Experience   by Bobby Carlton in VRScout

Alibaba is launching Taobao Buy, a new shopping experience that uses AR technology to bring 3D versions of products into the real world.

E-commerce supergiant, Alibaba Group, recently announced Taobao Buy, an AR infused shopping experience that reimagines how you shop online with an interactive experience that looks and feels futuristic, but is also easy to use.

Alibaba’s new AR infused shopping app perfectly blends the real-world with 3D images for a result that looks like something straight out of big budget science fiction movie.

To bring this experience to life, a 3,200-square-feet ‘futuristic shopping district’ will be assembled inside a building along scenic West Lake in Hangzhou, which is an area known for having influenced poets and painters throughout Chinese history, as well as being a location for reflecting an idealized fusion between humans and nature; something the designers behind Taobao Buy wanted to be sure to capture.  .... "

Thinking About Virtual Worlds

Even a simple mirror can create a virtual world.  I remember when we experimented with data immersion using VR in virtual worlds, it was remarkable to see how hard navigation was.  To the point that you often had to go back to the expected flat world to make sense of it.   This article hints at why.

The Physics of a Mirror Creates a Virtual World in Wired.
Human eyes are sort of dumb—but you can trick them into being smart ... " 

Virtual Reality Winemaking

Engaging the customer.

Winemakers Engage Visitors With Virtual Reality  in VR Focus

Funding from Australian Federal Government lets wineries encourage tourism using VR.  By Rebecca Hills-Duty  

Virtual reality (VR) has seen use in a huge number of industries and sectors, from architecture to sport, but winemaking would not appear, at first glance, to be a natural fit. However, several Australian winemaking associations are investing in the technology.  ....  "

Training Computers with Virtual Reality

Its all about having enough real data.

Want Computers to See Better in the Real World? Train Them in a Virtual Reality   EurekAlert

Chinese researchers have developed a new method for improving how computers "see" and "understand" real-world objects by training their vision systems in virtual reality. Professor Kunfeng Wang at China's State Key Laboratory for Management and Control for Complex Systems says their research seeks to overcome the drawbacks of real-world image datasets for training and testing vision systems. The team virtually generated the ParallelEye dataset using commercially available computer software, and modeled an urban area in Beijing by adding various buildings, vehicles, and different weather conditions. Then they positioned a virtual "camera" on a virtual car, which drove around the simulation to produce datasets representative of the real world. The researchers saw a marked increase in performance on almost every tested metric, and Wang says they also showed that they can easily synthesize diverse sets of images to help build stronger computer vision systems. ... " 

Zanzibar Scans Objects and Brings them into Virtual Reality

For games and toys, certainly,  but also for design of objects and how they live in spaces.  And more,

Microsoft’s object-detecting playmat brings toys to life
Project Zanzibar looks like more than a kids toy. ....

David Lumb, @OutOnALumb  in Engadget




"...Zanzibar is a 'sensing platform' that combines capacitive sensing to track finger movements with Near Field Communication (NFC) to detect objects. It's also flexible, both literally and systematically: Just hook it up to any tablet or screen and unroll the mat, and you're ready to go. It can sense objects simply by placing an NFC sticker on their bottoms, which tracks them spatially and even vertically, identifying distinct items stacked on top of each other. .." 

Youtube video demonstration.

Not yet available, a UK MS Research project.   Paper on its use and development.

The Basics of Virtual Reality

Good non-technical piece on the Basics of Virtual Reality (VR).

What is VR?  By Tyler Lacoma  @CaptainWords In DigitalTrends. 

Learn the basics of VR: Here's everything you need to know about virtual reality ... VR, or virtual reality, has gone from a science fiction concept to a broad market of consumer devices in just a short span of years: It’s no surprise some of us have whiplash.

Now that VR technology is everywhere, you may have some questions. We’re going to answer them! Here’s everything you need to know about VR.

The Basics of VR
Virtual reality technology seeks to create a realistic three-dimensional image or environment that a human can perceive as real, and even interact with in realistic ways. Obviously we aren’t at holodeck levels of realism yet, but consumers do have easy access to VR headsets and controllers.  .... "