By Neil Perlin | Fellow
This column presents overviews of new technologies that may affect technical communicators in the near future. If you have feedback, or would like to suggest topics for subsequent columns, please contact Neil Perlin at nperlin@concentric.net.
We’ve heard for years about virtual reality’s (VR) potential in technical communication and training but have seen few actual applications because of the cost and effort involved. Today, however, inexpensive new viewers like the Oculus Rift and Microsoft Hololens may be leading your company to take a new look.
Microsoft’s Hololens site at www.microsoft.com/microsoft-hololens/en-us has examples of live action holograms atop a real environment. And there’s Oculus Rift (www.oculus .com). But these devices are still emerging. The Microsoft site lets you sign up to receive Hololens news, but there is no option to actually order the device. Oculus’s order page at www.oculus.com/order is for the development kit and has a checkbox agreement statement that the hardware is for developers and is not a consumer product. But you can try virtual reality today almost free. All you need is an Android phone running Android 4.1 or later and the Google Cardboard viewer.
The Cardboard viewer is literally that, a viewer made out of folded cardboard into which you insert the phone. You’ll find dozens on Amazon (search for “Google Cardboard”), most under $30, many under $20 (see Figure 1).
What you get is a flat piece of cardboard with embedded lenses. You fold it up (with instructions that could use the help of a technical communicator), and you have the viewer. (I bought the Dark Shader, with the “classy, all-black look” for 15 Euros on Amazon.) After 10 minutes, this was the result (see Figure 2).
You then start a VR app on your phone, place your phone in a flap in front of the viewer, and watch. What kinds of apps are there? Following are a few examples.
Jurassic Dino (from Lunagames Fun and Games)—This is basically Jurassic Park. The app opens with you standing in a jungle compound, with a jungle drum sound track, surrounded by palm trees, huts, falling leaves, and some movements that turn out to be a velociraptor running around the compound and, nearby, a Tyrannosaurus Rex eating something. The app moves you in the direction you’re looking, so you’re going to wind up next to the Tyrannosaur’s head and can see its eyes, tongue, and teeth. It’s all virtual but surprisingly engrossing. One tester let out a yelp and handed me the phone when she wound up standing right next to the Tyrannosaur. What she saw looked like this, except she was closer to the front of the snout so that the eye seemed to be looking directly at her (see Figure 3).
Sisters (from otherworld) —This horror story takes place in an old mansion once occupied by two sisters who seem to have disappeared. The story starts during a thunderstorm, naturally. As the power goes on and off, objects in the room move, doors open on their own, and so on with most of the clichés of the genre. Yet clichéd or not, the game is surprisingly eerie; reviewers called it “creepy” and “terrifying” (see Figure 4).
There are also the usual vertigo-inducing apps like Roller Coaster VR from Fibrum where you ride a deserted coaster on a tropical island (see Figure 5), and others, such as Lava Inc. from The Virtual Dutch Men (a roller coaster through a factory that refines lava?), Village for Google Cardboard from Axiomworks, Inc., and VR Cineam for Cardboard from Mobius Networks (renders MP4 video in a split-screen view that can be played back on a virtual reality headset).
I only tested three apps, so it’s risky to make generalizations about VR, but I’ll make three anyway.
- They’re fun. (I watched a velociraptor run past me.)
- They’re physically engaging. (As I was sneaking up on the Tyrannosaur and hid behind a tree, I reached out to steady myself against the trunk.)
- They can have a strong visceral element. (A doll in Sisters was on the left side of a mantelpiece. Then the lights went out. When they came on, the doll was on the right side of the mantelpiece. Creepy indeed. And seeing the Tyrannosaur apparently looking directly at me was jarring.)
VR and Tech Comm
How might VR apply to tech comm? Many physical tasks could lend themselves to being VR-ized, such as:
- Performing maintenance on large equipment like generators. A VR app could help familiarize the technicians with the equipment before they touched the real equipment.
- Making repairs inside a nuclear reactor (for the same reason as above).
- Naval damage control training to familiarize sailors with the environment before sending them into a real training environment. (Read “Damage Control Training Makes Sailors Feel the Heat” at www.defensemedianetwork.com/stories/sailors-feel-the-heat-2 to get an idea what the training is like.)
Many training simulations no doubt already exist for cases like this. (The naval damage control training center is itself a simulation, and students deal with real fires, real flooding, and real adrenaline.) Tech comm can create training simulations now using tools like Adobe’s Captivate or TechSmith’s Camtasia. But what those tools can’t offer is the immersive 3-D effect and the “viscerality” of the experience. (Standing neck deep in water in a flooding compartment is a great way to learn to keep your ship from sinking, but it has to be an expensive way to learn. An app that teaches the basics of damage control would seem to be a much cheaper and safer way to start.)
Current work is also opening new ideas for integrating VR and reality. For example, see the discussion about integrating VR and roller coasters (www.vr-coaster.com/index.php) and read the description on the Discoveries page. Dodging fiery monsters and firing cannons at alien ships while evading asteroids doesn’t seem to fit into technical communication, but the idea of overlaying training on top of the real environment offers tremendous possibilities. And the SDKs are available now for the Oculus Rift, Hololens, and Cardboard (https://developers .google.com/cardboard/android/).
Summary
I’ve always wanted to discuss VR in the context of tech comm, but the cost and effort seemed to be so high as to make the use of VR for tech comm unlikely. Then I found out that I could try it for under $20 (thanks to Deb Sauer) with my cell phone—zero effort and essentially free. Think of Cardboard as dipping a toe in the VR waters. Trying Cardboard might lead you to decide that VR is fun but doesn’t apply to your needs. But it might give you some ideas. Remember that YouTube was initially derided as a platform for watching videos of dogs on skateboards. Today, many doc groups use YouTube as a distribution medium for video training. VR might follow a similar trajectory. It’s worth a look.
Neil Perlin (nperlin@nperlin.cnc .net) is president of Hyper/Word Services (www.hyperword.com) of Tewksbury, MA. He has 36 years of experience in technical writing, with 30 in training, consulting, and developing for online formats and tools including WinHelp, HTML Help, JavaHelp, CE Help, XML, RoboHelp, Flare, and others. Neil is MadCap-certified for Flare and Mimic, Adobe-certified for RoboHelp, and Viziapps-certified for the ViziApps mobile app development platform. He is an STC Fellow and the founder and manager of the Beyond the Bleeding Edge stem, which ran at the STC summit from 1999 until 2014.
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