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Walmart deploys Oculus Go headsets to train its employees
- kerng 8y agoThese sneaky Google amp links are making it everywhere... so annoying.
- jaequery 8y agoAfter trying VR (Oculus Go) for the first time, I am convinced VR maybe the future of education. Being able to watch something in 3D as opposed to just 2D video is like night and day. Btw, I'm not talking about 360' videos, I'm talking about the 3D stereoscopic ones. When I watch a video in 3D, I can actually totally relate to what I am watching and it is as if I am actually there. It really helps with perception and understanding the subject.
- arkitaip 8y agoWe now know that tech isn't an high impact factor when it comes to learning quality. This is based on John Hattie's profound research work covering 1200 meta studies: https://visible-learning.org/hattie-ranking-influences-effect-sizes-learning-achievement/ https://visible-learning.org/hattie-ranking-influences-effec...
- TaylorAlexander 8y agoThat seems like a very broad statement. I played with VR a few years ago, and found the notion of an immersive virtual environment to be profoundly different from looking at something on a computer screen. Some technology absolutely helps with learning. Pencils and paper are technology that help us write down our thoughts. School buildings and chalkboards are technology that make it easy for us to meet and collaborate. Computers too can provide an opportunity for us to play with abstract concepts. Immersive VR could be a way to better understand certain concepts. With the right presentation, I think VR could be a more effective way of learning than other methods.
- mikeash 8y agoI don’t think you can treat “tech” as a general category. VR headsets are totally different from smartboards which are totally different from graphing calculators. Maybe VR headsets will be useless too, but I don’t think you can extrapolate that.
- leetbulb 8y agoI agree. VR is a completely new interface for us with technology and we have yet to even discover the tip of that iceberg.
- jlg23 8y agoIf your subject benefits from a 3d representation at all. I dare to say: most do not, just as most do not benefit from video. I think the real revolution in teaching will be when we have enough well educated, well paid teachers. Imagine the level of immersion that could be accomplished with real-time individualized lessons!
- shafyy 8y agoTrue. And VR allows new school models with a wildly different cost structure than today's. You don't need a physical building, no physicial equipment and geographic location doesn't matter. In addition, because VR makes project-based learning [0] more scalable, a teacher's time can be used more efficiently. These cost-savings can be passed on to the students and the teachers (in the form of higher salaries). All this while improving average the education quality. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project-based_learning https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project-based_learning
- lostlogin 8y agoThis sounds terrible to me. The process of learning, particularly when young, isn’t just about having the information fed to you. It’s about trying, failing and being shown where you went wrong. Quite literally, falling and being helped up. How do you get help diverse problems like handwriting, getting on with others and the millions of other situations teachers help with? Empathy via Facebook sounds bad. A big problem with education in my opinion is that everyone who has been to school sees themselves as a teaching expert. The near-minimum-wage teacher who buy school supplies out of their own pockets, they are the experts. Rant over.
- shafyy 8y agoCompletely agree. And my whole point is that you can do that better in VR. Instead of meeting in the real world, meet in VR and learn there together with your friends and teacher.
- 8y ago
- FLUX-YOU 8y agoAnything that requires hand/eye coordination is waiting on a good VR implementation. I would totally pay $60 for a VR game that has you building a house from the ground up or doing woodworking in as much detail as possible (even if it's individual stages and tasks without a proper physics sandbox).
- rixrax 8y agoFor building a house it should then also include the role playing aspect of dealing with building departments, inspectors, and contractors that don't show up or drill into wires that electrician had just installed. ;-)
- nikofeyn 8y agocan you elaborate? because nothing you mentioned has anything to do with education. the expected use of VR in education reminds me of the failure of nearly every other forced use of technology in education. my mom was a teacher, and i clearly remember the required use of powerpoint to be a major detriment to her teaching. as another example, i was horrified recently during a volunteer opportunity at a local high school at the use of chromebooks in the classroom. it seemed like such a blind use that served no purpose other than to further seaparate the students and teachers from social interaction and communication. i think something like dynamicland is the only technology that has promise to be used as an educational tool.
- isaiahg 8y agoJust like it's hard to explain how it feels in VR is hard to explain the difference here. I think the big take away is that it lets you simulate tasks physically instead of just watching them being done. Like the difference between watching something being done and doing it. I know with me, physically doing things with my hands cements the material in my brain way more than reading about it. One thing I can see this being used for is fork lift driver training. You could put the person in the seat of the heavy and expensive equipment without actually risking anything. The user can play around with the controls and make mistakes without the fear of breaking something. That alone would be valuable.
- scott_ci 8y agothere's a company that focuses on this: http://www.forklift-simulator.com/ http://www.forklift-simulator.com/
- wongarsu 8y agoI don't think it will help much in teaching math or anything else that can be easily learned from a textbook. But you can't learn plumbing or operating a crane from a textbook, and here VR has great potential. It might also be great for teaching science, since VR can communicate scale much better than drawings.
- 8y ago
- eksemplar 8y agoI think VR will be the future of a lot of things. I used to think it was sort of fad, like 3D movies but maybe a little cooler. Then our GIS department bought one and I’ve tried it a few times now. I always feel constrained when I go back to my two monitors. The interface and technology in general has some way to go, but I think VR will be the biggest tech revolution in my lifetime and I’ve been around since before the refrigerator was a common thing.
- rocky1138 8y agoI'm really glad to hear that you enjoy VR. I have a similar feeling when using BigScreen to do work. All I really need is like twice the resolution so that text is clearer and we can essentially have unlimited scalable desktops.
- isaiahg 8y agoLegible text that you can read without squinting and tracked keyboards will be the floodgate moment I think. I'd really like to see how an IDE can evolve in VR space, especially with collaborate features. It could probably make online offices a regular occurrence.
- atonalfreerider 8y agoprimitive.io is an IDE designed for VR
- applecrazy 8y agoHow does keyboard input work? Does it track the position of the keyboard and then show a digital equivalent in VR? Because I think most people can’t touch type essentially blindfolded.
- scott_ci 8y agoAs someone who develops VR on a daily basis, I'm skeptical that 3D over 2D is the key. When I first tried on a headset, and watched a video from up high, my fear of heights kicked in. Now I'm almost completely immune to that effect, but I still routinely do things like try to set a tool down on a virtual table. I suspect VR will be good for hands-on training (where it's more about the sequence than the "feel" of it) and psychological training (how to deal with an angry customer), but maybe the psychological benefit wears off like my body's reaction to being up high in VR.
- loup-vaillant 8y agoHave you tried to test your fear of height in real conditions recently? I'm wondering if the desensitization you experienced in VR have effects in real life.
- scott_ci 8y agoI just went on a zip line for the first time, and climbing their tallest ladder was pretty unnerving. I don't have a great fear to begin with, but my the wow-I'm-really-hear effect has definitely gone down. Maybe if I had done that exact zip line in VR, it would have helped? I do believe VR can help with phobias and PTSD (http://www.virtuallybetter.com/ http://www.virtuallybetter.com/), but I wonder if its benefit goes down with exposure (complete speculation!).
- loup-vaillant 8y ago> VR maybe the future of education. This implies having children using these headsets for extended periods of time. I hope the (auto?) calibration of future headsets gets real good, otherwise I fear there are some risks, messing with the eyesight of children. Potentially awesome, sure. Just, not too fast.
- Fellshard 8y agoI'm curious whether it will be a deeper problem for propaganda, though. Would it affect memory even more to be able to recall visceral memories of an event as seen in VR, when that event has never actually occurred, say?
- kolderman 8y agoVR is dying like 3D TV...expect lots 'o shills to be out selling the message.
- aphextron 8y agoVR is not dying. It's a new technology that is under active development. Magic Leap just released their first dev kit last month. StarVR has a new HMD coming out with 210 degree FOV. Oculus is working on a standalone wireless HMD. Things are actually progressing much quicker than anyone thought back in 2014 when the "VR renaissance" got started. We now have wireless HMDs, eye tracking with foveated rendering, perfect sub-millimeter inside-out camera based tracking, and the first multi-plane displays (on Magic Leap One). None of that tech even existed 4 years ago, or if it did it was in a university research lab. We're now less than 5 years away from having a slim, lightweight, wireless device that you can put on your face and have 100% nonstop presence. There are still things to solve like haptics and locomotion which will be decades away, but the visual component is totally solvable with current tech.
- wpietri 8y agoI would be interested to see what you say after a couple hundred hours. VR has a very strong novelty effect. I thought it was incredible and amazing the first times I used it. And then, as it became no longer novel, I just gradually stopped. I'll note that "3D is the future of education!" has a long history. Stereoscopic photos were the future starting in the 1850s. During WWII, the US Department of Defense bought 100,000 View-Masters and millions of reels because 3D content was more effective and engaging for training. But somehow those futures never happened. This one could well end up in the same historical category.
- shurcooL 8y agoI think VR would be a great way to practice giving talks, especially in front of bigger audiences, etc. To practice being comfortable in that environment.
- user5994461 8y agoHow long before the employees get a headache?
- pixl97 8y agohttp://marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm http://marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm
- stallmanite 8y agoThis has been scaring the shit out of me since I first read it. Brilliant story
- Wingman4l7 8y agoFirst thing my mind went to as well. Hardware sensors and wearable computers are so cheap now...
- pieix 8y agoThanks for sharing! Thought provoking read and a good walk through how a society like Star Trek's 23rd-century Earth might arise.
- deltron3030 8y agoAR, and overlaying "ghost scenes" over objects in front of you (e.g. a "ghost engineer" showing you how to repair iMacs) will be super useful, especially considering the "rewind" factor that doesn't exist in reality. You could learn skills remotely that would require the presence in an apprenticeship. This might be a big source of income for companies specialized in mechanical engineering. They'd sell those ghost videos on a marketplace..
- dmix 8y agoTrue, education was also one of the oldest uses of 3D, well before it became economical for games (3d simulation technology was later ported to some arcade machines), since the early 1980s. For ex, simulations for training first with the military and pilots. But this takes it to another level and doesn't require a specialized set up for tooling or being in a particular location (custom simulation room).
- skocznymroczny 8y ago"Ghost engineer" sounds like AR skeuomorphism. Why have a ghost engineer showing you how to repair iMacs, if you can have your AR headset just show you on the iMac which part to replace and how?
- deltron3030 8y agoIn AR or in a "real" 3D environment, skeumorphism could make a lot of sense for manual tasks imo. On 2D screens it's a different story, but even there it helped people to understand technology. You're training hand eye coordination, and other than the instructor or your master in an apprenticeship, you don't have formed habits through practice. You stand in front of an object you want to interact with, and the ghost basically directs your movement, showing you how to hold or lift components and the ideal posture.
- gpm 8y agoWith old fashioned boring training videos (e.g. safety) and training propaganda (e.g. anti-union messages) you could easily look away from the screen. Now they are gluing the screen to your eyeballs so that it's pretty much impossible to look away and not pay attention. It will probably work. It's probably a good idea from the employer's point of view. It feels very dystopian.
- crazygringo 8y agoSafety training is there for a reason... anything that helps employees pay attention to that could save their lives or the lives of others, so in that narrow application it feels like a good idea from everyone's point of view.
- baxter001 8y agoIf you think you have to glue content in front of their eyeballs, you've got bigger problems than fulfilling your legally mandated requirement for check-the-box training.
- tboughen 8y agoAnd that would be a fair comparison if before trainers were training with death-by-PowerPoint and now they were doing the same inches from trainee’s eyeballs. However I’m hopeful that this new medium leads to interactivity by default, furthermore there are first mover advantages to be gained from improved engagement while VR is novel to most users.
- baxter001 8y ago"Improved engagement" in corporate training materials? I fear that's a concept that only exists in the sales literature of training materials creators.
- HeadsUpHigh 8y agoI feel that improved engagement used to exist as a positive term before marketers took it and added all the marketing garbage that comes with it today. If something makes you less bored with teaching then it's worth looking at.
- polskibus 8y agoI wonder whether they have planned for VR-induced nausea. With such a large number of headset, the absolute number of affected people will be at least in the hundreds. Some people just can't use VR at its current stage.
- wincy 8y agoI’m someone who is hyper sensitive to motion sickness. I’ll throw up after maybe five minutes of reading my phone as a passenger in a car. Mass transit is a boring hell, and it seems to be cumulative with a long recovery time. I went to Disney World last year and each day it became more difficult to ride the relatively tame rides without measured breathing and a lot of breaks. With all that said, I can handle VR as long as it doesn’t interfere with my proprioception. That is, no movement of the camera independent of my actual head moving. As long as that holds true, and the system doesn’t lag (fixed by “time warp”, thanks John Carmack). As long as those conditions are true I can play VR without breaks for several hours at a time.
- natch 8y ago"to train its employees"... They could simultaneously capture training data for a coming workforce of robots. What are the chances they aren't doing this?
- hughlang 8y agoExactly. "Walmart deploys 17,000 Oculus Go headsets to train its machines"
- FreeRadical 8y agoInteresting to see how employees that get motion sickness from VR will be impacted
- curuinor 8y agoThe lessons are very short and we told the Walmart folks to repeat them, for spaced repetition.
- crazygringo 8y agoI get horribly nauseous after 15 minutes in VR, but I've never tried the Oculus Go. Is this more of a PR stunt, or has the Go somehow solved nausea issues enough that widespread workplace deployment is now considered feasible?
- nouveaux 8y agoI'm not sure what you mean by VR but if you have not tried HTC Vive or Oculus Go, I suggest giving it a try. Everyone I know who has issues with motion sickness or traditional VR can play many games comfortably in modern VR.
- dleslie 8y agoI am a VR developer and so have an i9, 1080, Vive, Oculus, and a Pixel2 Daydream; with hundreds of hours emersed. I experience eyestrain and nausea within five to ten minutes. It takes considerable effort to overcome. The tech just isn't there yet for lighting. I am hopeful that real time ray tracing will provide some solution... It's not so bad with flat and Tron-like games.
- wongarsu 8y agoCompared to reality or ray tracing, the lighting and shadows of most games are just terrible. It'd be interesting to see how VR sickness triggers are distributed in the population. How many people actually get nauseous from bad lighting, how many get nauseous from forced camera movement etc
- mattnewport 8y agoThere's a pretty wide range of sensitivity. I'm also a VR developer and relatively insensitive to nausea (I was happily playing unreal tournament on the DK2 which made other people want to vomit pretty quickly). I almost never experience any nausea these days, even after extended sessions in games with a lot of motion. I hate anything without 6 dof tracking though, not because it makes me sick but because it completely lacks immersion. I've never heard anyone bring up lighting as a factor in nausea before. There's certainly a lot of room for improvement for visual quality but it's not something I've heard anyone discuss as a factor in simulator sickness before. What do you think might be going on there?
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- sciberphunk 8y agoExcept it’s all very anti-cyberpunk. Mostly because the vitriolic and perhaps self destructive (aka: the “punk” part) rejection has been very anemic so far. “Punk” as self destruction to express disdain for norms is a requirement, otherwise the future is merely “Cyber” and in that sort of septugenarian congressional “Information Superhighway” privatized by Enron interpretation of the word. It’s not really “cyberpunk” until cruising for back alley bionic implants becomes a reality.
- kirykl 8y agoI’m skeptical this will achieve their goal of increasing employees’ empathy
- rbanffy 8y agoMaybe paying the employees better would help motivate them to learn more efficiently.
- aaron695 8y agoKFC’s New Employee Training Game Is a Virtual Reality Nightmare (2017) https://www.eater.com/2017/8/23/16192508/kfc-virtual-reality-training-oculus-rift https://www.eater.com/2017/8/23/16192508/kfc-virtual-reality...
- JoshMnem 8y agoDoes that mean that you need a Facebook account to work at Walmart now? People should have the right to not use Facebook.