31 GENIUS INTERVIEW Richard Mills, Imaginary Pictures
MEASURING UP: A new generation of AR apps are practical tools for design, visualisation, medicine, study - and fun. The computing power and ubiquity of smart devices shows great potential for innovation.
Unreal doing a lot of that work in the broadcast field, but in the mobile and PC type apps, it’s mainly Unity. But these are basically enabling technologies. They’re not a platform per se. The real competition comes between the various VR platforms. We’ve got the Oculus store. We’ve got Steam, and then there are a number of solo apps not related to either of the two major VR platforms. So the actual method of disseminating content is really dependent on whether the publisher wants to retain control or if they want to have apps which can go on the Android Play or Apple Store or if they want purely stand-alone apps. I think one of the first stand-alone apps I saw was from Fiat which was for car sales and it was published independently, not on any platform. There is room for small developers to actually put stuff out there. It’s a bit competitive and independent, but you see some very, very useful things out there
from small developers. It’s still useful to put an app on the stores because then you have got reach and can take advantage of recommendation and push, but if you were to avoid tying it to anything and make it, say, for a PC-based platform, there are a number of ways of doing that. FEED: What does the future of VR, AR and 360 video look like? RICHARD MILLS: I think at the moment it’s a constantly changing world. Things that were gimmicks a couple of years ago have become useful, and that’s attracted the attention of the more serious players. So Sky, BBC, Discovery, Fox, Universal have all got VR apps and AR content as well. They see it as being important. Whereas a couple of years ago it was done for gimmicks or maybe an advertising stunt. People are now starting to monetise this. There’s a rise in 360 video popularity. And with virtual reality the platforms are
becoming more capable. In the next year, we’re going to see more mixed reality become available in bespoke see-through headsets or Magic Leap or other platforms that are coming out. There are some serious players now looking at mixed reality to improve techniques within the workplace. Several car manufacturers are using Microsoft HoloLens for assembly training, assembly checking and for service and repair work. It enables you to have generalist trained service personnel rather than a specialist. Another area there seems to be a bit of take-up is in medical applications. It’s quite possible now to be able to practice complicated surgical techniques in virtual reality before the operation takes place, and even during operation you can be coached by a remote expert to give extra input into an ongoing surgical process. I think this needs to be looked at carefully from the ethics point of view, but if it’s well curated and designed it definitely has a value.
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