Virtual reality headsets for education,
training & enterprise
Life around the world has been reshaped in the last few years caused by the worldwide health orders and the rapid rate of technology evolution. Practically every country around the world has been forced to rethink its approach to teaching students, especially in locations where it wasn’t possible for them to attend regular classes. In other situations school teachers are looking for a way to give their students the absolute latest in teaching techniques.
Using a virtual reality technology is fast becoming a very easily deployed solution to solve these two challenges;
– Remote learning;
a VR headset can be used in remote locations with content easily distributed either via the internet, pre-loaded into the headset or via a memory card. It means students can get access to the same content no matter if they are in the school premises or off-site in another location.
– Immersive teaching materials;
for locations that have all of the students attending school, VR headsets can be used together with traditional learning materials to create even more immersive learning experiences. Virtual reality can take typical text and images from a text book and bring ideas to life, enabling students to interact with real environments or situations with a level of immersion that aids retention of information beyond any other method.
DPVR worked very closely with Veative to help customise and adapt our P1 wireless virtual reality headset to deliver a VR hardware solution they could deploy to compliment their online learning platform. Veative develops immersive technology solutions that have an incredible ability to educate, train, and solve real-world problems using virtual reality. This can help improve the performance of individuals to improve the grasp of technically-challenging concepts, enabling them to work better, smarter or safer.
Their virtual reality technology is used by educational institutions, corporate enterprises and companies to train or educate people. This includes helping people learn about new topics like body parts or even for OH&S training for airline staff.
One of the biggest platforms delivering virtual reality learning modules with 600+ available online.
Lessons include K-12 STEM, immersive simulations, language learning and other topics.
The ability to create lessons split into sections;
Video – Students can passively absorb knowledge about a topic or concept
Practice – Students can interact with content about a topic.
Evaluation – Each lesson can have a test component added to measure the results from each lesson that teachers can evaluate..
Customised content that can suit different ages or learning abilities to suit different cognitive development levels.
Available to be used around the world & already being used in more than 20 countries
I am continually amazed at the new ideas Veative comes up with to apply virtual reality technology. They are able to come up with solutions for the use of VR in so many different applications.
Veative uses DPVR headsets and we help them brand our hardware so they can present a completely branded solution to their clients.
"Having a partner rather than a vendor has made a world of difference"
By 2018, there were a number of players in this space, on the hardware side. As a device-agnostic content provider, this was always going to be good news to us. However, it soon became apparent that although much effort and investment went into consumer-ready gaming and entertainment products, the choices that were out there were not fully conducive to education. Schools and districts have specific needs, and gaming hardware doesn't necessarily consider these. Although Veative content plays very nicely on a wide range of devices, we became frustrated by not having our hardware needs filled, and being asked to pay to make the hardware suitable for education. Full of frustration and in need of a VR device that we could faithfully take to educators the world over, CEO Ankur Aggarwal and CPO Dave Dolan set out to find a partner. In the fall of 2018, we met with DPVR.
From the very beginning, we insisted that it needed to be a partnership, to enable both companies to thrive. This was met with a similar commitment from the DPVR side. They realized that there was a gap in the market (edu) and that by working with Veative, together we could solve the problems that existed. Their P1 Pro headset was 90% ready for the education market, and they were willing to collaborate on that last 10%, which became the EduPro. Over the last couple of years, we have been able to get this product into about 15-20 countries. However, just when sales were starting to take off, the world shut down with COVID-19.
Although there was a sharp decline in demand for VR devices for education, our joint development never stopped. Veative was able to get into more schools and a few districts, which in turn provided both companies with valuable feedback on fit, usability, and maintenance issues (caring for and cleaning of devices). DPVR diligently went about making revisions to the headstrap, liner, OS and so on, based on this feedback. Our commitment to working together has never wavered.
With the world coming out of this pandemic, and the needs of educators worldwide fully understood, DPVR and Veative are poised to make significant inroads in the edu market. Having a partner rather than a vendor has made a world of difference.
From Sunny and Leon, to Derek and Ariana, Veative has been fortunate to work with a wonderful group of people who have pleasantly and speedily worked through any issue which has come up. This is a partnership we value very much.
How the P1 wireless VR headset is used by Veative
DPVR has been dedicated to designing and manufacturing VR headsets for many years and our products are used around the world. Our design team has accumulated lots of experience creating headsets that can be used in educational applications & we helped Veative to customise our P1 for their specific use;
- Development of a education focussed VR headset operating system for Veative
- Changing the VR headset hardware capabilities to be able to use large storage, the headsets were made to handle 6+128GB storage. This helped ensure Veative’s lessons can be played on the headset very smoothly & reliably.
- The XR1 VR headset processing chip helps deliver long battery life giving uses up to 4 hours of usage vs many other headsets that last for 2 hours or less.
- Customised interaction modes to give students a choice for how they would like to interact with lessons.
- The ability to use the headset as a standalone device or via a wireless connection. This means if there are internet limitations a headset could still store 100+ hours of content.
- Branding on the headset & packaging to help with better brand awareness for Veative when the units are being used in the field.
Virtual reality to learn about biology
Veative creates educational software for schools and universities that can cover a very wide range of topics including biology. Using VR to learn about the intricacies of the world around us, at a biological level, is now something all students can have access to in an immersive, interactive way.
You can do things like entering into a plant, become a part of an ecosystem, and feel a connection with the smallest particles that make up the basis of life from genes to proteins, or cells to protoplasm. Veative creates content that can be used in an immersive way using DPVR headsets to bring this to life, much better than a textbook.
Virtual reality for OH&S training
One of the hardest challenges for large corporations, enterprise businesses or global brands is to provide effective training for all the employees, especially if they spread across multiple countries.
The benefit of VR software is that it can be accessed from practically any location around the world & distributed quickly. This makes it easy to train large groups of people quickly and regularly. This could be done to teach new processes, launch new products & provide OH&S training.
The types of uses are almost unlimited and only restricted by the imagination of the company involved. The immersive nature of using virtual reality means that content is retained at high rates than normal powerpoint presentations or printed manuals.
Virtual reality training for classroom groups
All of this technology can be used to train and educate groups. With such a wide range of VR content available it can suit kindergartens, universities or corporations equally because the delivery can be customised to suit any application.
