The Immersive Wire - 4 April 2021 (Sunday edition)

SUNDAY READ EDITIONCurated VR/AR analysis every Wednesday and Sunday 

// 4 April 2021

Connect with the Igloo Vision team on LinkedIn.

Let's talk about Microsoft's $22bn U.S. Army deal with HoloLens. Having worked together several years ago

with a smaller contract

, the U.S. Army announced that their entire Close Combat Force will be outfitted with HoloLens devices, according to

Bloomberg

. Think of it as commanders feeding information to soldiers while they are deployed on the field. While the

three Bethesdas

worth of cash is grabbing headlines, there are a few tidbits that I find interesting:

• The agreement will last for five years, with a possibility to extend another five. 

• The deal includes some Azure cloud services. Between this and the JEDI contract, Microsoft is working with multiple parts of the U.S. Also remember that Azure is a core revenue driver for the company, so we may see more immersive-related content as part of it in the future as it integrates further with Microsoft's cloud services. 

• Magic Leap submitted a proposal as well. Winning the deal would have helped the company double down further on its Enterprise strategy. 

It's highly probable that its interconnected web of services and hardware - HoloLens, Azure, expertise - helped it win the contract, compared to other competitors who might only fill one area sufficiently. It's also why companies like Microsoft are so important to follow within the immersive space. While Apple is a hardware company attempting to diversify towards services, and VR/AR-specific platforms provide the tools of creation, it's the synthesis of all parts that puts Microsoft in a strong position.

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Q&A with... a specialist in self-reflection and VR

Christophe Mallet, Co-founder of Bodyswaps

What's been your most successful project and why?Safeguarding VR. It’s an experience for NGO staff to practice having a conversation with a survivor of a safeguarding incident disclosing what happened to them. We worked with the Humanitarian Leadership Academy to develop the scenario and piloted it with several NGOs including Save The Children and The UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR). It’s a great project because it’s solving a real pain point: to break the culture of silence around sexual harassment and abuse you need to give everyone the ability to provide survivors with a psychologically safe environment where they can speak out. And this is not the kind of conversation where you want inexperienced employees to “try out things” in real-lifeWhat platform do you use?To develop: Unity. To deploy: we’ve made our entire library of scenarios available on all major standalone VR headsets as well as for smartphone and PC.Why are you called Bodyswaps?There’s one person you know very well that you’ve never received advice from or been criticised by: that’s you! In each Bodyswaps scenario, there are one or more sequences during which you’re asked to express yourself, speaking out in an unscripted way. We then leverage the recording of your voice and body movements to make you swap bodies with the character you were speaking to and relive the scene from their perspective. For example, we once created an experience for mental health nurses where you would provide advice to a suicidal patient then swap bodies to sit across from yourself giving that advice. That self-reflection is a key ingredient in bridging the gap between knowledge and real-world application.  

For more information on what BodySwaps is up to, check them out here. 

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That's all for this week! Want to have a chat, let me know about a news story, or talk business? Either reply to this email, or contact tom (at) virtualperceptions (dot) com. Have an excellent day!