King Charles’ 2025 Christmas Day message was in VR

Executive summary

Welcome to your weekly briefing on the metaverse and spatial computing. Here are your snippets to sound smarter in meetings this week:

• Top stories: King Charles’ 2025 Christmas Day message was in VR.

• Event: We are hosting an event on 15 January in London, based around VR films! Come along if you wish.

• This week’s stories: Marine Biological Laboratory, led by Andre Fenton and Abhishek Kumar, are using VR, custom AI tools, and NVIDIA-powered visualization to study how long-term memory alters brain function, supported by funding from the National Institute of Mental Health and the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative.

This week’s stories

• Amandeep Hospitals, in partnership with Ujala Cygnus, has launched North India’s first hospital-based 3D printing and virtual reality facility, enabling patient-specific surgical planning, custom implants, and in-house anatomical modelling across multiple complex procedures.

• Buckingham Palace made King Charles’ 2025 Christmas Day message available to watch in virtual reality via the Meta Quest 3, allowing viewers to experience the broadcast in immersive settings alongside traditional TV and online formats.

• The Camarillo Health Care District has launched a grant-funded virtual reality cycling programme called Pedaling the Planet to help seniors reduce social isolation by combining gentle exercise with shared immersive travel experiences.

• Dougie Mac Hospice is piloting a virtual reality mental health project led by Vae Care and Keele University that uses guided 360-degree “virtual field trips” to assess whether immersive experiences can reduce depression, loneliness and anxiety in patients with life-limiting or long-term conditions.

• Marine Biological Laboratory, led by Andre Fenton and Abhishek Kumar, are using VR, custom AI tools, and NVIDIA-powered visualization to study how long-term memory alters brain function, supported by funding from the National Institute of Mental Health and the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative.

• The Terraces retirement community in Los Gatos is using Rendever’s shared virtual reality experiences to help residents in their 80s and 90s relive travel, stimulate cognition, and strengthen social connections without leaving their chairs.

Note: The Immersive Wire is run by Tom Ffiske, who also works at Accenture. The contents of the newsletter should not be regarded as Accenture’s views.

All spelling mistakes are deliberate, actually.