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VR Training Practicality in the Post-Covid Online Era

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VR Training Practicality in the Post-Covid Online Era

While virtual reality (VR) training isn’t new, it has skyrocketed into the mainstream in a post-covid online era.

With physical interactivity severely limited, hands-on training has become challenging. Yet, learning by doing is an invaluable technique that companies should incorporate into the workplace.

There’s a Chinese proverb that summarizes the importance of experiential learning perfectly: “I hear, and I forget. I see, and I remember. I do, and I understand.” In other words, work-based experience enhances learning retention.

VR training adds a level of interactivity to workplace learning. Depending on what type of VR training the workplace has access to, it can be a simple simulation or involve in-depth, hands-on activities.

But, not all VR training is made equal. With today’s advancements, can technology keep up with the practical needs of workplace training?

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Workplaces Using VR Training

There is a wide variety of careers that have access to VR training. Before Covid, the practicality of the requirements for VR training limited it to wealthier companies.

While Oculus, a VR division under Facebook, might be a more popular name in VR gaming, they’ve also launched VR training. Oculus for Business hosts programs that engage participants with operating routines and customer interactions.

The Hilton uses Oculus for Business as a tool to immerse corporate team members with the complexities of working in a hotel. VR training helps new employees practice simulated scenarios with virtual guests.

With over 400,000 team members, Hilton’s VR training allows greater access to the same quality of training. It also reduces costs and increases the speed of training sessions.

Osso VR helps surgeons practice procedures individually and as part of a team. It can create a variety of simulations, from the mundane to the unexpected. With more chances to test themselves, training surgeons improve confidence in their skills.

VR training can’t replace the experience doctors need to operate on living people. But it can allow surgeons more in-depth rehearsal before they get to the operating theatre.

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Police departments, like the NYPD, can use VR training drills to recreate hazardous situations. The training allows them to practice responses to circumstances that they couldn’t effectively recreate in reality.

The Effectiveness of VR Training

VR training, or Virtual Reality-Based Training (VRBT), can simulate real-life situations. But can a simulation prepare trainees for unexpected outcomes? For the wrenches thrown in their plans?

German psychologist Hermann Ebbinghaus researched learning retention back in 1885 when he coined the term “the forgetting curve.” His curve theory suggests that humans forget learned skills over time. However, the strength of the memory impacts how long we hold on to it and how effectively we can recall it.

Ebbinghaus’s theory found that memories are longer-lasting when the memory is a) more significant to us and b) repeated. You might have heard you should repeat someone’s name to remember it or any number of repetition rules associated with learning.

While VR could allow trainees to repeat a simulation, chances are you might not have time for repeat training. What VR training can do is make a lesson have more significant meaning by letting you experience it.

Researchers have found that VR training helps people remember information. Immersive environments allow participants to use both visual and spatial memory.

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The brain learns better when it’s able to create a fuller mental map. Oral instruction limits the five senses we can use to process new information. With VR, participants engage more and can make a stronger memory.

How VR Training Has Changed Post-Covid

The global pandemic expanded the need for training at a distance, but it also changed the types of workplaces that use VR training.

Serious Labs has designed VR training for equipment industries. The company used gaming software to simulate complex scenarios. While the company began developing in March 2005 (under the name 3D Interactive), it drew more attention after the emergence of Covid restrictions.

Several unexpected careers have recently gained opportunities to use VR training. Here are a few surprising new areas:

  • Fire and rescue can realistically simulate dangerous situations without putting themselves in danger.
  • A virtual world called ElectriCity is capable of generating risky work environments for trainees to practice electrical safety.
  • Maritime education can be practiced on dry land, allowing seafarers to experience difficult situations.

Another drastic change is the training available for soft skills. Hard skills were the initial target for VR training. It’s simple enough to show how to open a program like Excel or explain which buttons to press on equipment for specific results. It’s trickier to simulate teamwork or communication skills.

PwC found that their VR training for soft skills trained employees four times faster than traditional classroom training. Their results showed that VR learners were more confident applying their learned experiences. The learners were also more engaged with their training.

Practical Problems with VR Training

The obstacles that stand in the way of VR training aren’t its effectiveness or even the availability of training specialties. Instead, it’s practical problems like cost, space, hygiene.

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Cost

VR systems can be expensive. Larger companies might consider it cost-effective to purchase a $1000+ VR headset plus a computer powerful enough to operate the system. But it might not be feasible for smaller businesses.

Costs are dropping, particularly for older headset models. But if you’re buying more than one to train a few or several employees at once, prices can climb. With the latest Oculus Quest 2 headsets you can get a fully standalone system for $399 USD — with the enterprise business edition coming in at $799, but you will need to budget as well for accessories & yearly licensing of $180 that kicks in after the 1st year.

Space

How much space is required will depend on the simulation. If you’re simulating the operation of large machinery, you need more space. VR training needs a dedicated space free of obstructions. This isn’t to say that you need a LOT of space, as with standalone devices you will only need enough room to move your arms freely.

Hygiene

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In a post-Covid era, everyone is more aware of the impact of hygiene. If the workplace schedules multiple employees for VR training, it’s likely more than few people will be sharing the same headset. In a post-covid world, there may need to be modern solutions that work to solve this problem, thankfully there is one called CleanBox. CleanBox is a UVC light device that allows you to put your headset inside and then using a unique technology to kill bacteria with simply UVC light.

Nausea

Unfortunately, not everyone can handle VR. Virtual reality sickness, like motion sickness, can range in severity. Some participants can adjust quickly, while others might not tolerate longer training sessions. While most of this has been solved in the latest headsets from Oculus – there will still be a small segment of the population that VR can cause problems for.

Final Thoughts

VR training has proven to be more effective than traditional training methods. It also allows for a greater variety of simulations. Participants can practice difficult or dangerous situations. VR has the potential to exceed the limits of physical simulations.

If businesses and employees can overcome the practical problems, VR training can significantly impact workplace learning.


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TECHNOLOGY

Next-gen chips, Amazon Q, and speedy S3

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AWS re:Invent, which has been taking place from November 27 and runs to December 1, has had its usual plethora of announcements: a total of 21 at time of print.

Perhaps not surprisingly, given the huge potential impact of generative AI – ChatGPT officially turns one year old today – a lot of focus has been on the AI side for AWS’ announcements, including a major partnership inked with NVIDIA across infrastructure, software, and services.

Yet there has been plenty more announced at the Las Vegas jamboree besides. Here, CloudTech rounds up the best of the rest:

Next-generation chips

This was the other major AI-focused announcement at re:Invent: the launch of two new chips, AWS Graviton4 and AWS Trainium2, for training and running AI and machine learning (ML) models, among other customer workloads. Graviton4 shapes up against its predecessor with 30% better compute performance, 50% more cores and 75% more memory bandwidth, while Trainium2 delivers up to four times faster training than before and will be able to be deployed in EC2 UltraClusters of up to 100,000 chips.

The EC2 UltraClusters are designed to ‘deliver the highest performance, most energy efficient AI model training infrastructure in the cloud’, as AWS puts it. With it, customers will be able to train large language models in ‘a fraction of the time’, as well as double energy efficiency.

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As ever, AWS offers customers who are already utilising these tools. Databricks, Epic and SAP are among the companies cited as using the new AWS-designed chips.

Zero-ETL integrations

AWS announced new Amazon Aurora PostgreSQL, Amazon DynamoDB, and Amazon Relational Database Services (Amazon RDS) for MySQL integrations with Amazon Redshift, AWS’ cloud data warehouse. The zero-ETL integrations – eliminating the need to build ETL (extract, transform, load) data pipelines – make it easier to connect and analyse transactional data across various relational and non-relational databases in Amazon Redshift.

A simple example of how zero-ETL functions can be seen is in a hypothetical company which stores transactional data – time of transaction, items bought, where the transaction occurred – in a relational database, but use another analytics tool to analyse data in a non-relational database. To connect it all up, companies would previously have to construct ETL data pipelines which are a time and money sink.

The latest integrations “build on AWS’s zero-ETL foundation… so customers can quickly and easily connect all of their data, no matter where it lives,” the company said.

Amazon S3 Express One Zone

AWS announced the general availability of Amazon S3 Express One Zone, a new storage class purpose-built for customers’ most frequently-accessed data. Data access speed is up to 10 times faster and request costs up to 50% lower than standard S3. Companies can also opt to collocate their Amazon S3 Express One Zone data in the same availability zone as their compute resources.  

Companies and partners who are using Amazon S3 Express One Zone include ChaosSearch, Cloudera, and Pinterest.

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Amazon Q

A new product, and an interesting pivot, again with generative AI at its core. Amazon Q was announced as a ‘new type of generative AI-powered assistant’ which can be tailored to a customer’s business. “Customers can get fast, relevant answers to pressing questions, generate content, and take actions – all informed by a customer’s information repositories, code, and enterprise systems,” AWS added. The service also can assist companies building on AWS, as well as companies using AWS applications for business intelligence, contact centres, and supply chain management.

Customers cited as early adopters include Accenture, BMW and Wunderkind.

Want to learn more about cybersecurity and the cloud from industry leaders? Check out Cyber Security & Cloud Expo taking place in Amsterdam, California, and London. Explore other upcoming enterprise technology events and webinars powered by TechForge here.

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TECHNOLOGY

HCLTech and Cisco create collaborative hybrid workplaces

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Digital comms specialist Cisco and global tech firm HCLTech have teamed up to launch Meeting-Rooms-as-a-Service (MRaaS).

Available on a subscription model, this solution modernises legacy meeting rooms and enables users to join meetings from any meeting solution provider using Webex devices.

The MRaaS solution helps enterprises simplify the design, implementation and maintenance of integrated meeting rooms, enabling seamless collaboration for their globally distributed hybrid workforces.

Rakshit Ghura, senior VP and Global head of digital workplace services, HCLTech, said: “MRaaS combines our consulting and managed services expertise with Cisco’s proficiency in Webex devices to change the way employees conceptualise, organise and interact in a collaborative environment for a modern hybrid work model.

“The common vision of our partnership is to elevate the collaboration experience at work and drive productivity through modern meeting rooms.”

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Alexandra Zagury, VP of partner managed and as-a-Service Sales at Cisco, said: “Our partnership with HCLTech helps our clients transform their offices through cost-effective managed services that support the ongoing evolution of workspaces.

“As we reimagine the modern office, we are making it easier to support collaboration and productivity among workers, whether they are in the office or elsewhere.”

Cisco’s Webex collaboration devices harness the power of artificial intelligence to offer intuitive, seamless collaboration experiences, enabling meeting rooms with smart features such as meeting zones, intelligent people framing, optimised attendee audio and background noise removal, among others.

Want to learn more about cybersecurity and the cloud from industry leaders? Check out Cyber Security & Cloud Expo taking place in Amsterdam, California, and London. Explore other upcoming enterprise technology events and webinars powered by TechForge here.

Tags: Cisco, collaboration, HCLTech, Hybrid, meetings

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TECHNOLOGY

Canonical releases low-touch private cloud MicroCloud

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Canonical has announced the general availability of MicroCloud, a low-touch, open source cloud solution. MicroCloud is part of Canonical’s growing cloud infrastructure portfolio.

It is purpose-built for scalable clusters and edge deployments for all types of enterprises. It is designed with simplicity, security and automation in mind, minimising the time and effort to both deploy and maintain it. Conveniently, enterprise support for MicroCloud is offered as part of Canonical’s Ubuntu Pro subscription, with several support tiers available, and priced per node.

MicroClouds are optimised for repeatable and reliable remote deployments. A single command initiates the orchestration and clustering of various components with minimal involvement by the user, resulting in a fully functional cloud within minutes. This simplified deployment process significantly reduces the barrier to entry, putting a production-grade cloud at everyone’s fingertips.

Juan Manuel Ventura, head of architectures & technologies at Spindox, said: “Cloud computing is not only about technology, it’s the beating heart of any modern industrial transformation, driving agility and innovation. Our mission is to provide our customers with the most effective ways to innovate and bring value; having a complexity-free cloud infrastructure is one important piece of that puzzle. With MicroCloud, the focus shifts away from struggling with cloud operations to solving real business challenges” says

In addition to seamless deployment, MicroCloud prioritises security and ease of maintenance. All MicroCloud components are built with strict confinement for increased security, with over-the-air transactional updates that preserve data and roll back on errors automatically. Upgrades to newer versions are handled automatically and without downtime, with the mechanisms to hold or schedule them as needed.

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With this approach, MicroCloud caters to both on-premise clouds but also edge deployments at remote locations, allowing organisations to use the same infrastructure primitives and services wherever they are needed. It is suitable for business-in-branch office locations or industrial use inside a factory, as well as distributed locations where the focus is on replicability and unattended operations.

Cedric Gegout, VP of product at Canonical, said: “As data becomes more distributed, the infrastructure has to follow. Cloud computing is now distributed, spanning across data centres, far and near edge computing appliances. MicroCloud is our answer to that.

“By packaging known infrastructure primitives in a portable and unattended way, we are delivering a simpler, more prescriptive cloud experience that makes zero-ops a reality for many Industries.“

MicroCloud’s lightweight architecture makes it usable on both commodity and high-end hardware, with several ways to further reduce its footprint depending on your workload needs. In addition to the standard Ubuntu Server or Desktop, MicroClouds can be run on Ubuntu Core – a lightweight OS optimised for the edge. With Ubuntu Core, MicroClouds are a perfect solution for far-edge locations with limited computing capabilities. Users can choose to run their workloads using Kubernetes or via system containers. System containers based on LXD behave similarly to traditional VMs but consume fewer resources while providing bare-metal performance.

Coupled with Canonical’s Ubuntu Pro + Support subscription, MicroCloud users can benefit from an enterprise-grade open source cloud solution that is fully supported and with better economics. An Ubuntu Pro subscription offers security maintenance for the broadest collection of open-source software available from a single vendor today. It covers over 30k packages with a consistent security maintenance commitment, and additional features such as kernel livepatch, systems management at scale, certified compliance and hardening profiles enabling easy adoption for enterprises. With per-node pricing and no hidden fees, customers can rest assured that their environment is secure and supported without the expensive price tag typically associated with cloud solutions.

Want to learn more about cybersecurity and the cloud from industry leaders? Check out Cyber Security & Cloud Expo taking place in Amsterdam, California, and London. Explore other upcoming enterprise technology events and webinars powered by TechForge here.

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Tags: automation, Canonical, MicroCloud, private cloud

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