Augmented Birthday Parties and Virtual Reality Field Trips with Centertec’s Bill Tustin

Chicken Waffle!
Now that we have your attention, check out this episode of XR for
Business. Centertec CEO Bill Tustin joins Alan to talk location-based
VR “retail-tainment.” Fun, exciting XR technologies are
revitalizing America’s malls, and taking kids on field trips across
the stars or through the pyramids; places they could never go in real
life.

Alan: Today’s guest is Bill
Tustin. Bill has owned a location-based VR location for over three
years. He’s worked for 25 years in the casino banking industry,
teaching them how to implement technologies that increase their
revenues, create great customer experiences and have fantastic ROI.
He has used that experience to create a successful location-based VR
place with multiple revenue sources, including XR educational content
and XR programs. His company just made a seed investment in Chicken
Waffle — crazy name! — but it’s an XR solution provider that
develops innovative solutions with high-quality branded experiences.
They’ve created many enterprise experiences in a world for an amazing
list of partners and clients. [You can learn more about Bill’s
business at www.centertec.com].
They’re working on all sorts of really cool IP, and I want to welcome
to the show: Bill Tustin. Thanks for joining me.

Bill: Thank you.

Alan: Thank you so much. You’ve
been working in VR a long time. What are some of the best experiences
you’ve seen, and what drives you to do what you’re doing?

Bill: Really? The smiles on
people’s faces. We work with a lot of children, and the children and
the teachers are very excited about learning about VR, experiencing
VR. Just, customers’ experiences has been great for the last few
years.

Alan: Awesome. You say you were
working with children. Is this just location-based entertainment? Or,
what are you finding is something that… what is resonating with
everybody?

Bill: From the educational
aspect of it, where they can go and experience a visual education
experience? The teachers actually have been really excited about it;
just the fact that they can go, like, for example, to the civil war,
and experience of battle with great artwork. It educates some really,
really well. Especially the younger they are, the more they get
excited about it.

Alan: So, what’s one of the best
XR, or VR/AR, experiences that you’ve ever had?

Bill: Well, for children? Space.
Anything with space, they get really excited about. Anything
underwater. These are all experiences that they can’t experience in
real life. You can’t experience space right now — I mean, hopefully
in the future you will — and most people don’t really go scuba
diving, especially kids. So, they’re going to really experience
underwater adventures, or Space Adventures. And then, on the
education aspect, we work very closely with the schools on exactly
what they’re teaching them, so the education aspect of it is in on
the experience.

Alan: Interesting. You made an
investment in Chicken Waffle. Can you maybe tell us what’s… what’s
Chicken Waffle? As soon as I heard the name, I was like, “what
the heck is a Chicken Waffle?”

Bill: The founder of Chicken
Waffle actually co-founded TheWaveVR. He actually still owns
TheWaveVR, which became a very big social media music platform. One
of the reasons why we invested in them is, we saw a need in the
education field, where just the content that was there wasn’t really
up to par for the children. They really wanted to have more
interactive experiences. It just seemed like a lot

Chicken Waffle!
Now that we have your attention, check out this episode of XR for
Business. Centertec CEO Bill Tustin joins Alan to talk location-based
VR “retail-tainment.” Fun, exciting XR technologies are
revitalizing America’s malls, and taking kids on field trips across
the stars or through the pyramids; places they could never go in real
life.

Alan: Today’s guest is Bill
Tustin. Bill has owned a location-based VR location for over three
years. He’s worked for 25 years in the casino banking industry,
teaching them how to implement technologies that increase their
revenues, create great customer experiences and have fantastic ROI.
He has used that experience to create a successful location-based VR
place with multiple revenue sources, including XR educational content
and XR programs. His company just made a seed investment in Chicken
Waffle — crazy name! — but it’s an XR solution provider that
develops innovative solutions with high-quality branded experiences.
They’ve created many enterprise experiences in a world for an amazing
list of partners and clients. [You can learn more about Bill’s
business at www.centertec.com].
They’re working on all sorts of really cool IP, and I want to welcome
to the show: Bill Tustin. Thanks for joining me.

Bill: Thank you.

Alan: Thank you so much. You’ve
been working in VR a long time. What are some of the best experiences
you’ve seen, and what drives you to do what you’re doing?

Bill: Really? The smiles on
people’s faces. We work with a lot of children, and the children and
the teachers are very excited about learning about VR, experiencing
VR. Just, customers’ experiences has been great for the last few
years.

Alan: Awesome. You say you were
working with children. Is this just location-based entertainment? Or,
what are you finding is something that… what is resonating with
everybody?

Bill: From the educational
aspect of it, where they can go and experience a visual education
experience? The teachers actually have been really excited about it;
just the fact that they can go, like, for example, to the civil war,
and experience of battle with great artwork. It educates some really,
really well. Especially the younger they are, the more they get
excited about it.

Alan: So, what’s one of the best
XR, or VR/AR, experiences that you’ve ever had?

Bill: Well, for children? Space.
Anything with space, they get really excited about. Anything
underwater. These are all experiences that they can’t experience in
real life. You can’t experience space right now — I mean, hopefully
in the future you will — and most people don’t really go scuba
diving, especially kids. So, they’re going to really experience
underwater adventures, or Space Adventures. And then, on the
education aspect, we work very closely with the schools on exactly
what they’re teaching them, so the education aspect of it is in on
the experience.

Alan: Interesting. You made an
investment in Chicken Waffle. Can you maybe tell us what’s… what’s
Chicken Waffle? As soon as I heard the name, I was like, “what
the heck is a Chicken Waffle?”

Bill: The founder of Chicken
Waffle actually co-founded TheWaveVR. He actually still owns
TheWaveVR, which became a very big social media music platform. One
of the reasons why we invested in them is, we saw a need in the
education field, where just the content that was there wasn’t really
up to par for the children. They really wanted to have more
interactive experiences. It just seemed like a lot of educational
stuff that exists right now in VR/XR/AR is just real basic. So, we
decided that we needed to make our own content with certain partners
that we’re working with. And they were the right company when we
checked around; everybody kept on referring to them. Their name came
up constantly, that they were the right company to partner with.

Alan: So what kind of content
are you guys making, then?

Bill: A lot of things that they
do are for clients, so I can’t really say names. But to give an
example, they’re working on a major museum project, where there’s 20
geo points and it’s a civil war experience. They basically walk
around on the battlefield — the kids and families, we have a walk on
a battlefield — and through AR, be able to experience the civil war
at the exact points where the action happened on this battlefield.
So, that’s an exciting project that they’re working on. We’re also
talking to the client about us using that type of experience in a VR
experience that we can also bring to schools. As it relates to
museums and these type of establishments, it’s great when the schools
are around them, but they spend quite a lot… like, this client is
spending over half a million dollars just on artwork alone. And
they’re basically only going to get schools and families that —
while they’re major, I mean, people do travel very far for them —
but the schools only travel about an hour on a field trip. So, just a
partnership with them, and Chicken Waffle will make it to be able to
bring it to the LBE [location-based experience], depending on what
you want to call it. That type in a VR experience would be real
exciting.

Alan: The whole idea of being
able to take field trips really far — going to the pyramids in Egypt
— that’s not really something that most schools (or any schools),
you know, “let’s get a flight and fly halfway around the world
to go see something.” But in VR, you really can do that, and you
can go anywhere in the world instantly. I think it’s really gonna be
great for that. And I think it’s hopefully going to create new bonds
amongst children and people around the world. You know, one of the
most transformative moments I had in VR was the first time I went in
Altspace and I realized that there were other people in the space,
talking to me. That was a game-changer.

Bill: Yeah, actually, that’s
what we discovered. The children do want to interact with each other.
It’s funny that you just brought up Egypt, because we just had 120
third graders come in to our location, and that was one of the
requirements; teaching them about pyramids. So we actually had a VR
experience where they wandered through one of the permits. It was
like a 360 video, interactive experience. And the third graders loved
it. There would be no other way for them to do it, except in VR or
AR. I mean, literally, it was 120 third graders — four third grade
classes — and they loved it.

Alan: Are you seeing that 360
video is something that people are resonating with? Or is it more the
interactive content that is getting people’s attention?

Bill: It’s interactive. The 360 video, they get bored very quickly; 360 video is just TV in VR. I mean, in my mind, it’s when they could touch things. Like, they go to the Egyptian pyramids, and be able to pick something up — that’s really resonates with the children. The way they could be avatars of different people, and they could see each other when they interact with each other. That’s really where it’s having to. That’s another reason — that’s our main reason — for making a seed investment in Chicken Waffle. They’re able to do that social interactive experience with great artwork.

Alan: It’s pretty exciting, I
think, being able to interact. One of the things that I got to do was
drive an excavator in virtual reality, and I’ve never been in one
before. I started it up and it explained to me how to drive it, and
how to use the bucket and everything. And it’s funny, because I was
in it for maybe 20 minutes driving around. And I feel — I mean, I
haven’t tried it yet — but I feel like I could go and drive an
excavator now. I probably wouldn’t be very good at it, but I could do
it. I know what the handles do, and I know which… I feel like I’ve
driven that thing. And it’s really interesting, how you can give
people incredible experiences and trainings, long before they’ve even
got to the place of where they’re what they’re doing. So I think it
holds tremendous value there.

Bill: Yeah, yeah, I know.
Chicken Waffle’s actually done work for one of the clients. Hopefully
it’s not an NDA with them; it’s Exxon Mobile, and they’ve done a lot
of safety training with them. They’re also working with a franchise
Asian restaurant, where they’re doing the training for the
franchisees on the rice cooker, which is another safety — you know
how — to properly get this rice cooker to work. So you’re right. You
are correct. It’s really a great way to do training — especially
safety training — in VR. And you could actually have emergency-type
situations where you could evaluate that safety training.

Alan: Are you guys doing
anything with a AR at all? Mobile phone-based augmented reality?

Bill: Yeah, we actually have
four Magic Leaps. Magic Leap just met with Chicken Waffle. They’ve
actually changed their API because they’re… I don’t know if I want
to say, I’m sorry [laughs]. But it’s actually going to be an open
source thing that we’ve just recently did for Magic Leap. So we are
working with Magic Leap in an AR capacity. A lot of it’s
confidential, but we are doing certain things.

Alan: It’s pretty exciting, when
spatial computing comes into your living room. It’s all around you,
and it kind of takes… it hijacks the space that you’re in, and
really gives you this opportunity to augment the world you’re already
in. I think the immersion slider from your reality — or the real
world you’re in — to full virtual reality. I think the ability to
blend and go in and out of that is gonna be really magical. I’m
really excited to see what you guys do on that.

Bill: Yeah. They’ve actually
done a lot of work on the MERGE Cube. Mostly the API, most of the
MERGE Cube has been done by them. A lot of AR work, actually.

Alan: I love it. The Merge Cube
is a small, foam cube that has tracking markers on it, that you can
point [at with] your phone. The cube can be a sushi game, where
you’re a fish trying to eat sushi one minute; it can be a camp fire
the next minute; it can be a trippy cube. It can be a human heart.
There’s all sorts of things; they have an open API, so that
programmers can make all sorts of really cool experiences on it. And
I think they’ve done a really good job at taking “phone,”
and matching it with a very inexpensive “toy” or “tool,”
and creating unlimited possibilities on this thing called the MERGE
Cube. So, really exciting. I had the opportunity to travel to China
with the principals. It was really cool. In your experience, what has
been the path that businesses have taken to get to the point where
they’re ready to invest in this technology? Because — let’s be
honest — it’s not the least expensive technologies out there. So
what is the path to getting a company excited? Getting them bought
in? Is it proof of concepts, then rolling it out? What is the path
that you’ve seen that businesses are taking?

Bill: When I speak to business
leaders, it really depends on the type. I recently spoke at the
retail show in New York, and they’re very interested on the ROI in
the retail environment. When you make an investment — and it’s a
large investment, especially if you’re doing a custom AR/VR
application — what’s the type of ROI there is? One of the things
they mentioned to me was they love my story about, um, there’s
actually a toy store in Prague, where they had a backpack AR system
in the basement — so, it was a space that wasn’t really being used.
They’ve had a very large increase of sales at the store, because
people come there to do the AR, and then they go shopping. Over at
Centertec, we’re in one of the largest malls in the world, Simon Mall
— and we all working with them on some other locations — and we
bring people to their mall. I mean, everybody says the malls are
dead, but the average mall customer spends $108. So, you can get him
into the mall — statistically speaking — they’re going to spend
$108. So, VR and AR — I mean, like an AR scavenger hunt — there’s a
lot of things you could do, especially in retail and businesses, to
get a really nice ROI. And they’re looking for partners that can
explain that ROI to them, because, you know, it’s a capital expense.

Alan: Absolutely. So, the work
you’re doing with Simon, you do have a location set up in their
malls, now?

Bill: We’ve been in a Simon mall
for three years. They’ve talked about a lot of other VR companies
that now… I’m going to use the word “left,” but have gone
out of business. We’re now going into one of their outlet malls,
which is an agreement with them — it’s more of a partnership — and
that outlet mall gets 8-million people per year, and they have 45
locations that they want us to roll into.

Alan: That’s incredible.

Bill: We’re listening to our own
ROI on that; gotta take baby steps.

Alan: That’s an incredible use
case. I think malls are slowly changing — the face of retail is
changing, really — and it’s going from a place where people, they
went for entertainment, and to pass the time, and to shop. But I
think it’s more moving towards this “retail-tainment,”
where people go there for social experiences. A lot of the malls here
in Canada have — obviously they have movie theaters — but they have
arcades, and stuff like this. And I think VR and AR lend themselves
very nicely to these locations. And you’re absolutely right; for
every extra minute average that a mall like Simon Malls has, you’re
talking millions of dollars in revenue for every average minute that
a customer spends in the locations. So, it’s a great way for public
spaces to be reunified and revitalized.

Bill: You get the customer back
in the mall. I mean, they actually reported to us — they they were
studying it — some of the merchants buy us, their sales doubled.
Because of the amount of people that we brought into the mall. The
first mall we in, it was kind of… I don’t use the word “dead
mall.” They wouldn’t like that word. But what I would say, it
wasn’t a triple-A mall. We were underneath the staircase. On a
Saturday, we’re packed, and the mall’s empty. My partner loves to
take photos of that. But the merchants stand by us. Their sales have
gone up, so they’re very happy with that; that leads to them giving
us a better real estate deal. We have more of a partnership than us
paying them rent. I joke around, that they should pay me.

Alan: [laughs] I don’t know
about that! But yeah, I think it’s a great opportunity for everybody
involved. For sure.

Bill: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, they
realize that I’m an asset to their mall. It’s more of me not
expanding. I mean, I think they would put us in every single mall
that I was willing to do it.

Alan: What are some of the most
impressive business use cases of this technology that you’ve seen so
far? You know, something that we’ve tried and said, wow, that is
really impressive.

Bill: Well, you know, one thing
I was surprised with last week was a woman approached me — I was in
my center — and said, “are you the owner?” And I said
yeah. I don’t want to, you know, promote it too much, but she’s got
cancer, and she’s been come into our place; she bought a membership.
And she’s actually a nurse, and she had a lot of anger issues with
her getting cancer. She started crying to me, telling me how great
our place was, and it saved her marriage, because she had a lot of
anger over it, and she’s actually playing a boxing game. She just
comes in, and, you know… and we’re not pushing her. She did it on
her own. It’s been great therapy for her, just coming in and letting
her aggression out in VR. It was very interesting, listening to her
talk about that. That was probably one of my most interesting
experiences I’ve had.

Alan: It’s funny how… I’ve
actually been recording and keeping track of all the different use
cases in business, and medical, and health, and automotive, airlines,
you name it. And only recently, in the last two weeks, I had to make
a new folder: virtual and augmented reality for mental health. We’re
seeing all sorts of incredible statistics around this technology
being used for mental health, or autism. They’re being able to take
kids who are quite a ways over on the spectrum, that don’t socialize
well, and really understand their their social cues, and get them
used to making eye contact with people in a virtual space, so that
when they are in the real world, they’re kind of more understood.
Because I don’t think somebody with autism is at a disadvantage; we
just never figured out a way to harness their genius. I think these
technologies really unlock that, so it’s really exciting.

Bill: It’s funny you brought
that up. We just booked an autism — they just booked five days in
May; they came in last year — an autism group. Literally, they
booked their whole school’s field trips. The kids love VR. The only
thing that annoys me about it is, I go to a lot of shows, and they
have special autism programs. And honestly, they’re fine on a regular
games! They just want to be treated like regular people. They’re
great with all the regular games. They don’t need special games.
They’re fine with what exists.

Alan: I agree, and I think our
school systems were designed to take kind of the bell curve, and
educate the bell curve as much as possible. When you get people on
either side of the bell curve, the system starts to break down and
goes, “well, you know, you don’t fit into our system, so you
must be an outsider.” I think it’s going to see a huge pivot in
education in the next little bit, as we start to introduce
technologies like artificial intelligence, to really study and
understand how these students think, what drives them, and what
they’re interested in. You can teach a group of 30 kids science —
I’d say 10 of them are interested in science, 20 of them don’t care,
and we’re still pushing them into that? So I think personalized
education is really going to unlock a whole new way for which we
educate entire populations. I think if we can figure that out…
like, if you look at Netflix, they use AI algorithms to give you
better movies to watch. So why aren’t we using that for education?
And I think we’re gonna see that very, very soon.

Bill: Yeah. I mean, we work with
girls who code. They come in once a week to a place, and it’s just
amazing, the skill sets that they have. As relates to programming,
some of the things I’ve seen them create — programming — when we
work together. They call it teacher bias, too; especially when it
comes to girls, with coding and science. And the teachers don’t mean
to do it, but they kinda push these young girls into things they
shouldn’t be pushed into, because they think that’s what they need to
do. And when you just let them be free and they explore and they
learn, it’s amazing.

Alan: It really is. Education is
it’s an interesting thing; if you look at it from a market size, it’s
a $4-trillion industry. It’s four times the size of Amazon. And if
you look at it that way, we’re seeing a tectonic shift in the way
education happens, and the way it moves forward. I think virtual
augmented reality are really going to be a central role in doing
that.

Bill: Yeah, if it’s implemented
correctly. We’ve been to over 100 schools. We’ve worked a lot with
schools. I’m amazed, where they’ll have VR equipment there — I went
to one college, and Microsoft gave them a bunch of Hololenses — and
they were just thrown into a corner, because nobody from Microsoft
ever came down and showed them how to use it, how to implement it.
They have these $4,000 Hololenses sitting in the corner, not being
used. I was there with my VR stuff, and I saw them there; they were
asking me about them. I said, “where’d you get them?” And
they said, Parsons gave it to them through Microsoft, but no one ever
showed them anything. So, it needs to be implemented correctly. You
just can’t hand people all that equipment and say, “bye!”
You know, it needs to be executed correctly. Content needs to
correct. It’s just not giving them hardware and saying, “figure
it out yourself.”

Alan: I agree. I think there’s a
couple things that need to happen. The hardware is gonna just keep
evolving, and that’s fine. But I think it’s more on the platform
side, and really creating content that is uniform across multiple
headsets, and easy for a facilitator or a teacher to bring to the
students in a way that makes sense. But to your point; without
training, without getting these people ready to go, it’s kind of
useless. It’s like, “here’s a bunch of VR,” and if you
don’t train them and don’t get people… you need one champion — at
least — in every school. I think a very important.

Bill: The teachers, and the
students, and the school administrators, they are very interested in
VR. I mean, they get it. The ones who don’t get it, I see more social
media — people attacking me about kids, man, and headsets. And I’m
like, *sigh* — the people who aren’t there are the ones who aren’t
getting it, you know? And that’s always a problem with education: the
people who don’t know think they’re the experts.

Alan: Absolutely. I think this
comes up a lot. VR is something you just have to try. Same with AR.
You put it on; you have to try it. And once you see it, you get it.
You’re like, “oh, this makes perfect sense. I get it now.”
And it’s one of those things that, if you don’t put it on your head,
you’ll never really know what you’re missing.

Bill: Yeah, yeah. I’m also
amazed by, you know… I tell this story. I went to Villanova
University, and I asked how many people in that class did VR. Only
three of the college students raised their hand. That was on a
Friday. Then on Monday, we went to an elementary school, and it was
all third graders. I asked them how many did VR; every single one of
them raised their hands. And that really shocked me. It really tells
me something with older people, that they aren’t willing to try VR,
or there’s something going on there. That really opened my eyes to,
“wow.” I mean, there’s such a drastic difference. But when
the Villanova kids did the VR, they loved it. So it’s almost like
they had a kind of negativity towards VR? I think a lot of it has to
do with the type of VR content that they tried in the past. They
maybe had a bad experience, so they don’t want to try it. What’s
great is, the young kids are all doing it. I mean, everybody says,
“you guys are doing [VR with] young kids?” I’m like, “well,
that’s who’s playing VR.” But they’re gonna get older.

Alan: Yeah, I think so. And it’s
it’s like anything. I don’t know about you, but I’m not… no, I am
on Snapchat, but very barely. But if you if you miss the Snapchat
thing, or you’re a little bit too old, you know, you go on Snapchat,
you’re like, “what is this dumb thing? What do you mean, I can’t
save my photos? What the heck?” So I think there’s definitely a
generation gap. And we’ve noticed when we’re doing Hololens demos,
that adults — almost anybody over 40 — has a hard time with the
gestures to click — the bloom and all that — almost everybody over
40 has a problem with that. Everybody under 20 that we’ve put it on
instantly gets it. Like, within seconds. We put it on, show them the
commands, and then that’s it. They’re off to the races. They’re
running around doing their thing. One of the challenges that we keep
seeing — and I’m seeing it right across the board — is the
facilitator controls; being able to control experiences, and know
what somebody is in. When somebody is in VR, you can’t really see
what they’re doing; being able to have facilitator controls is
important as well, so that a teacher could lead a class of 30
students through a pyramid discovery, and know where they are, and
kind of speak to that as well.

Bill: That’s 100 percent
correct. They need a teacher established… well, I wouldn’t even
call it a teacher established. We guide people in our VR center. We
don’t let them guide themselves, because of different experiences are
different. You need any to guide people right now.

Alan: Agreed.

Bill: I think you always need [a
guide], because it’s always going to be different controllers,
different ways of doing it. It’s a guide. Definitely.

Alan: Absolutely. What do you
see as the future for virtual, augmented, and mixed reality, as it
pertains to business and education? What is the future?

Bill: There’s so much coming at
me lately, with all the new headsets! Huh, wow… definitely,
interactive VR experiences where everybody wants to be avatars. I
mean, if you just look at Fortnite and Apex Legends, everybody wants
to be an avatar. Nobody wants to be themselves. Everybody wants to
interact. People are craving social experiences, even though they
don’t want to admit it. Everybody’s so connected nowadays. It’s like
children want to be social, but they don’t want to be social. I mean,
if that makes any sense.

Alan: Actually, I have a perfect
example of that. My daughter, we went to the mall and we’re walking
— she’s 14, so she’s a teenager — and she’s said, “all my
friends are at the mall.” So, do you see them? She goes, “no,
no, no. I see they’re on Snapchat. I can see they’re at the mall.”
Oh, OK, cool. Whatever. Then she saw her friends from across the room
and she’s like, “oh, there’s my friends!” I said, “well,
go over and say hi.” “No, no, no, no, no. Oh, I can’t do
that.” [Snicker] They’re your friends on Snapchat; you’re
standing in a shared space in the real world; and you don’t want to
go over and say hi? What?

Bill: She would’ve with an
avatar. An avatar would interact with them. It’s funny, the girls
like to be boys; the boys like to be girl avatars. I could take
another story. We used a lot of trampoline instalments when we first
opened, because those trampoline parks are very, very popular. One of
the things they discovered is almost half the people don’t jump on
the trampolines when they pay to get in. They go there, they stand in
line. And what the girls, she’ll stand behind a boy she thinks is
cute. But when it’s time for her to get on the dodgeball court,
she’ll bail out. It’s all about the wait in line. About queueing the
people up; it’s kind of like why we go to bars. The popular bars have
discovered that the whole social scene. It’s why we go to
restaurants; we go to look at other people at restaurants — we all
can eat at home! My wife is a very good cook. We’re human beings.
We’re tribal and we crave social experiences. We just don’t want to
admit to it. VR really helps with that, and so does AR.

Alan: I think the social aspects
of it… there’s all sorts of really great social experiences coming
out. You’ve got VRChat, Altbase, Facebook Spaces, High Fidelity,
Sensar. There’s a number of these experiences coming out, where not
only can you choose your avatar and what your representation is to
the world, but you can also choose the world you are going to
communicate in. You can make these virtual worlds. I think it’s just
gonna be spectacular. It’s very Ready Player One.

Bill: Yeah. Yeah, are you really
talking to another person? Or is it AI you’re talking to?

Alan: That’s a whole next
question, for sure.

Bill: Or a deep thing, like who
you really fall in love with. It could be an AI character.

Alan: I think that’s going to be
a real thing, man; AI-driven avatars are gonna be a thing. And we’re
getting close to photorealistic avatars, as well.

Bill: Yeah, yeah. But
definitely, people are interested in VR. It’s happening. I mean, you
just go to a Centertec on a Saturday/Sunday; we’re packed. Schools
are coming in during the week; camps are coming in; autism groups are
coming in; people for medical reasons coming in. I think that’s why
LBVR and LBE is so successful in VR right now. They don’t want to do
it at home. They want to go out and do it. It’s like the movies.
People go to the movies, and they watch TV at home. So I think
there’s a place for both. I think an LBE, it’s definitely in the
social experience, and the educational experience, and at home would
just be more like watching TV. Maybe 360 videos. But definitely,
interactive is an LBE.

Alan: Well, is there any other
closing remarks before we wrap this awesome episode of the XR for
Business Podcast?

Bill: Nah. VR and AR has a great
future. I believe they can combine with esports. I mean, actually, I
believe education, VR, AR, and esports are all going to clash and
come one. And it’s happening.

Alan: I agree. I think people
crave challenge; and VR, it can open worlds of challenges that we
never even thought of. And I’m really excited. The headsets are
getting better. They’re actually becoming untethered. There’s so many
technological advancements coming at us faster than we can read about
them. There’s haptic gloves. There’s haptic suits. There’s the suits
that give you cold and hot. There’s scent machines; we’re really
trying to hijack all of the senses. And I think it’s an exciting time
to be in this industry.