Hello, everyone, and welcome back to Kyrabe Stories! Today, we have for you an interview with Hugh Seaton from Adept Reality! Adept Reality is a partnering company of The Glimpse Group where they focus on creating employee training environments using virtual reality!
Below we also have the transcript of the interview if you wish to skim through the information! Shoutout to Rev.com for your spot-on transcriptions!
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All right. So hi. My name is Kyndall Bennett. I am the Personal Development Blogger over at Kyrabe Stories and today we have Hugh Seaton. Um, so, you’re the General Manager at Adept Reality?
That’s right. That’s right. So um, Adept is, is a, a VR and AR training company that is part of a bigger company called The Glimpse Group. Um, based in New York we focus on, on VR and AR across a number of different areas of education and entertainment and marketing.
Nice! Uh, what motivated you to create an employee training environment using virtual reality?
So I’ve been in the, the e-learning world for a while and actually been in educated, -cator, an educator for even longer than that.
Huh.
And um, you know, four years ago or so, um, I started um, really getting introduced to VR from some friends in Silicon Valley that were playing around with and worked doing some things with the Oculus Rift. Um, so I, I, and even then I thought, “Wow! There’s things that you might be able to do, um, to, for training and education more broadly in VR, is really exciting.” Uh, a little after that the Vive came out. So there’s, there were really two big headsets um, for a while. The, the HTC Vive and the Oculus Rift.
Um, so I bought the Vive and, and um, spent a lot of time playing with it. I actually set up a lab at our local lib-, library in Connecticut um, and let people just come in and, and experience VR and play around with it. And there’s things you can do in VR that are, that you just can’t do anywhere else. You can simulate things.
(laughs)
Uh, or you can bring you, br-, bring someone anywhere. Any, anything you can imagine, we can create and put someone there. So you, you imagine things like what would it be like for a, um, you know, an American to go to a Chinese factory and uh, and see what it’s really like? You can do that in VR without getting on an airplane. What would it be like to, you know, negotiate with somebody from Argentina? You can do that in VR without, you know, without having to go anywhere. So as a result, it’s cheaper and faster and, and more effective than a lot of other ways of doing things.
So the answer to the motivated problem, I, I, I, I’m, I’m a huge, I’m really passionate about learning and about people improving themselves. And the, the ability to, to simulate things and experience them over and over again and really understand them that VR offers, just got me super excited and, you know, the, that’s what, that’s what I’ve been doing the last couple of years.
Yeah. One of my classes back in college, they let us play with the Oculus Rift and I think one of them they had a VR experience of a temple. And, it’s like, it’s amazing to be at the college but actually feel like I’m somewhere that I may not have ever imagined being able to visit.
Yeah, isn’t that cool?
Yes! So, with the training –
Okay.
… uh, for the employee training, what are some of the benefits of collaborating within a virtual environment as opposed to the, let’s say the traditional email and conference calls?
Well, so, collaborating is one of the things that we do. Um, and some of that is, there’s a real difference when you’re seeing someone react than, than when they’re just a little box on a screen.
Yeah.
Like we have a, a couple of products that allow you to have people from all over the world that are in VR together and they’re looking at the same 3D model. Um, you can do all sorts of interesting things with space in VR because, you know, everyone has their own headset. So that means that there’s a different computer that’s recreating the, the, the room that you’re in or the model you’re playing with. Which means that everyone can have their own version of that reality.
Hmm.
It’s a little bit hard to wrap your head around but what it, what it, what it means is, you can really personalize an experience that everyone is still doing together. And then you have other things like you can put, I can send you PDFs and I can send you models and I can, um, we can interact with each other.
One of things that we’re looking at is what if I had a room full of, let’s say, thirty people. And they were all listening to one person speaking. And we’ve got a product that does that which is really exciting. But then if the, the, the, the person who’s speaking to all of them, let’s say they’re, you know, explaining a new, a new process or a new policy, whatever it is. Then says to all those people, “I want you all to now go into groups of three.” And all of a sudden, all those people, they don’t see the other, the other 29, they only see the three that are in their group. So then, just right on the fly, the, the VR system has created their own little room where they can collaborate together. Where they’re talking to each other, drawing things, whatever it might be. And then when the five minutes or ten minutes are up, they’re back together with the, with the other, with all thirty people.
So, that sort of idea is what VR allows you do in a way that you just couldn’t ever think of doing –
That –
… in any other way.
That is convenient. Uh, I know you mentioned um, thirty people getting divided up to, into different groups. Uh, would you say that with the current software that thirty is the maximum? Or how many people max can participate within this virtual training?
No one has, no one has, has really defined the upper limit. Um, it stops meaning anything if you have too many. Do you know what I mean? Like, we can send the same experience out to an unlimited number of people. But, you know, if, if, let’s imagine that you are in a room um, and you had a hundred people in it. You don’t really care about anyone except the ten that are close to you. Just because we could stick 300 people into the same experience doesn’t mean you need to see 300 distinct people. You see what I mean?
So the limits to it are not as, as hard as it might sound. Um, I don’t really care what all 100 people are doing at any given moment ’cause I simply can’t focus on a hundred people at once. You see what I mean? So, what –
Okay.
… happens in VR is you start thinking of space a little differently. People that are close to you, you really care about, because you can interact with them. People that are about ten feet away, you kind of care about ’cause they’re sort of in the same room or the same area. People that are thirty or forty feet away, or, or the VR equivalent of that, they’re just background. So it, it, there isn’t really a limit to how many we could put into a system. There’s a limit to how many you care about having in that system. You see what I mean? Like, or having in that same scene with you.
Okay.
So the reality is if, if we had 300 people that wanted to join for whatever reason, any individual wouldn’t need to see all 300 rendered in their scene. They would, you would just have the ones that are close to you or the ones that you’re, that you already know, or whatever it is.
So it’s a, it’s a little different because again, everything gets recreated in every single headset. So you have weird flexibility that’s just counterintuitive until you’re in VR. Um, so the, the an-, the broad answer to your question is there’s no reasonable, there’s no real limit to it. But there’s a practical reality that you’re probably not gonna care if you have too many people in that same scene with you.
I feel like that would also help with people who may be trying to conquer social anxiety. Like if they’re uncomfortable with large crowds, it seems like being able to divide a crowd up in a vir-, VR environment, but still get the same information, it seems like that would be very beneficial for someone who may be dealing with anxiety.
I, I, not only are you correct, ’cause you are 100% correct, the other thing about VR is, is you can make that something that people can choose to, to dial up or dial down. So if somebody feels like, “Look. I, I wanna be part of this experience but I don’t love the idea of being, milling around with all these people. So I’d like to only see two. Or three. Or I’d like to only see the instruction. Or only see the model. Or whatever it is.” But you can change that, because again, it’s all, it all gets sent to their ma-, their headset and the headset can choose. You can, can make it so that they can select, you know, what sorts of experiences they want or whatnot.
I mean one of the things that we found in VR very early, is it’s very good at, at helping people with general phobias. So, it’s been used for –
Huh.
… PTSD a fair amount. It’s been used for things like arachnophobia and agoraphobia. Because you can control the environment. And you know, one of the ways you get over um, phobias is by giving people little bits of it and dialing up how much you expose them too.
True.
And VR, you can control that, yeah, yeah, yeah. Um, and you can control that in VR in a way that y-, much more uh, specific and accurate than, than anything else.
I don’t think I’m ready to lock myself in a room full of virtual snakes, but maybe one day I’ll get there. (laughing)
That’s right. (laughing) That’s right. Maybe just never hanging out with snakes is good enough. Right?
Yeah. Yeah that’s, that’s my logic. Now I have heard concern for VR that uh, if there is a lag or a miscalculation in a VR sensor, it’s been known to cause like, nausea or disorientation. What has Adept Reality done to ensure that this virtual re-, uh, virtual training, is a comfortable experience for the users?
So there’s two, two ways I’d answer that question. One of them isn’t us. One of them is just the, the, the hardware has gotten so good that that almost never happens anymore.
Okay.
Um, it’s just very, very good now. But the other thing is, just because it’s very good doesn’t mean it’s perfect. So the other thing that we are careful not to do, is to put people through experiences that are unnatural in VR. So I’ll give you an example. Um, if you are not moving yourself but the system kind of gets you through a room, you’re gonna feel ill. ‘Cause your body, your mind is saying, “I’m not moving but I’m moving. I’m not moving…” You know what I mean?
Yeah.
So it winds up making you feel un-, uncomfortable. So there are creative and just story telling choices. You can choose not to make that make, that really minimize the likelihood someone would get sick. Um, what we do find on occasion is people don’t love being in a headset.
Yeah.
And that’s really not a technological [inaudible 00:10:10]. Yeah. That’s a personal thing. Some people don’t like to put hats on their heads and I guess it is what it is.
(laughing)
Um, you, you know, and that, that’s a, but you know, one of the great things about my early experiences in that, that lab at the library, the number of people who genuinely don’t like the experience of being in, in high quality VR is actually quite low. Um, once you get someone in, in something that’s well thought through and well created, um, you know, you almost never have that. And of the great things about Glimpse is we’ve got over forty uh, dedicated VR engineers. So the, the, the amount of people that have really thought about this and built a lot of things, seen how people react, um, is just unparalleled. Uh, which is great.
Now I remember you mentioning earlier the Oculus Rift. That’s probably the most well known of the VR sets. Now do participants need a specific headset in order to use your virtual media, so your virtual trainings? Or do Adept Reality provide a specifically engineered VR set for that?
No. That’s a great question. So, um, no. We, we to the degree you can, we, we make it as, as broadly available as we can. So the, the headsets that are really out there in terms of people having a lot of them, are really four or five. So there’s that original Oculus you mentioned. There’s the Vive thing that I mentioned. And then Oculus has come out with this thing called Go, which is only $200. And another one just a couple months ago called Quest, which is only 400. Which is great ’cause it also, the last two don’t even need a computer. You can just, you buy it and it, and it, you know, you download the experience and it works.
Um, so we made sure that everything that we create is available in the, in at least two of those. Um, but usually all of them, depending on what it is. The Go it turns out, can’t do some things; it’s a little more limited so we don’t always make it for that. But, you know, we really wanna make sure that whatever we create is as available as possible without people having to do anything special other than just download it and make it work. So we make it work for the, you know, the headsets that most people have.
Nice. And I, and some with that explanation, I think you managed to answer some of my other questions. But to finish off, what are some of the training examples that you can provide that’s already available through Adept Reality that we can use in VR?
Yeah. So we’ve, we’re doing a number of different things. So we’ve got uh, there’s one that’s a, a public speaking. So we talked earlier about um, phobias. You know, I don’t know if you’ve ever heard this, but there are actually a significant percentage of people would rather die than speak in public. I think that’s kind of a not that serious statistic. But it, it is genuinely something that really freaks people out. And we find that practicing in VR is often a way, um, that you can uh, overcome that. So we’ve done some things. There’s also just some [inaudible 00:13:08] picked out on, off of public stores that you can buy that, that make, make for a great way to practice um, that.
Mo-, mo-, much of what Adept does actually specific things that a company will ask us to build for their workforce as opposed to things that are out, you know, publicly available. Um, so we’re doing a lot with manufacturing. So, you know, what you’ll find is that there’s like an expert who knows how to do a certain process but that person’s only one of them and they need to train people. And much cheaper to build a VR experience and train them most of the way and then maybe the expert does a little fine tuning.
Hmm.
We see that a lot in things like pharm, a mar-, a pharmaceutical manufacturing, general manufacturing. Um, you know, one of my colleagues is doing some things with nurse training as well, which is interesting. Um, we’ve done some things as well with some of the hospitals to help, help them train people to clean hospital rooms. You know, you may have heard, you know, it’s a big deal to make sure you clean a hospital room the right way or you can have these hospital um, acquired in-, infections –
That’s actually pretty cool.
… which are, are of-… Yeah. So, so what if we can, you know, and, and one of the things about people that are doing the cleaning of those rooms is some of them stay a long time but some of them turn over quickly. So you wanna make sure that you’re training the people that, that clean a hospital room very well. And VR’s a great way to have them understand what it means to really clean the whole bed. Or clean the whole wall. Or whatever it is. ‘Cause you could show things in VR that you couldn’t do otherwise.
So for example, if I’ve got you practicing a certain way [inaudible 00:14:41]… Great example is, um, one of the local New York hospitals we were working with, they have a very specific way to clean the ceiling. You have to do it in a clockwise motion. And what we will do is –
Huh.
… is make it so that when you’re cle-… I know, right. But that’s how they make sure people will get every inch. Is by doing it a specific way every time. So we’ll actually have them hold up, you know, kind of a fake mop or a fake… It’s not quite a mop but… And have them, you know, clean the ceiling and the ceiling turns a different color when they do it so they can really see what it looks like when they’ve missed things. That’s sort of a controlled reality that VR allows you to do so people can really in their minds, understand what it means to miss a spot. Or to, you know, to overdo it or whatever it might be. Um, so that kind of thing is what makes VR really special and, and that’s the sort of thing that we spend a lot of time doing.
And one other thing I would just add to that um, which isn’t always obvious but we have [inaudible 00:15:37] in the VR world. You can also track absolutely everything that happened in VR. So things that you couldn’t track in real life, like where someone’s looking. But not only just tell generally where they’re looking but very specifically, you look at that label for .5 seconds. You looked over at that gauge for .7 seconds. Whatever it is. And start to correlate that with someone doing a good job or a bad job. So you can really understand how good someone is at something as they’re getting trained.
This ability to, to track everything that you can do in VR, is actually one of the, one of the more powerful reasons for using VR is this insane ability to really, not only collect the data but then analyze it and, and really do some amazing things with it.
And I guess that also helps with tweaking the uh, system as well. Like if it’s known that [crosstalk 00:16:26] something is not picking up really quickly, you can look at the uh, data and say, “Okay look. A whole bunch of people are not getting this. Maybe it’s something that we need to adjust.”
Completely right. Exactly right. And, and that’s, because the data is so good, you can start saying, you know, I know that this is a problem with the system. Not just I suspect it. ‘Cause, you know, if you think about a book or, or kind of more traditional learning, you can always kind of blame, you can always not be quite sure. But wh, when you have better data, you can really say, “Look, if 75% of people don’t understand this, that’s not acceptable. We have to do a better job.” You’re absolutely right.
Nice. And, in your opinion, what does the future of VR training look like? Like, would you say that more people are going to warm up to it to be able to incorporate it more in schools? Maybe even as soon as middle school in order to give uh, younger individuals more hands-on experience?
I think that’s right. I think that what you’re gonna see is, is, is I mentioned the Oculus Quest. It really is a different um, from a hardware perspective, it, it is another step forward and a, an important one ’cause it’s cheaper and, and it really works and it’s easy to use. The reason I bring that up is I think we’re still getting there from a hardware standpoint. You know if you think about, you know, phones. The first iPhone wasn’t anywhere near as powerful as the one that we use now.
(laughing)
And I think we’re on… You know what mean?
(laughing)
And you, before the iPhone you had a Blackberry. And the Blackberry you could type on but it didn’t have an [inaudible 00:18:02]. And just the [inaudible 00:18:04] really changed the way we use our phone. The reason I bring all that up is, I think the, the underlying technology’s still moving forward really quickly. And I think what’s gonna happen is, it isn’t just, you know, users saying, “I want it.” It’s also it getting better so they have a reason to say they want it.
Um, so I think that’s gonna happen over time. Um, you know, being able to send a, a fifteen year old to the savannas of Africa or to, you know, the ruins in Mexico or to Rome or ancient, or not ancient, but to China, without moving, is really amazing. And suddenly you start to learn things in way that you, you couldn’t any other way. I think that’s so powerful that you’re gonna see a lot of that.
I think that we’re still getting there in terms of the experience. In terms of being able to control a lot of these headsets. Some of the nuts and bolts. But it’s getting solved pretty quickly.
Um, we as a company and, and Glimpse more broadly are talking to educators of all, of all high, uh, you know, all um, all levels and, and different universities, and, and uh, and uh, K through twelve as well. So there’s a lot of interest in this. Um, there’s definitely a… Anyone who’s been in it recognizes that it can do things that that nothing else can do. Um, it’s just a question of, of making it ready for big groups of people and, and really rolling out over, you know, a hundred thousand people, which is coming, it’s just not quite there yet.
I think you’re gonna find, the headsets get cheaper. I think they’re, you’re gonna find um, that actually augmented reality, um, becomes more common as people’s phone can do it. But also as head-, as uh, glasses become more common. So it’ll be a blend. You know, if you think about how often you watched a video in school, that might be the equivalent of, the, of VR. You think about how often –
Oh wow.
… you know, you looked at a poster or how, how often you read a book, that might be more like AR.
That is (laughing)…
I think that the future is, the future’s exciting. There’s just a lot to figure out.
The other thing is, you hear about 5G. I think 5G will have a big impact because in, you can pass data around a lot more quickly. And VR is a very data heavy application. So it’s gonna be really good for, you know, um, for 5G.
I’m glad that they are –
In fact we have –
Hm? Oh no. I’m saying I’m glad –
I’m sorry.
… that they are gradually [crosstalk 00:20:20] introducing this to us, ’cause this is gonna be one major change within the next couple decades. Probably not even that long.
Yeah. I think it’ll, it’ll come before you know it.
(laughs)
You know? Um, no… That you could never have guessed that someone would do the things we do with our phones five years ago.
Oh yeah.
You know? And cer-, certainly not ten years ago when the iPhone came out. I mean imagine b-, was it eleven years ago was when they introduced the, the first iPhone. Before that, phones were pretty much only phones. All the things we do on a phone, you didn’t do except with Blackberry you could do some typing and that’s it.
So it’s um, it’s pretty exciting where, where it might go and, and it might go faster than we think. I think some of the things we imagine won’t happen and some of the things we can’t imagine will.
That’s a good way to put it. (laughs) And to finish off, is there anything else you would like for us to know about Adept Reality?
Um, you know, we’re, we’re very learning focused. Very excited about what this technology combined with people that really care about users and really care about learning um, can do. Um, so we’re super excited to be doing what we’re doing. And I really appreciate you taking the time to talk to me about it.
No problem. Thank you so much for granting me this interview with you. Like –
My pleasure. Any time.
I’m excited to see what all comes to be within the upcoming years.
You gotta stay in touch with us then.
I will. I will. I definitely will. Well –
Fantastic.
Thank you, Mr. Hugh, for uh, [crosstalk 00:21:52] giving us this interview.
My pleasure. Have a great day.
You too! Take care.
If you’d like to learn more about employee training environments using virtual reality, please go check out the Adept Reality website! We also have a blog post for “Using Virtual Reality for Adulting 101!”
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Take care,
Kyndall Bennett from Kyrabe Stories
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