The 360dgrees.com Platform Now Supports Flat Video Gamification

Gamification
by Max Harris, Media Producer at 360dgrees.com
  • 360dgrees.com’s Interactive Reality platform empowers anyone to create immersive, interactive experiences
  • The platform now supports flat videos, allowing users to augment non-360 video with POS and interactive links between videos that the viewer can control.
  • The process is simply, easy, intuitive and powerful.

As Mixed Reality has rapidly expanded into the mainstream in 2017, devices and software platforms have become increasingly accessible and affordable. The Oculus Rift and HTC Vive dropped in price significantly (triggering major market share booms), consumer-grade headsets like the Oculus Go were announced, and development platforms like Apple’s ARKit and Nvidia’s Holodeck were opened.

360dgrees.com is committed to bringing Interactive Reality further into the mainstream with a video platform that empowers anyone to create dynamic immersive experiences. Simply upload 360 degree video content and augment it with interactivity through a simple and intuitive interface.

Now 360dgrees.com is excited to announce the introduction of flat video functionality, meaning that anyone, with any camera, can easily and quickly create and gamify dynamic, interactive, flowing experiences.

This is achieved by placing interactive hotspots into your videos – points of sales that can open forms, link to websites, or transition to other videos – empowering the creation of flowing narrative paths that the user can choose between. These hotspots can be moving or static; invisible or represented as virtual objects. The implication is that you can gamify your content, and create decision-based interactive videos that can be used for entertainment, education, or training. You can insert custom or preset icons, badges, timers, text, picture-in-picture interfaces – and the possibilities are limitless. The platform also provides analytics and insights into how users respond to the interactivity and the choices that they made.
Check out this interactive video created for Sydney Aquarium on the 360dgrees.com platform which employs both flat and 360 degree video. Click the interactive hotspots in the video represented by the shark and the “buy” graphics to trigger different sections of the video.

To sign up or learn more about the platform, visit 360dgrees.com. Our experts are waiting to empower you to create your own interactive experiences.

How Mixed Reality Gave Me Purpose & Made My Daughter Proud

How mixed reality gave me purpose and made my daughter proud
Written by Toby Ellis, CEO at 360dgrees.com 

I’ve worked in the Innovation and Technology sector for a few years now, but it was a simple yet really confronting question my 8-year-old daughter asked me at breakfast one morning that forced me to think about technology, what I do, why I do it and helped to pivot the focus of our entire organisation. I’ll get to her question in a minute… 

I want you to think about training. Imagine safety training for a warehouse.  There are 10 people in a room and none of them want to be there. They would all prefer to be back doing their jobs. They’re working from a folder and in that folder, is a question. That question is “should you be looking at your personal device while walking across the warehouse floor where there are forklifts and PT’s operating?” Now, no-one gets that question wrong, but it doesn’t change behaviour because the second they leave that training room they’re all on their mobile phones.  

Now I want you to reimagine that training using our 360dgree.com platform. First, the participant puts on the Mixed Reality headset and is immediately immersed in the environment. They are in the warehouse. They take the point of view of the person walking across the warehouse when they hear an SMS and a phone appears at the bottom of their view. They look down to read the text and in that split second, they are hit by a forklift.  Sounds a bit rough right, but not nearly as rough as not getting home to your kids. 

Did you know, that in Australia at the end of August 115 people had died as a result of workplace accidents and that that number is higher than the corresponding period last year?   Workplace accidents cripple people financially. A global number of cost is touted at $6bil but the impact on individual families is devastating. You see the problem is, traditional safety training produces poor real participation rates, low knowledge retention and is done in abstraction of consequence. 

Our Mixed Reality Training Platform creates immersive, interactive, gamified training experiences that makes it impossible to not be present and engaged during the training. We turn training into a game where you make decisions and learn by doing not by reading and data tells us that when you learn by doing you can lift knowledge retention from 5% to 75%. When you experience consequence, you get to feel the outcomes of your decisions and that’s what drives behavioural change.  

You become the forklift driver, the nurse, the student, the teacher. You’re not doing the training, you’re in the training. Actively participating, making decisions and experiencing the outcomes of those decisions. 
If safety and training are important to your organisation and you aren’t taking advantage of Mixed reality technology then please reach out to us today as we have a platform that can help you tomorrow. 
Now, back to that question my little girl asked. Matilda said “Daddy, how do you make your money?” At the time, my answer was “Ï help people see things differently using technology.” It was a cool answer but it lacked purpose. I wanted more purpose. My parents are teachers, my wife’s a teacher, my brothers served in the navy, I have cousins in the police force and friends who are nurses. I wanted more purpose in my work. I didn’t like my answer so I sought to change it. Now, our platform is making a real difference to businesses and communities. The next time my kids ask me how I make my money I am able to say, “Daddy helps people go back to their families the same way they went to work: Safe.”

To learn more about 360dgrees.com and how we drive real outcomes through virtual training, get in contact with us or visit 360dgrees.com.

VR and Education: Yes We Can

Virtual reality and education

Most people think 360 videos and virtual reality are a fad.

It is a trend destined for failure in a couple of years, maybe before.

On the other hand there is an important number of people that consider virtual reality and 360 degrees videos as an innovative and exciting way to play or entertain in an era defined by technology.

We don’t know what it is going to happen in the future, but we can do some predictions about what we think it is going to happen, in a realistic way.

The problem for virtual reality and 360 degrees videos is people’s attitude. They often consider VR primarily for gaming and entertainment, however, there are different aspects that they must take into consideration right now which can completely transform our society, our lifestyle and our education too.

Yes, education.

I am pretty sure you are wondering what is the connection between virtual reality and education. They seem so distant to you, Correct?

You are wrong.


One year ago, Michael Bodekaer Spoke in Ted program about how a virtual laboratory could revolutionize science class.

In his talk, Bodekaer highlighted how important virtual reality would be as a teaching instrument which will be 20 times more effective than traditional methods. Below the introduction of his talk:

Virtual reality is no longer part of some distant future, and it’s not just for gaming and entertainment anymore.

Michael Bodekaer wants to use it to make quality education more accessible. In this refreshing talk, he demos an idea that could revolutionize the way we teach science in schools.

According to Michael Bodekaer, virtual reality can be a new way of innovative teaching.

How?

You can experience working in a laboratory before going in a true lab, or you can do dangerous experiments before doing them for real, you can better understand what the teacher is explaining because you can “see” the lesson with your eyes.

Virtual reality is not just a different way to teach students, it is also more effective than a traditional frontal lesson.

Students are more engaged using virtual reality and they can improve faster with better results.

Google has been working for a long time on virtual reality program, called“Expedition”.

With this video on You Tube it shows us the impact virtual reality will have on education.

“I would like to go to the moon” said one child at the very beginning of the video.

Why not?

There is no place where virtual reality can’t take you.

Seeing the world with your eyes help to better understand what the teacher is talking about during the lesson and when you explore different places you have the chance to learn something new.

On the other hand the teacher has the role to drive this innovation technology in the right way to show the kids that there is something outside of their community they can experience and from which they can learn.

Is it not true that travelling is an amazing source of learning for everyone?

Google plans for virtual reality to be accessible for everyone, that means “not expensive”.

Thanks to google cardboards and smartphones we are able to create a simple and cheap headset suitable to everyone at school.

This sort of devices can actually revolutionize the learning process not just about the amount of information available, but about seeing and doing something, live an experience that the students can remember and assimilate.

With virtual reality students can bring the lesson to themselves in a very different way.

Remember when you were young. You spent a lot of time to prepare a test, and then the day after you completely forgot all what you had studied, sound familiar??

What about a school trip?

Learning is not just about gaining information, it is a matter of experience, about doing something or, at least having the right environment of learning to transform theory into practice.

So, why is VR and education are a really good match?

Because virtual reality is a kind of technology that is easily applicable and allows for the transfer of real knowledge to users, in this case, students.

There are endless applications to use Virtual reality for education:  you can go a field trip to Verone in Italy, to see the place where Romeo and Juliet lived, you can experience a trip under water or see the Great Wall of China and understand how long it would take to walk its length.

We know that learning is something more than getting information. Seeing with your eyes something new, experiencing the feeling to do something you have never done in your life before make your level of knowledge more effective and persistent.

I believe this new technology won’t be just a fad.

It is an innovative instrument that can give the world more than just entertainment, it can make the difference between two different concepts of teaching, the traditional one and the futuristic one.

It can change the world, because young generations are the future.

It all about a vision.

Pick up your smartphone, let’s start the lesson!

The humane side of virtual reality

Virtual reality is the ‘next big thing’, an industry on the precipice of being worth billions that will transform industries including entertainment, engineering and education.

What many people who are resistant to this fancy new technology don’t realise is that it also has the power to help those in need.

Virtual reality and 360degree video can help people to understand what’s beyond their own world. By giving people an understanding of a completely different reality you can prompt them to take actions.

One such example is The Guardian’s recent immersive content 6×9, which allowed users to virtually experience what it is like to be placed in solitary confinement in prison. The purpose of this interactive video was to create a dialogue around the psychological impact of prisoner isolation.

Elsewhere, one agency is using the power of 360degree video to connect WWII veterans with tours of war memorials around the world. This venture was produced to essentially provide a free travel experience to those too old to journey to the destinations that had been so impactful on their lives.

The same agency has worked on a project based in Zambia, which highlighted the plight of the disabled in developing nations. By demonstrating the struggles of someone with limited mobility, 360 video was able to play a part in raising awareness about specialty wheelchairs for people who live on rough and difficult to access terrain.

In Japan, Virtual Reality has been used to treat phantom limb pain, which affects amputees who are plagued by discomfort from body parts that no longer exist. Researchers have discovered it is possible to reduce the pain caused by this affliction by creating replica visuals of the amputated limbs.

Meanwhile, at charity galas in fancy hotels, guests of honour are able to put on a pair of virtual reality goggles to view first hand the work that the charity is doing on the other side of the world. Providing this up-close-and-personal experience can really bring home the charity’s message and help to increase donations.

And in the UK, Microsoft has worked with partners to help young people with autism by introducing them to coding as well as virtual reality. By introducing them to the idea of building something and then seeing it work, the goal was to show participants how they can transfer an interest in IT to a career in the industry.

Virtual reality isn’t just something you watch, it is something you experience. This provides the potential to open doors not just to profits, but to positive change in the world.