Beyond print and digital: XR’s potential for local media

XR is the most unique media experience since the emergence of the internet. As local media looks to engage younger audiences and offer an experience that stands out from the crowd, we need to begin experimenting with XR.”

Guy Tasaka, founder and managing partner of Tasaka Digital

If we were to tell you that more people have VR headsets in the U.S. than those who subscribe to a newspaper — print and digital subscriptions combined — would you consider it a viable new frontier? The reality is extended reality (XR) — the catch-all term encompassing virtual reality, augmented reality and mixed reality — has slowly grown under the radar. 

As the pandemic and the AI tidal wave have had our full attention over the past four years, XR has grown in installed base — primarily driven by Meta's (previously known as Facebook) big investment in the Metaverse.

Meta, who in 2014 purchased Oculus, an early mover in the VR movement, has made the largest investment in driving adoption. However, like many technologies before, the party really started when Apple showed up. This time, the attention brought to its Vision Pro made people look harder at XR technology. For those who need a reminder of the near past, PDAs (personal digital assistants), mp3 players, smartphones, tablets and smartwatches all existed before the iPod, iPhone, iPad and Apple Watch; Apple still made us question how we ever lived without these.

The confluence of Meta, Apple and Sony with its PS5 add-on has moved the VR headset beyond its original gaming niche. Globally, ByteDance, the owner of TikTok, acquired Pico in 2021.

What is XR?

XR is the broader term that includes several different technologies with very different use cases. 

VR, or virtual reality, is an immersive experience in which you are in the environment, fully consumed, and able to interact with elements around you. The early use cases were gaming and navigating virtual worlds. The VR experience also takes advantage of VR headsets’ stereoscopic or 3D elements. The 3D capabilities open opportunities in education and entertainment. All those 3D movies from the past few decades will never look better than in these headsets. 

AR, or augmented reality, involves overlaying digital elements on real-world views. The best example of AR is Pokemon Go, where digital elements are put into a real-world environment viewable through the user's smartphone.

MR, or mixed reality, is the overlaying of digital elements into a real-world view. At the same time, the user can interact with the elements similar to how they can interact in a virtual world. MR opens immense opportunities in business productivity and advertising.

Non-believers

I must admit that I was the biggest naysayer about XR. It was probably because I was early. I first saw them at CES in the early 2010s, when users demonstrated giant headsets tethered to gaming computers, known as PCVR. The players using the VR headsets were also tethered to a harness as they walked on a 360 treadmill to simulate movement in their virtual worlds.

Then came Google Cardboard: Google's effort to lower the friction for adoption by putting your smartphone in a cardboard headset. It was cool but underwhelming.

The world changed for VR in 2019 when Forbes dubbed it “the year VR gets real.” It marked the release of the first self-contained VR headset. No longer would users need to be linked to a gaming computer. The new VR headsets were essentially smartphones with lenses built in. The new Oculus Quest had its own app store built in, though it wasn’t very robust. Eventually, players like Vive and Pico launched similar self-contained headsets for the business market. The Oculus, now Meta Quest 2, soon became the best-selling VR headset. According to research firm IDC, at the end of 2023, Meta had a 62% share of the global market. A distant second was Pico. Don't expect to find the Pico headset at your local Best Buy. They have chosen to target countries outside the U.S. where the Meta Quest is unavailable.

As I mentioned earlier, I was a non-believer until that changed. I was working on a project and had to look at something in a VR environment, so I borrowed my daughter’s Meta Quest 2. My world changed. It was not what I remembered or thought at all. My last VR experience was five years earlier — watching my son play Fruit Ninja while tethered to a computer. The Quest 2 was a self-contained (not tethered) totally immersive experience. I watched 360-degree virtual tours of cities around the world. I sat on a stage with John Legend, watching him a few feet away in 180-degree 3D. I watched a basketball game on a 12-foot screen in my living room, a virtual home theater and a 50-foot screen in a vintage theater. I was able to work at "my desk" with three monitors surrounding me, interacting with them in real time as though they were actual monitors.

A believer

I had never bought into existing virtual worlds as an avatar (no judgment) and was a little jaded by early 360 VR games, but I saw its expanded use case possibilities. I upgraded to Meta Quest 3. The screen resolution is higher, lens better and processor faster. The form factor is a little friendlier as it sat better on my head. I also got prescription lenses which are attached via magnets so I wouldn't have to wear glasses. It was game changing.

Terminology

There are four different immersive experiences in the XR headset. The first is the 360 (or 360-degree) VR experience. That allows you to see the world as if you were there. Look left, look right, look up and down, you are there. Look behind you and you’ll see what you usually can’t see in any other medium. The 360 environment is fantastic for being in virtual worlds and real worlds and is a great tour experience. Over the years, you probably have seen 360 VR videos on YouTube where you scroll your pointer and see around you. It’s not even close to what it looks like in a VR headset.

The second experience is a 3D (3-dimensional/stereoscopic) 360 VR experience. It is the “big boy” setup in the scope of creator tools. It requires numerous cameras replicating stereoscopic views with 360 coverage, stitched together to create a single image. These views are the rarest of the four.

The third view is my favorite. It is a 3D 180 VR experience. It is created with a high-resolution camera with two lenses spaced at the same distance as human eyes. The two images are stitched together in the camera and delivered as a single image with each eye’s view being put together either side by side or one above the other. The video player puts it into stereo format on playback. This image is immersive, though it is bound by borders in 180 degrees of your view, and you cannot see behind you. 

The newest view is called spatial view. It was initially created by the Apple Vision Pro but is now available in the Meta Quest. It is very similar to the 3D 180 view in the previous experience, but it is not 180 degrees. Imagine it is like watching a 3D movie on a TV or in a frame. It is the easiest to create as Apple has built spatial video capture into the iPhone 15 Pro.

Easy creation and workflow

We are in year five of the “new VR” with self-contained headsets, which have accelerated adoption. So what about content creation? XR cameras have gotten better and cheaper, and more importantly, the creation workflow has gotten easier and more affordable. Consider an enterprise 3D 8K 360 camera now costs $5,000 and a prosumer 8K 360 camera costs $500. The iPhone 15 Pro natively shoots spatial video. Cameras like the Kandao QooCam EGO give you the power to shoot spatial video for under $300. Many of these cameras come with simplified editing tools, and most video editing software like Final Cut Pro, Adobe Premiere or DaVinci Resolve natively support 3D video editing.

Distribution

You’ve shot your video on inexpensive cameras and edited it in a simplified workflow, but how do you get it to a headset? At this stage of the XR revolution, the simplest way to distribute your content is via a VR-enabled website and YouTube VR. Inside Meta Quest are several installed native apps. One is a VR-enabled browser, and the other is YouTube VR.

If you are not convinced you want to dive into VR but just want to see what the content looks like, you can access it from the 2d (two-dimensional) world at vr.youtube.com. You’ll notice that much of the content is experimental, with demonstrations, instructional videos and incredible footage that will blow you away when viewed with a headset. Something else that will jump out at you is a lot of footage from four to five years ago when a lot of effort from big technology and media companies was spent on evangelizing VR. Another open site for the public to distribute VR content is https://deovr.com/.

Why does XR matter to the local media publisher?

We have to view every new medium as an opportunity. We must first watch adoption signals. Is the audience moving toward the medium? Is the size of the medium growing and at what rate? Is it vastly different from what we have now? Most importantly, we must first think about business models and platform monetization and not give up on it.

XR is the most unique media experience since the emergence of the internet. As local media looks to engage younger audiences and offer an experience that stands out from the crowd, we need to begin experimenting with XR.

We are all familiar with widescreen movies. They were first created by movie studios and theater owners who needed a “hook” to bring people back to theaters after the introduction of television in the 1950s. They were attempting to create a “plus” experience from television. We need that!

In 2024 and beyond, media publishers must find a “plus” experience for media and local marketing. Can XR be the hook? In the next column, we'll explore use cases for local publishers.

Guy Tasaka is a seasoned media professional with a 35-year track record of leading change in the industry. He has collaborated with renowned organizations such as Macworld Magazine, Ziff-Davis and The New York Times, where he honed his expertise in research, strategy, marketing and product management. As the former chief digital officer at Calkins Media, Guy was acknowledged as the Local Media Association's Innovator of the Year for his work in advancing OTT and digital video platforms for local news organizations. He is also the founder and managing partner of Tasaka Digital, specializing in helping media and technology companies navigate business transformations using his extensive experience and forward-thinking approach. Guy can be reached at guy@tasakadigital.com.