Should developers be ignoring AR and VR? That and more from the week in software engineering

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'I think that there's going to be many products and use cases that would actually be less useful in XR'

I attended XRDC in San Francisco this week, a developer conference covering all things augmented reality, virtual reality and the stuff in between. What I took away from the event's presentations and panels is that, with the wow factor of AR and VR now years in the past, the industry is experiencing somewhat of a lull. And that might be able to be said for getting consumer attention and developer attention.

While most experts think the (far) future is still bright for XR software and hardware, the next several years in the industry could be spent on not-so-exciting things, like iterating sensors and adopting faster wireless networking -- all preparation for, hopefully, a breakthrough in adoption in the following years. So, I asked several XRDC attendees about how they see the state of XR today and whether they think now is a good time for most developers to consider getting in. Here's what they had to say.

The Q & A below has been edited for brevity and clarity.

Do you think AR/VR is something pretty much all developers should gain some experience with today, or will these technologies remain niche in software for the foreseeable future?

• Scott Montgomerie, CEO at Scope AR: I think, as developers, we should be well-versed in a lot of different technologies. I don't think AR/VR is necessarily one of those things -- a "must have." ... I think in the next few years, you're going to see a bunch of really interesting things coming out with AR, stuff to do with faces, authentication and the camera as a user interface … So [AR/VR] is certainly not a must-have right now. But yeah, in the next three-to-five years, I can see it actually becoming much more prevalent.
• Thomas Leahy, CTO at Embodied Labs: No, I think that there's going to be many products and use cases that would actually be less useful in XR, just given the extra setup that there is to get started with an app or a product. You know, like watching a movie in a theater is better in the theater than a headset. So, with that in mind, I think XR is not for everything.
• Chris Morse, interactive visualization at SHoP Architects: I think it'd be 10, 15 or 20 years down the road when everyone has glasses. Yes, then all your phone apps are going to also have [AR glasses components]. You know, like you have the Apple Watch version today. So, the [need to learn AR] is going to happen, but I think it's going to be a while.

Which traditional software-building skills or experiences best translate to AR/VR development?

• Alex Silkin, CTO at Survios: Game development. If you come from that background, if you know how to use an existing game engine like Unity or Unreal, it really sets you up for success. You already have your mind oriented around 3D graphics and linear algebra transformations.
• Dan Miller, AR/VR evangelist at Unity: Basically [the whole Unity] tech stack is in C# and right now we are kind of evolving some of our development paradigms. We're going from object-oriented to data-oriented.
• Leahy: First one would be rapid prototyping. I think people and groups of think teams who are building something in XR, they usually build it really fast and validate it, like the MVP approach … The second: The people who are implementing [AR and VR] are also usually the same people designing it. So someone's technical skills are very important, but also the design skills.

In the next five years, will it be entertainment, enterprise or education that we'll see the biggest jump in AR/VR?

• Elizabeth Hyman, CEO at XR Association: What's got me very excited [in addition to gaming] is the enterprise space and the potential for really amazing societal impact. … Engineering and Architecture are already taking this up in a big way. Retail is, obviously, particularly in the AR space … I could see the hospitality industry using VR as a way of really enticing people to want to come to this hotel or even go on that resort experience. There is some initial thought and conversation around, you know, XR as a tool for helping in the courtroom. I don't know the specifics at this point, but I think that could be very interesting if you think about the sensitivity of witnesses confronting the person who is at issue.
• Silkin: I think we're still at that stage where gaming is going to continue driving things. I'm really excited about PlayStation VR 2 to an Oculus Quest 2, and honestly I feel like after those mainstream platforms have higher specs, have better tracking and have an even better price point, the user base is going to grow, consumers are going to become even more comfortable with the devices, and the other more exciting, potentially more impactful-to-society applications are going to come.

Do you think there's any benefit for devs picking a lane between entertainment, education or enterprise?

• Miller: I think [AR/VR devs skills] are fairly portable between industries. And I think that's really something that we're enabling at Unity. I mean, obviously, for the industry specific kind of knowledge, deeper skills are going to be applicable. You're thinking about kind of the architecture space where they're using AR/VR to kind of visualize buildings or offices and things before they're built. If they have some of that specific architectural knowledge, they know what they need to see and the information and things like that.
• Montgomerie: The entertainment space has much more emphasis on the polished user experience. So, if you're gonna get into that, focusing on things like shaders and really high-fidelity models and stuff like that, that's probably where you want to go.

How about your long-term predictions for hardware and platforms? Are you betting on mobile, smart glasses or VR headsets?

• Montgomerie: I mean, we're all in on enterprise AR. I think that's one of the only areas that's making money in in AR these days. ... I think 5G will be very interesting. It's going to allow us to offload a lot of compute to the local cell phone tower. And that'll extend battery life, reduce the amount of processing power you're going to be required and turn the displays in the glasses into, basically, glorified video displays. So I think that's probably where we go in the next three-to-five years to have a really good experience.
• Miller: We might see kind of a little bit of a crossover between [AR and VR]. So, it's pass-through video in VR headsets and stuff like that. But really, I kind of see them all continue to advance and some of the tech starting to potentially, you know, assist one of the other technologies.
• Silkin: In like 10-15 years, it has to be an all-in-one kind of glasses. The AR or VR will be based on how many pixels are covered by the rendered image ... And ideally in the future, it's just contact lenses that you stick in. Hopefully, we just swap out the eyes entirely, to be honest. And then we can just zoom into things and just like completely transformed our lives.

What was the most impressive piece of AR or VR technology you saw this year?

• Morse: My answer so far is the HoloLens 2. I had the opportunity to try it briefly a few weeks ago at Unite. With the first HoloLens, the first thing people complain about is the field of view. And it was sort of small. But for me, I go back to the UI and UX. The actual limitation was I'm doing these really awkward gestures that are difficult to use. And I have to point with my head. The HoloLens 2, there's a window and I want to move over there, I don't even think. I grab it and move it over, and it had surprisingly natural interactions compared to the awkwardness [of the first HoloLens]. And the field of view is bigger, too. (Microsoft, the maker of the HoloLens, is LinkedIn's parent company.) 
• Miller: At Unite Copenhagen, there was a partner called Varjo and they actually have a VR headset with stereoscopic color cameras on the front, so you're seeing into the real world. ... The setup they had on our show floor was there was a real Volvo right here, and there was a completely digital one [next to it]. It's like this super high-res VR headset, so you're doing a double take and you have to, like, touch it because you kind of forget which one is real.

Tech updates...

• Python 3.8 was released
• .NET Core 3.1 preview was released
• Safari Technology preview 94 was released

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What was the most interesting thing to you this week in software engineering? Please join the conversation in the comments below. See you next week!