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Reality Check is a monthly newsletter where we share our learnings in the immersive technology space - we’re all about educating, not selling.

Hello and welcome to the January edition of Reality Check.

Happy New Year 2021! We hope you all were able to find some time over the holiday break for some downtime, rest and relaxation.

Whilst we considered pausing the newsletter this month, thinking there wouldn't be much news to cover, it seems many in the industry were busy as ever throughout December with plenty to cover below.

2020 saw rapid adoption of immersive technologies across a range of sectors at work, and judging by some early indications from VR game developers talking holiday sales revenues, at home as well. 

It looks like 2021 is set to continue the trend as immersive technologies find ever more relevance in our everyday lives, enabling us to connect virtually and remotely in new ways, as the Western governments struggle to cope with the ongoing pandemic.

We hope you enjoy this first edition of the year and be sure to tell others about the newsletter if you think they would find it interesting too!

Best Regards,
Sam Watts
Immersive Partnerships Director
Make Real Ltd


If you do not want to receive more of these newsletters, please do not hesitate to hit the unsubscribe button at the bottom of this newsletter and we'll promise not to contact you again.

Enhancing Soft Skills Training with Virtual Reality

Interpersonal soft skills training is nothing new, and many enterprises making employees undertake roleplaying sessions around diversity and inclusion (D&I), communication, leadership and team building. However, there are a number of barriers to effective learning outcomes that hinder learners’ engagement with content and facilitators’ provision of soft skills training. This article on Training Industry websote looks at how VR can overcome these and provide benefits.

Exploring Coaching in VR

As part of his research for his new book on coaching technology, which we spoke to him about too, professional coach Sam Isaacson spent some time trying out a range of VR experiences to trial coaching some willing participants.

Tyne and Wear Metro drivers use VR to test trains

Virtual reality is being used by Tyne and Wear Metro drivers to test a new fleet of trains in a Covid-secure way. The computer-generated images give drivers a virtual tour of the controls and layout of the cabs so they can provide feedback before they are built. Metro operator Nexus said the headsets were a "vital tool" to get train crews ready for the new £362m fleet (via BBC News).

Reality Check: Looking Back at AR in 2020

Tom Emrich has been covering xR for years so what he doesn't know or think, probably isn't worth it. Here he revisits his predictions for AR made at the start of the year. Did he get it right? Was he on the money and did all that knowledge stack up? Read on to find out how accurate he was. Also, cool name bro.

VR Comfort Settings Checklist & Glossary

For those who have been playing or developing VR content for years, it might seem ‘obvious’ what kind of settings are expected to be included for player comfort. Yet for new players and developers alike, the confusing sea of VR comfort terms is far from straightforward. So here’s a checklist and glossary of ‘essential’ VR comfort settings that developers should clearly communicate to potential customers about their VR game or experience (via RoadtoVR).

VR Locomotion Vault

No silver bullet exists for VR locomotion. Many scientific papers have proposed new locomotion techniques, some have compared techniques, and there have been attempts to classify locomotion types into taxonomies. The goal is to help unify research in this field by creating a shared community-sourced database of locomotion techniques and evaluation criteria. Starting with the vault, this is proposed to be followed with a workshop at the next IEEEVR event.

BT Collaborates with DoubleMe for Holoportation in 2021

BT, formerly British Telecom, has announced a collaboration with holographic reality start-up DoubleMe on the launch of a business‐to‐consumer (B2C) service, TwinWorld, in 2021. We used an earlier version of the HoloPortal application with Microsoft Kinect to capture H.G.Wells for the CreativeXR Time Machine project with The Old Market Theatre, Hove in 2019.

Cooperative Innovations Announces Curatours

Friends of the studio, Cooperative Innovations (who also developed the excellent social VR game 'Spaceteam VR') have announced their new product aimed at museums. Curatours is the place to find cultural virtual tours where you can socialise. That means you can visit an art exhibition or museum online with friends and family. Everyone can explore and experience the tours using a web browser, tablet, smartphone or virtual reality headset.
Constraining Dense Hand Surface Tracking with Elasticity
Facebook Research Labs have released a new video and accompanying paper covering their work on impressive hand-tracking experiments.
Popular VR 3D Modelling Application 'Gravity Sketch' Goes Free
On January 25th 2021, Gravity Sketch is going free on all platforms to all individual users. This move allows us the company to provide even more people with the creative tool set and build up their ecosystem of products.
Adobe Flash Rides Off Into the Sunset
Adobe scheduled the end of support for its famous Flash software on December 31st, 2020, and taht day has passed. While Adobe won’t start blocking Flash content until January 12th, major browsers will shut it all down tomorrow and Microsoft will block it in most versions of Windows. If you still have some elearning content built in Flash, it's time to update it to something more immersive. It’s over.
Social gaming platform 'RecRoom' Scores $20M Further Investment
Social gaming platform Rec Room has scored some new funding as it aims to bring its once VR-centric world to every major gaming platform out there. The startup has closed a $20 million Series C led by Madrona Venture Group. Existing investors, including First Round Capital, Index, Sequoia and DAG, also participated in the round. They’ve raised just shy of $50 million to date.

Your Backstage Pass To Jean-Michel Jarre’s Virtual NYE Concert

"For New Years Eve this year, I set out to discover a digital reincarnation of the Notre-Dame Cathedral in VRChat, the venue for Welcome to the Other Side, a virtual concert by electronic music legend Jean-Michel Jarre." (via VRScout).
Starry Night in 3D
Explore Vin van Gogh's beloevd painting in astonishing detail in this behind-the-scenes look at a new imaging tool It's hosted on Sketchfab so you can bring it into your room in AR using your phone or tablet too!

Tetris Effect Updated with Multiplayer and VR Support. Grab a £1 Xbox Game Pass trial to try it out now!

MS Flight Simulator VR support added for all headset owners thanks to OpenXR compatibility (& is also available via the £1 Xbox Game Pass 3-month trial!)

Make Real
2020 End of Year Review


Goodbye 2020! Good riddance many would say and whilst we wouldn’t disagree that it’s been an unusual, topsy-turvy, challenging year, creating difficult situations for many, we are here to reflect upon the positives of the year too. Fortunately of which, there were many for the team and studio, from awards to projects and welcoming new faces. Read more about how it went for us.
We have moved! We are now situated in Plus X Brighton Innovation Hub, ready to host workshops, meetings and immersive technology demos in 2021. Please note our change of address but more importantly that we have removed our landline phone system. The 0845 number is no longer active, please contact us via details you may already have for your direct contacts at the studio or via our info@makereal.co.uk email address for general enquiries.
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