Virtual und Augmented Reality in NRW

Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality have recently been recognized as potential topics for the future - not only in industry circles but also in a broader public. Yet these technical approaches are not new. The beginnings of the technology go back to the first Head-Mounted-Displays (HMD), which came from military research in the early 1990s and made industrially useful applications possible. The fact that this technology only made the leap into widespread use within the industry is due not only to the high costs for the necessary computer technology and the high know-how requirements for operation at the time but also to the low wearing comfort of HMDs. The resulting rear projection-based systems such as CAVEs and Responsive Workbenches, on the other hand, have at least contributed to the spread of VR technology within the global automotive and aerospace industries. VR technology had never really made the leap into other industries. AR applications have been researched very intensively within the framework of national funding projects since their emergence in the early 2000s at the latest, and their application in the field of simulation and support of industrial maintenance tasks have been evaluated. Here, too, the beginnings of AR technology were not able to be used by a broad mass due to its sophisticated use and high costs.

With the advent of powerful and easy-to-use smartphones, VR/AR technology now appears to be suitable for the mass market:

•  With the aforementioned Pokémon Go, Google CardBoard as an output device or various VR gaming systems, popular applications for the broad masses are successful in the market. The momentum in this sector remains high or is accelerating (cf. CES 2017, Announcements by Facebook).
•  In addition, companies see enormous potential for raising their customer communication to a new level. Various companies would like to take advantage of the new opportunities and offer their customers new 360-degree experiences.
• The two technologies are also suitable for processing media content - several high-quality showcases and applications have already been developed to date.
• Finally, VR and AR systems can be used to increase productivity and organize workflows more efficiently (e.g., in production, maintenance of complex machines, etc.).

As a result, numerous start-ups have been founded in Germany and especially in NRW in order to satisfy the immensely increased demand for VR/AR content and related services. However, this growth opportunity for the (media) economic location NRW has not yet been investigated. Thus, apart from anecdotal evidence, it is not known which companies are actually working on these technologies, which competences are available at the location and, above all, which needs exist among the companies with regard to qualification, technological promotion and networking. These questions form the core of the study.