Book Excerpt: Why would I want to create 360 video for learning?

Here’s another sneak peak of some new material from our next book, due out in October. Make sure to keep your eyes peeled for a sneak peek of the cover coming soon!


The best reason to use VR for learning is to let your audience experience a situation. If you use VR, the participant will feel like they are part of the experience — that they are actually there and they are experiencing it in real time, leading to them being more prepared when the situation does arise. There are lots of examples of this being successful — in a tragic case, employees at a Walmart had done active shooter VR training only months before an actual active shooter situation. Interviewed in the aftermath, they reported feeling less panicked and more prepared, and probably saved lives.

VR can also be used to simulate human interaction. This is amazing for learning soft skills and communication — the user will feel as if they are actually talking to the person in the headset. This can be incredibly powerful — take the example of “The Last Goodbye,” a VR piece where the user can interact with a Holocaust survivor returning to his camp. If you were learning history for the first time, you’d likely find an experience like this far more impactful than reading words on a page or passively watching a film.

One key thing to note here — using avatars for pieces like this just doesn’t cut it. There is a concept called the uncanny valley — put simply, something LOOKS real but the mind can detect that it isn’t real, and it causes a disconnect. The only way to make pieces like this truly impactful on a mass scale is to use real people and capture them in 360 video or use volumetric capture (although this is a more expensive option). Another note about avatars — to have anything that does look close to real in VR will requite a lot of computing power, which will limit how widely you can distribute a piece. And lest you think using avatars is cheaper, in truth, it is actually less expensive to shoot 360 video.

Look, look: We Wrote a Book!

Yeah, I’m finally doing the damn thing.

This October, look out for the initial release of “A Practical Guide to Making VR That Changes the World,” coming via Apple Books. I’m shaking things up for my third book, based on learnings from my first two books (available on Amazon here and here); namely, that any writing about new technology gets dated very, very quickly. So rather than put out a book and call it a day, I’ll be building in public and adding new chapters to the book on a regular basis as the industry develops.

To tide you over until the book comes out, I’ll be releasing some new material every other week on this blog, as well as more information about how to order the book and a cover preview.

Chapter one: The 101 on 360

First things first — there is a lot of bad 360 video out there. Like, vomit-inducing bad. Like, quick MTV-style jump cuts that work great on flat screens but take users out of the immersive experience in 360. Like, boring and non-interactive (oh look, a 360 video of Paris. It’s pretty and interesting for all of 30 seconds). Like, who am I and what I am doing here and why is this in 360 bad. I could go on and on, but you get the gist.

The point is that just because you have the tools to make 360 video, that doesn’t mean you should. Think of VR like you think of social media — everyone can use it, but not everyone should, for every use case. As the space grows, we’ll likely see levels emerge, just as we have with social media. Big brands and companies will hire specialized agencies while individuals who just want to have fun and make content will be able to create on their own.

The absolute number one cardinal rule you should always remember as you may 360 VR is this: the camera is the user. Seriously, I would tattoo this on my forehead if it wouldn’t break my mother’s heart. No matter what, the user is part of the action, and they need to have a defined role. Do not put them in the position of being a wallflower who observes the action unless it is a deliberate narrative choice. Do not put them in an unnatural position (I once saw a corporate VR piece where the user sat in the middle of a conference table, an action that would surely get you fired in real life). Do not make the user ten feet tall or three feet tall unless it is part of the story (five foot six is an average height that mirrors normal human interaction).

The next section of the book is meant to help you get started in your thinking about 360 video. Think of it as a 101 level course that you take in college — you’ll get the fundamentals, but you’ll still need more learning and assistance to get to mastery. As you read, you’ll get some key definitions and tips, as well as things to watch out for and questions to ask yourself and your organization.

How Custom VR Training Saves Your Organization Money

A few years ago, I was in a meeting with a client and she shared a competitor’s bid with me. For the same as it cost to create a custom VR piece, this company wanted to license a pre-created VR piece and charge a per seat fee -- meaning that as the piece succeeded and more people wanted to use it, the company would have to pay more. She was showing me this because she believed our fee had to be higher -- when I told her she could have her own custom piece to own free and clear for the same price, she couldn’t believe it. 

The market is filling up with organizations that license off the shelf VR training content, and for some organizations, they make sense. An organization of less than a thousand people, for example, shouldn’t be paying for custom VR work -- even if everyone went through a piece a few times, it would still be cheaper than making something bespoke. But for organizations with thousands of employees, it makes sense to create a custom solution. Here’s the math:

Let’s say an organization spends $150,000 on a VR piece, which will get you something pretty solid. Add in an additional $25,000 for a fleet of headsets (and that’s at the high end). So you’re looking at a $175,000 total spend. If the organization has 2000 employees who use the piece, then you’re looking at less than $100 per use; if you go up to 3000, that’s just under $60 and so on, until you’re training massive amounts of people for not a lot of money. And the headset costs are fixed, so if you create more pieces, you get an even bigger bang for your buck. 

Plus, you control the content. Check out some of the behind the scenes shots at the end of the post; they’re from a custom shoot we did for a client this weekend. The client collaborated with us on the script to make sure we were teaching exactly what they wanted employees to learn, and we shot in one of their locations and used their branding. That resonates with employees far more than something generic. 

“But Cortney!” you might say, “what about avatar programs where I can just swap in new scripts? Isn’t that cheaper than a shoot?” 

Well...no. First off, you’re still going to pay a licensing and per seat fee for those programs. Secondly, swapping in scripts isn’t all that easy and it still requires hiring voice actors, unless you want everyone to sound like a robot. And third, talking to a videogame character versus talking to an actual person? Which do you think has a greater emotional impact? 

If you want to start making great custom VR training content that reflects your organization’s values and priorities, drop us a line!