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A fire breaks out in a hospital full of patients. You are the first responder, what do you do? While thankfully the scenario is rare, it will feel very real for the hospital staff who are put through their paces on the Virtual Rangers emergency simulation VR platform.

“We did everything we could to put them under pressure to see if they would make the right decision,” Virtual Rangers’ Matthieu Bracchetti told Delano. “Because it is training, you can do it again to get to know the procedure perfectly.”

B2B demand

The programme reflects the firm’s shift in direction towards B2B products. Originally specialised in entertainment, Bracchetti said it became clear that the games market was becoming saturated and there was greater demand in other areas. “Doing virtual training more efficiently was in real demand,” he said. “If we hadn’t adapted, it would have been the worst year possible.”

Matthieu Bracchetti of Virtual Rangers is pictured speaking at a Paperjam Club event in January 2019. Photo: Patricia Pitsch

Virtual Rangers are not focused on any old training—a number of commissions are coming from the health sector. In June they released a test version of an immersive VR programme to help distract young people undergoing treatment for serious illnesses like cancer.

“You'll go through several adventures, underwater or flying, going into the mines where there are dinosaurs,” the entrepreneur explains, adding that the adventures are synchronised with the gestures of the healthcare staff.

And the team is currently working on a covid simulator for the government, designed to train staff to have the correct responses and habits when entering a pandemic zone. Over the past 12 months, the projects have helped train over 3,000 people. If Bracchetti doesn’t have a medical background, he and his team are learning fast, largely thanks to being curious and asking “a lot of questions.”

Pivot from wellbeing to helicopters

The pandemic also forced German entrepreneur Mathias Keune to rethink his wellbeing VR startup Zenview. A successful VR mindfulness and CBT tool to help employees manage stress in the workplace, interest dried up when staff stopped going to the office.

Mathias Keune of Vizz is pictured at a Paperjam Club event in June 2019. Photo: Jan Hanrion

Keune’s response was to create Vizz, a VR and AR agency with customers spanning sectors including tourism, helicopter modelling as a sales tool for Airbus and, most recently, the government.

Keune says the biggest challenge is in explaining to B2B customers the potential applications. To raise awareness, he has created a VR/AR meetup and ultimately, he wants to build a community of people working in this sector in Luxembourg.

Tipping point

“It’s not like in Berlin or London, two regions where this kind of technology is more implemented,” he says, adding: “Most of the people we realise so far are quite open for using it. They say ‘I didn’t know this was possible’. But it’s still not the case that people will come to you and say we need a VR solution.”

If VR remains less known now, 2021 could be the tipping point for home use when Apple brings its VR/AR headset to market. Further down the line will be Apple Glass, smart glasses designed for augmented reality which will reach the market between 2021-2022. “There will be a huge market also for VR in advertising. As soon as enough consumers use these glasses, there will be marketing opportunities. That will be an interesting field to discover,” says Keune.