New XRDC Healthcare Report offers insight into how AR/VR/MR is shaping medicine

Hey devs! Today the UBM Game Network, organizer of the Game Developers Conference (GDC) and XRDC, is proud to present a very special AR/VR Healthcare Report!

It’s completely free to download and designed to give you a concise overview of how leading experts believe virtual reality, augmented reality, and mixed reality technologies are shaping the state and future of healthcare.

You can expect insight from luminaries like CheckPoint director Dr. Jennifer Hazel, veteran game developer and former Chief Game Designer at Google Noah Falstein, and Merck innovation specialist Zach Pinner on cutting-edge topics like how VR is being used in exposure therapy, drug discovery, and neuroscience.

For more information and to access the full report, download it for free here!

This topic is important enough that at XRDC 2018 there will be an entire track of talks dedicated to how these technologies are revolutionizing healthcare by opening up new avenues of healing, improving the quality of care and reducing the risks and costs of treatment.

Analysts expect the market for VR, AR, and MR in healthcare to grow rapidly, with an estimated market value ranging from $3 to $10 billion by 2023. With that in mind, XRDC organizers surveyed some top minds in healthcare, technology, game development, and academia about how they’re seeing these technologies used to improve treatments, foster pharmaceutical discoveries, and more.

To give you a taste of what's in store when you download the full (free!) report, here's an excerpt featuring the insight of veteran game developer and former Google Chief Game Designer Noah Falstein.

Tell us about yourself and your work in VR/AR

Falstein: I’ve been in the game industry since 1980, working on hundreds of titles over the years. Like many others, I was exposed to VR early on (got a demo of VPL from Jaron Lanier himself in 1985) and was disappointed at how slowly it advanced – and then was turned from skeptic to believer by the latest round of VR systems a few years ago. Until just recently I was Chief Game Designer at Google, where I worked closely with both the Tango AR and Daydream VR teams. I left Google in April of this year because I wanted to work on development of VR titles – specifically in the areas of VR storytelling, and in Neurogaming/games for health.

How can neuroscience help to create a better VR/AR experience?

Falstein: By giving us a better understanding of how the brain works in concert with our visual perception and inner-ear vestibular system to create the experiences we have in VR/AR. For example, visual system researchers have learned that we process foveal vision (the actually small area directly in our field of view) differently from our peripheral vision. Peripheral vision does a lot to help orient us in 3D space, and if the information in our peripheral view is out of sync with how our inner ear tells us our body is moving, it can be disturbing – but we’ve learned that graying-out just the peripheral view when you’re moving the player in VR, while keeping a small circle of foveal view can convey the sense of movement without causing distress. That’s just one example.

Register for XRDC 2018 early at a discounted rate!

XRDC is happening October 29th and 30th in San Francisco at the Westin St. Francis Hotel. Now that registration is open, you'll want to look over XRDC passes and prices and register early to get the best deal! Use the promo code B600 by June 13 to save an additional $200 (a total savings of $600)!

For more details about XRDC, which is produced by organizers of the Game Developers Conference, check out the official XRDC website. You can also subscribe to regular XRDC updates via email, Twitter and Facebook.

Gamasutra, XRDC, and GDC are sibling organizations under parent UBM Americas