9 Jun 2023
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Mike Boland
AWE Talks: XR's State of the Union
AWE USA 2023
Welcome back to AWE Talks, our series that revisits the most engaging content from AWE’s catalog of conference sessions. Now that AWE USA 2023 has concluded, we have a fresh batch of sessions to dive into.
And what better way to enter into this new season of AWE Talks than Conference Chair Ori Inbar's welcome address? Always serving as a sort of XR state of the union, it carried Inbar's signature mix of insight, humor, and a little magic.
See the summarized takeaways below, along with the full session video. Stay tuned for more video highlights each week and check out the full library on awe.live and AWE’s YouTube Channel.
Speaker:
Ori Inbar - Co-Founder, CEO and Chief Hologram, AWE
– What's the current state of XR? It's far from fully actualized, but progressing nicely.
– Though there's skepticism in the broader tech world, the fact is that XR is thriving.
– Or to paraphrase Galileo, there are claims that XR is dead....and yet, it moves.
– To quantify that, it has grown 30 percent annually over the past several years.
– Moreover, 1.2 billion people globally have experienced AR in some form.
– Beyond users, brand adoption is strong for AR marketing, commerce, and try-ons
– But we should also acknowledge the challenges: XR is hard.
– For example, XR hardware is based on optics so it doesn't follow Moore's law.
– Then again, look at how far the hardware has come in only the past few years.
– We have a strong baseline of devices on which startups can innovate.
– That wasn't the case five years ago, when costly tethered VR was the standard.
– Other milestones include Quest 3 and the Google/Qualcomm/Samsung alliance.
– And let's not forget Apple Vision Pro (which wasn't yet unveiled before this talk)
– For passthrough devices like Quest 3 and AVP, 2023 could be the year of AR on VR.
– It’s also the year of AI, given all the excitement. And AI is good for XR
– AI accelerates XR by powering its functionality and generating 3D assets
– Correspondingly, XR is the interface for AI considering interaction with 3D content.
– So despite all its challenges, XR is moving along and has ample opportunity ahead.
– To put it differently, and back to Galileo, XR is challenged... but yet it's everywhere.
For more color and holographic action, check out the full video below. And stay tuned for next week when we'll cover Inbar's subsequent fireside chat with Neal Stephenson.
Want more XR insights and multimedia? ARtillery Intelligence offers an indexed and searchable library of XR intelligence known as ARtillery Pro. See more here. 
