Last year pundits from industries including business, technology, and beyond declared 2016 as ‘The Year of VR’, leading to an incredible groundswell of activity from all manner of companies vying for space—bumping elbows trying to carve out identities for themselves and making it hard to figure out who is a leader and who is on the bandwagon.
We expected this.
The emergence of any new platform for storytelling is fraught with battles—disruptive technology is defined as such for a reason—and we’re sure that the rest of 2016 will be filled with surprises and challenges when it comes to virtual and augmented reality. Which platforms will emerge as the new standards? Which will fall by the wayside?
While this jockeying for position has been going on, INVIVO has been strategically building out its team of mixed reality experts, and developing its portfolio of VR and AR projects for some of the world’s leading medical device and pharmaceutical companies. Long before the “Year of VR”, INVIVO developed its first AR experience detailing the effects of iron overload on a virtual heart, liver and pancreas to educate doctors on the damage that excess iron can cause. We have continued to build on our expertise using each new technology in its pre-commercialization phase to bring scientific concepts and new medical device technologies to life. But you don’t have to take my word for it. Have a look at our Work page, or our free educational game for the HTC Vive.
Tethered VR headsets allow for high resolution, expansive experiences, but we knew that would only reach a subset of our users. Our experiences needed to be portable to the field. We set out to build a Google Cardboard prototype to showcase that we could maintain the quality and take it on the road.
And so the INVIVO Bloodstream Explorer VR app for IOS and Android was born.
The Explorer VR app allows users to explore human anatomy from impossible viewpoints. While it currently features environments that depict the bloodstream and central nervous system, the app is designed to be a platform for exploration of new virtual worlds.
Download Bloodstream Explorer now.
We know that most people downloading our application in these early days of VR adoption won’t yet have a Google Cardboard viewer for their smartphones, so we have created two viewing options—2D and 3D. To experience the 3D version we have included a simple sign-up form within the application for users to send us their contact information to obtain a custom printed INVIVO Google Cardboard viewer, completely free of charge (while quantities last).
Time to immerse yourself and enjoy!
Bloodstream VR is optimized for: iPhone 6 and 7 series, with iOS 8 or greater; Samsung Galaxy S6 and S7, with Marshmallow (6.0) or newer
By INVIVO Creative Director James Hackett