I would really love to see proper educational content from Meta but i bet this is not were the 'next money thing' is.
Imagine a catalog of proper real life skills you can actually train reasonable good:
- cooking
- soldering
- welding
- Tons of woodworking things
- ...
You could also go to a lot of makers of tools and offer them to digitalize their products for them so someone can actually exercise with a cheap to super high end machine like specific CNCs or table saws etc.
A previous company I worked at was using mixed reality years ago (>4) to train manufacturing operators on manufacturing processes.
It ended up looking like a simulated workbench with low-detail models of CAD parts that needed to be assembled - it was pretty cool. Engineering companies are very ready for this technology.
A local school here trains nurses in a VR environment that is situated inside a fully built out wing of a hospital. The headsets come down from the ceiling, all the equipment is real, but there are dummies in the beds, and some observation screens for others who supervise.
Why would you want to see it "from Meta"? There's no way a single company, that isn't even in the education business, can product that kind of content and keep it up to date. Meta's play is the right one – make an OS and software platform and let people build whatever they want on it.
I really want some good VR train sims. It’s vaguely educational! A standalone quest train sim would be an instant buy for me. Probably not for many other people.
Coincidentally, I saw Meta ads plastered all over London today - showcasing a welder who claims she practiced/learned welding with a Meta Oculus sitting at home.
Where would that fit in between watching others do it on YouTube for entertainment, and doing it for real where you can hold (or eat) the result at the end?
It seems one of the primary tradeoffs in edutainment is between actually learnable teaching and “content porn” where you sub content with food, cars, tech, etc.
When I think of truly learnable cooking videos the first thing that comes to mind is Kenji’s POV cooking videos / streams. Seems like something that could be relatively adaptable to a AR / MR format in a way that would differentiate it from other (still valid) content like the relatively educational food porn from Alex / @FrenchGuyCooking.
I'm actually making a version of Kenji's macaroni and cheese (except with shredded baby back rib meat added) for lunch as we speak! His channel is great.
I would also be interested in a Chef Jean Pierre simulator, where you learn classic French recipes in a subtly deranged metaverse with a butter-based economy.
As cheap to perform in as YouTube video, almost as vivid as the real thing, but again with most of the bullshit ("reality has a lot of detail") removed, just like with a YouTube video. Ideally, it would be suitable for experimenting with something you might want to then try out for real, but which would be too risky (time, money, embarrassment) to start with for real.
More hassle than a YouTube video, which is already more hassle than an article, but considering we’re talking about mixed reality, the ability to do the soldering, next to a detailed 3D model of exactly what you should be doing, in your line of sight, is a big selling point to me.
Imagine a catalog of proper real life skills you can actually train reasonable good:
- cooking - soldering - welding - Tons of woodworking things - ...
You could also go to a lot of makers of tools and offer them to digitalize their products for them so someone can actually exercise with a cheap to super high end machine like specific CNCs or table saws etc.