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TQ XR and the Metaverse

Learn from our experts as they discuss why XR and the Metaverse is an evolution of the
internet that enables a user to move beyond browsing and creating new experiences for not
just our clients but for our people too.

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 T a b le o f c o n t e n t s

 De s c rip t ion

 Tra n scrip t

 E xe rcise f ile s

 Discu ssio n

 R e l a t e d Co u r s e s

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XR and the Metaverse Preshow

XR and the Metaverse Preshow

Hi. It's Paul here, and I want to welcome you to the extended reality and metaverse TQ topic. This is

absolutely one of my favorite topics. With extended reality or XR, we get to bring the virtual and

physical worlds together, and that's a dream come true to a science-fiction aficionado like myself.
And I cannot think of a better location to talk to you about the technologically advanced concepts of

XR and the metaverse than right here at one of my favorite places, the Computer History Museum

in the heart of Silicon Valley, California. The Computer History Museum is a personal passion of

mine, and I'm honored to serve on the board of the museum, and Accenture is a proud sponsor and

partner with the museum as well. I'll explain more about that in a minute. Extended reality is an

umbrella term encompassing any immersive technology that blends digital content with the real

world. The term XR covers the spectrum of experiences ranging from augmented reality, where

instructions or 2-dimensional pictures are superimposed and simple instructions appear directly on

your smart glasses, to an entirely virtual world where people, places, and things coexist and interact

with each other in new computer-generated environments, and we call this the metaverse.

Extended reality has been around for decades, but the lack of devices and standard software

platforms made implementation a real challenge. Now that both are widely available and affordable,

the doors for innovation of XR have been thrown wide open. But there's a few more key drivers

making XR a hot topic right now. One is the need for digitization of our lives accelerated by the

global pandemic along with the recent global focus on sustainability and responsible business and

the business opportunities and benefits of XR, which are finally being recognized. We've also seen

the convergence of powerful related technologies such as cloud, artificial intelligence, and

blockchain. And the recent focus on the metaverse by companies like Meta, formerly known as

Facebook, are drawing increasing attention to this whole topic. And now is the time for XR and the

metaverse. This applies to all industries, and we see opportunities for any industry to apply XR and

use it, and they should be using it. And the good news is Accenture is leading the way. We've been

innovating, investing, and pioneering for years, and we're now in a great position to apply this to our

clients at scale. And we're in a unique position to lead as well. With XR and the metaverse, clients

truly need our differentiated end-to-end capabilities, advising and shaping and strategy and

consulting, creating new brands products and experiences that are interactive, building it all out in

technology, and applying it to our clients' operations. And every one of our corporate functions will

be impacted as well. With that, we firmly believe that XR is the future, not just for how we work

together, but how we learn, how we exercise, how we have fun together. We think XR will touch all

aspects of our lives, and that's why we launched Project Avatar, Accenture's grand experiment to
make enterprise virtual reality, well, a reality. As part of Project Avatar, we're currently in the middle

of the largest VR headset deployment in history. We're deploying over 60,000 headsets to our

people to experiment, innovate, and learn with virtual reality. XR gives employees a new toolset to

do their job safer, better, and to be more productive. XR gives us a platform to more effectively and

economically train our employees as well. It gives consumers new ways to try out products and

services before buying them. It gives us new reality-like ways of connecting, which, of course, helps

us build culture and community and also contributes to sustainability. This technology also makes it

possible for us to simulate being in other places in real time without traveling there, and you're going

to see a lot of examples of that in the TQ topic today. And one example is I'm not really in California

at the Computer History Museum. In real life, I'm right here in my local New York office. But in the

metaverse, I'm in a digital twin of the real Computer History Museum, which we built for our friends

at the museum. The museum is the leading institution chronicling the history and impact of

computing technologies. Now people can explore and interact with all the museum has to offer

without the need to physically travel. This is just one example of the amazing applications of this

new technology. We're living in an extraordinary time where digital has been a lifeline to keep us all

connected, to share experiences virtually when we couldn't physically be in the same space. We're

all part of this transformation story and living through it. As part of Accenture, the decisions we make

today about technology will shape the direction of our lives and many others in the future. And what

you're seeing on screen is just the beginning. I can't wait to dive deeper into all of this in our TQ after

show with some of our Accenture extended reality and metaverse experts, and we've got some

surprises baked in there for you as well. But first, to get us started, Simon's going to give the 101

explanation to help us get a better understanding of XR and the metaverse. Then, join Sarah and I

as we take you out a whirlwind virtual tour of extended reality and the metaverse. TQ and you, just

one of the ways we're powering change. Happy learning to all of you.

Extended Reality (XR) and the Metaverse: Executive

Introduction
Welcome to the executive briefing on extended reality in the metaverse. I'm Simon Allardice. And

okay, most of you watching this are probably familiar with this kind of thing, whether you've just seen

the headsets or tried them. Some of you may even have a VR headset of the home. But just the fact

that you're in a position to watch this course, I'll assume you have heard terms like virtual reality,

augmented reality, and even the metaverse. And if you're thinking, yes, I've heard those terms, I'm

clear about some of them, but others not so much, that's okay. We'll take care of that. What we're

diving into here are the ways we're beginning to blur the lines between the real physical world and

the digital world, whether that's putting on a headset that completely immerses us in a simulated

digital environment or using a device like a phone or a pair of smart glasses to overlay digital objects

on our real physical environment. So, we'll begin by getting clear on terms like virtual reality,

augmented reality, and a few others because they're not always used in a consistent way. But we'll

quickly go a little bit deeper. Not just looking at entertainment and gaming applications, but how this

is being used in business, education, manufacturing, construction. We'll talk about what makes this

technology work, the interesting applications being done right now, where it looks like things are

going over the next few years, and how you can become more involved. This isn't just about what is

extended reality, what is the metaverse, but how you can make better use of it. And even though

this is a very fast-moving area of technology, what you should expect. Welcome to the executive

briefing on extended reality and the metaverse.

Defining Extended and Virtual Reality

Okay, the title of this course includes the term extended reality, XR. Now this doesn't mean very

much by itself. XR is just a shortcut. It's an overview term. It's a way we can talk about several

different but related technologies, including virtual reality, or VR; augmented reality, AR; and mixed

reality, or MR. So let's begin with virtual reality, because this is the most widely understood of them.

Typically with VR, you'll have some kind of headset. When you put this on, it will block out your view

of the outside world. I can't see through this. It's opaque. I'll be looking at two lenses inside the

headset, and the images I see are all computer generated. Now, in some of VR headsets, the

computer and software that's generating those images is all built into the headset. It's all
self-contained. Other headsets don't include that computing power. They're more of a display unit,

and these need to be connected to a separate PC to provide all the graphics, so we often call these

devices tethered, because they need this long physical cable. Now there are pros and cons to each.

An untethered standalone device like this Oculus Quest 2, this is simpler. It's easier to set up, it's

more portable, it's cheaper, but a small self-contained device like this just can't provide the same

kind of processing power that you'd get with all the hardware in a high-end connected PC. So, if

we're using a PC with a tethered headset, we can get a better experience, including higher

definition, better resolution, where the images that you see are more realistic. But it's a lot less

portable, it's more complicated to set up, and it's more expensive, because you need a PC, as well

as the headset. But whether it's tethered or untethered, we're not doing this just to have a flat

two-dimensional display, like putting a TV program in front of our eyes. With VR, we do this to be

immersed in and surrounded by a three-dimensional environment which will react to what we're

doing. So all VR headsets, tethered or untethered, contain multiple sensors to continually figure out

the orientation of your head. So as you move up and down, turn side to side, back and forth, even

turn completely around, it will recalculate the view of what you're seeing. And it will send slightly

different views to each eye, so that what you see appears three-dimensional, that you have

perspective. Things seem close or far away, and you get a sense of scale. Some things are

appropriately tiny. Other things are huge, even planet-sized. You consciously know it isn't real, but

when it's done well, we often talk about this sense of immersion or sense of presence, that a virtual

space feels real or, at least, real enough. And that's more than just what you see; it's also what you

hear and what you can touch and how you move, but we'll talk about that in a moment. Let's cover

the other types of extended reality first.

Augmented Reality

With augmented reality, we're not trying to shut out the real world and replace it with a

computer-generated simulated environment. Instead, where they are, you stay looking at your

current space, whether that's your office, your living room, your car, your backyard, a hotel lobby, a

shopping mall, even the street outside, but where you have a way to superimpose graphics, text,
video streams, other digital elements over that real-world environment. So, we're adding to or

augmenting our current reality. And yes, this also requires some kind of device, but it's not always a

headset. Right now, many augmented reality applications use mobile devices, phones, or tablets

with cameras that can show me a live video feed of the real world and also overlay

computer-generated images on top of it. These digital elements can appear as if they're part of the

real-world space. They can be on the floor or on the wall or on a desk and correctly reposition

themselves as we move around in that space. There's just a few examples of this. Some retail sites

like Ikea or Apple now let you add augmented reality objects to see what their products would look

like in your home or office. But we could step outside. There's now apps that would superimpose the

flight details of any plane that I'm pointing the camera at. Or at nighttime, there are apps to show you

more about the stars and planets around you. Back inside, I could use my phone as an augmented

reality tape measure and have it overlay measurement data on my camera feed. There are

entertainment options where I can map my space and fill it with augmented reality effects. Or if

you've seen the camera filters or lenses on Snapchat or Instagram that detect faces, so you can turn

yourself into an animal or into a robot or into some kind of CG character. Oh, look. This one will

show you what it looked like if you shaved your head and had a gray beard and looked really tired.

Oh, right. Okay, if you think the examples I just showed seem a little simple or even trivial, that's

intentional. What I wanted to show is that unlike VR, which does require some level of investment

into dedicated hardware and requires your focus in your time and that you're not going to put a VR

headset on for 10 seconds, you're going in for a while, several minutes, even hours. But a lot of

people are becoming more familiar with augmented reality with just quick casual use cases on the

devices that they already have. Nobody goes out to buy a new phone just so they can use an

augmented reality tape measure. But if the new phone you've just bought allows you to do all those

extra things, why not? So, a lot of AR use is kind of bubbling up from the bottom. People might not

think of a Snapchat lens as being augmented reality, but it is. However, I certainly don't want to

suggest that AR is just about casual use. It's not. And beyond phones and tablets, there are some

very advanced head-worn augmented reality products like Microsoft HoloLens, Magic Leap, and

Google Glass. And the obvious difference between the VR headsets and the AR headsets is you

have to be able to see through them to see the world. I'm going to show a few examples of
business-focused augmented reality in a few minutes, but let's take care of another term first, mixed

reality.

Mixed Reality

The term mixed reality is not as widely used or as well understood, and some people and some

organizations don't really use this term very much at all. They just talk about virtual reality and

augmented reality. It sometimes seems very black or white. This is AR, and this is VR, and they're

always very different. But in fact, there is this in-between, hybrid stage, really multiple stages, where

AR experiences start to become more and more like VR experiences. Because augmented reality

can describe some fairly simple and non-interactive situations. Think of a heads-up display that you

might get in some cars now that project information like directions or even just your speed onto the

glass. It is useful, it is a form of augmented reality, but it's just a piece of data floating in your view,

as long as you're looking in the right direction. So, we then advance to the idea of digital objects that

are more aware of the environment, and they can correctly orient or reorient themselves to appear

on your desk or on your wall or superimposed on your existing computer screen. But the next step is

where we don't just look at but can also interact with those digital objects, where I can press that

digital button. I can reach out, grab that object and manipulate it, turn it around or resize it in the

space. So if an augmented reality environment starts to add more and more completely virtual

elements, more digital objects to interact with more avatars of people that I could talk to, then we're

moving more and more towards VR. Because you could even imagine hitting a point where what

you're looking at has more virtual objects than real ones. Some people talk about the idea of a

continuum or a spectrum of extended reality experiences between a AR and VR. Mixed reality is a

way to describe that space in between, where it's more about integration between the physical and

digital worlds. But again, you won't always hear it described as mixed reality. Some companies like

Microsoft use that term a lot. Other companies like Apple still call all of this augmented reality, even

for the more advanced situations. But whatever we call it, the idea is important that we have

situations where we don't just see objects in the world; we want to interact with them, and that

means that the hardware, the headset or smart glasses or any other device, needs to do much more
than just display some graphics on a piece of glass. It has to scan outwards and has to recognize

what's around us, the walls, the floors, the furniture, other people, so it can build its own awareness

of the space and also recognize what I'm doing with my hands, and whether I'm reaching out to

touch or grab those digital objects.

Mixing VR and the Real World

I talked about mixed reality experiences where AR can become more and more like VR if we're

beginning with the real world and adding more and more virtual objects. But we can also go the

other way. I could begin in a VR experience completely simulated and then bring real-world objects

into the virtual world. Here's an example. Right now, there are several popular VR applications for

productivity and working. Some are more about collaboration where you can meet colleagues in a

virtual space and sit around a virtual conference table, share files, and use a whiteboard. You can

also construct your ideal workspace in VR. In the real world, you might be traveling and in a hotel

room with a tiny laptop. But in the virtual world, you could have your perfect office, as many screens

as you want, whatever size you want, whiteboards full of notes and diagrams. One of the problems

with these applications has always been, well, you're working. And if you just put a VR headset on,

you suddenly can't see your desk or your keyboard. And even if you're a good touch-typer, it kind of

feels like you're trying to type with a bag on your head. You don't know exactly where anything is.

But there are more recent applications that now use the sensors in the VR headset to detect where

your desk is and can recognize where your keyboard is and then generate a digital version of those

real objects inside the virtual environment. So, I could put on the headset, join a virtual conference

room, and when I look down, I'll see my desk. I'll see my hands on the keyboard. And everything

feels like it's in the right place. I can type. I can take notes. I can even bring a virtual version of my

real computer screen into the space. Now, the way this works is that some of the sensors in VR

headsets are basically tiny cameras to help in scanning the space. They can detect specific objects,

but they can also do something called passthrough where you take what the camera sees and pass

the image through to the screens inside the headset. So, even though this headset is opaque, I can

effectively see through it to the outside world. Now, these tiny cameras in most current consumer
VR headsets, they're pretty basic. So, the images are often black and white and quite

low-resolution. But still, passthrough can be very helpful in keeping you oriented and grounded in

your real physical space, even when you're in VR, by bringing more of the real world in. So, even if

what you see is partly virtual and partly real, it's another way to have this mixed reality, this idea of

the spectrum of extended reality experiences that, yes, we do have pure VR and pure AR

experiences, but more and more, we're moving to this idea of merging the physical and the digital,

whether it's VR that incorporates more real-world objects or AR that uses more virtual objects.

What is the Metaverse

It's time we dealt with the remaining term in the title of this course and finally answer what is the

metaverse? Actually, I don't think that's a very good question. So, I'm going to try and convince you

that right now, the word metaverse is much more useful in an answer than it is in a question. And I'm

not trying to be cryptic. Let me explain. Over the last couple of years, we've started seeing the word

metaverse more and more, particularly in any articles or news stories about virtual or augmented

reality. Now, this word has been around and used on and off for 30 years. It came from the novel

Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson where the metaverse was this fictional virtual reality world. But it

exploded in popularity in October 2021 when Facebook, as an organization, renamed themselves to

Meta. And there were then press releases and headlines that they would be spending billions

developing the metaverse. Then, Microsoft started releasing videos and announcement saying what

they were doing with the metaverse. Then, Epic Games said they were throwing a bunch of money

into their vision for the metaverse. And an awful lot of people around the world started saying, hang

on, what's the metaverse? Well, you can't give a simple answer to that because, well, the metaverse

doesn't exist yet. Parts of it exists, but it is fundamentally a vision for a future state of technology.

We're not there yet, and we know a lot of things are going to change before we get there. However,

while it is some way off, what we can say is it's a combination of many real-world technologies that

do exist right now, including virtual and augmented reality, but also cloud computing, artificial

intelligence, applications like video conferencing, persistent massively multiplayer environments,

social networks, high-speed mobile internet access. Now, right now, I could show you an example of
any of these, but I couldn't show you one example that ties them all together. And that's kind of what

this is leading towards, the idea of a persistent, massive, shared 3D world that you could join in VR

and AR. So, you could go into that shared space to play games or to work, meet with your

colleagues, socialize with friends and family, watch a show, go shopping, play music, create art,

even exercise or just relax. Now, these are all things you can do right now in virtual reality, but in a

very separate and disconnected way. There's no way to share anything or cross over from one

experience to the other. If I meet a friend in a social app like Altspace, it might be nice to then go

and see some sights with them in BRINK Traveler or go and create art in Tilt Brush, but you can't.

And even if I create an avatar, that digital version of myself, to use in a conferencing app like

Horizon Workrooms, I can't then take that avatar over into equivalent apps like Spatial or Immersed.

I have to create another version of myself again and again and again. Now, there are VR apps that

are working on developing these shared social spaces in these virtual meeting places, like

AltspaceVR, which is owned by Microsoft, and Horizon Worlds, which is owned by Meta. Now, we

know there's a bunch of questions that still need to be figured out, primarily who owns what, who

controls access, who sets the standards for the metaverse, how is privacy going to work, how will

commerce work? If I create something in the metaverse, do I actually own it? If so, how do I buy and

sell it? If I want to use a decentralized cryptocurrency like Bitcoin or Ethereum, can I do that? And

for all of this to become more of a reality, we need more people, we need greater levels of adoption,

which means we need better devices, smaller, less-intrusive headsets, better battery life, better

graphics. But we also know these are coming anyway. But this is what I mean when I say the

metaverse is a better answer than it is a question because we can actually begin by just talking

about the technologies we have right now. We have virtual reality and augmented reality. We also

have massive multiplayer shared environments like Fortnite and Roblox. We have huge social

networks, Facebook Twitter, Instagram. We all spend time in video conferencing apps and

messaging apps. Some of this doesn't stay on our laptop or desktop. It moves to our phone or our

watches or our voice assistants. So, a more useful question is, well, in the future, when all of these

things start blending together, when we just choose to use a VR or AR headset to go and play that

game and then go and meet with colleagues and attend that event and write that document, what

are we going to call that whole thing? And the answer is, well, right now, we're calling it the
metaverse. And who knows? This word may become redundant. In a few years, it might be like

information superhighway or cyberspace, terms that became overused, clichéd, and unhelpful. But

for everything we're talking about here, all the various extended reality experiences, this is a

fundamental part of the metaverse, whatever we end up calling it.

XR Device Qualities

Earlier, I said that VR headsets aren't just strapping a screen to your face, but, well, some virtual

reality setups did feel a little bit like that, because a few early inexpensive VR options were just

made of cardboard. And you can still buy these online for a few dollars to create a simple VR

headset box with some eyeholes and lenses, and then you slide in a phone or a Nintendo Switch,

and you use the device to generate the images you see. So you run an app or a game that can

generate 2 images, one for each eye so that you get that 3D stereoscopic view, and then the device

itself uses its own internal sensors to change the image as you move your head around. Okay,

these are very basic. What's remarkable is the fact that they worked at all. And it's only been in the

last few years that we had devices that were small enough and powerful enough to even do this.

There's a couple of reasons you need a good level of computing power for any serious VR

application. First is the idea of frame rate, and the computer needs to continually generate new

images for each eye, and we measure that in frames per second, or FPS. Now if you're watching a

normal TV program or movie, frame rate is often between 24 to 30 frames per second, and that's

fast enough to seem smooth on a regular TV screen. Now with more modern, high-definition or 4K

resolution TV and movies, you might get 60 frames a second with good equipment, and that will

seem smoother, particularly when there's a lot of motion going on. But in VR, there's always motion,

and 60 frames per second is a bare minimum. We really want at least 90 frames per second,

hopefully even faster, like 120. Because this image is being beamed directly into your eyes, you're

much more sensitive to it, and if the frame rate is slow, our visual systems will perceive it as wrong.

And it doesn't just interfere with our sense of realism or presence; it can also make you feel

disoriented and nauseous. Now beyond just frame rate is also the idea of latency, in that the

hardware must minimize any delay, any lag between the movement of the headset and updating the
image that we see. So if I quickly turn my head to the right but for the next half second I'm still

seeing the image as if I'm looking straight ahead, then there's a mismatch between what my inner

ears are telling me and what my eyes are telling me, and it very quickly leads to motion sickness. A

fast frame rate and low latency are far more important than image resolution. In a lot of high-end

video or computer gaming, it's all about resolution. It's about having more and more pixels and the

ability to have more photorealistic images. Now, sure, in VR and AR we'd like that, but it's much

more important to have a simplistic environment with a high frame rate and low latency than to have

some photorealistic environment with a slow frame rate, because that will make you sick. And that's

why a lot of people who haven't tried VR often see some video footage of a VR experience and

think, that looks pretty basic. It looks like a video game from 10 or 15 years ago. Because they've

lowered the resolution to focus on speed and smoothness, because that's much more important

here. Now, most VR headsets come with some form of hand controllers with multiple buttons and

joysticks. The unusual shape of many of these helps with tracking to more accurately understand

position and orientation so that we can see our hands in VR, whether we're using them to launch

applications, write on a whiteboard, swing a sword, fire a gun, sculpt an image, whatever you need.

Now most controllers include some form of haptic feedback, which means you have various physical

sensations. They can vibrate or buzz or tap, and often There's different levels of strength of that

sensation. And this is much more than just a gimmick; it really does help with that sense of

presence. So if you're reaching out to touch a virtual button and you feel a tap that lets you know

you've touched it, it's much more immersive. Some devices do allow you to put the controllers down

and just use your hands, where you're using specific gestures to open menus and launch

applications. And this is easier on several levels, less equipment, it's easier for new users to get

started. But right now, we're at a point where if you want fine levels of control and very exact

operations, the hand controllers are more accurate than just your hands. Now, with any VR or AR

device, you need to have some level of spatial awareness of the room and surroundings. Part of it is

to recognize where you are in the room and partly to identify objects like furniture or walls, whether

it's to position virtual objects on those or just to stop you walking into them. And some devices like

recent generations of iPhone and iPad now include hardware for LiDAR scanning. This is light

detection and ranging. It's too quickly measure the distance between nearby objects. You can use
these to scan an entire room and create a mesh. This kind of looks like a fishing net, and you're

building a quick computer representation of the space, and the mesh continually updates as I move

around. It has spatial understanding. And with this mesh created, I can add effects to this room. But

if you notice how the generated objects disappear when they go behind a real-world object, this is

called occlusion. It's actually a very tricky thing to do computationally, but it's necessary for this to

seem and feel realistic. But although we are getting better and better hardware, one thing we don't

yet have is a single device that could cover everything from simple AR to full immersive VR

experiences. They all specialize in one part of the XR spectrum. Let's take a look at the main

options.

XR Hardware Lineup

While there were some early experiments in this area, the first meaningful VR headsets only

appeared on the market in 2016, with the Oculus Rift and the HTC VIVE. These were both tethered

devices, meaning they required a powerful PC. Now HTC and Oculus are still two of the main

players in this space. I'm recording this in late 2021, and HTC currently have 4 options, the VIVE

Cosmos and VIVE Pro 2, which are their tethered headsets, and the Pro 2, as it might sound, is their

top-of-the-line most expensive option, something that you might have in a no-expense-spared,

high-end VR gaming setup. Now these headsets also come with hand controllers and base stations

that mount in the room, and they improve the accuracy of the headset tracking and positioning in the

space. Now HTC also have the self-contained VIVE Focus headset. This is targeted more at

businesses than consumers. And in late 2021, they announced the HTC Flow headset. This is their

lowest-cost option. It's released at $499 US. It is a tethered headset, but it's designed to be tethered

to a phone, not tethered to a PC. The Flow is one of the more unusual options, as it's suggested as

being for kind of casual entertainment VR use but not for gaming, more for options like wellness and

meditation. Oculus, the company that released the Oculus Rift back in 2016, they were then bought

by Facebook, now Meta. And over the last few years, they've released 2 tethered headsets, the Rift

and then the Rift S, and 3 untethered headsets, the Go, the Quest, and now the Quest 2, which is

currently the only headset they actively sell. The Quest 2 starts at $299. It is a self-contained,
untethered device. It comes with two hand controllers but also has good hand recognition built in, so

you can just put the controllers down and use gestures. Although this is a self-contained, untethered

device, if you do have a good PC, you can connect a Quest 2 to your PC using a USB-C cable and

then use the PC to run more demanding VR applications that wouldn't run or wouldn't run well on

the device itself. But, Simon, you might wonder, why are you even talking about all these

consumer-level headsets if this is meant to focus on business applications? Good question, dear

viewer. Well, it's because, if you look at what's happened with mobile phones, where many

companies have now moved to a BYOD, or bring-your-own-device model, if an employee wants to

use their own iPhone or their own Android phone, they can absolutely do that. That's kind of what

we're expecting here. So if you own a consumer VR headset, even if you bought it for gaming or

entertainment, you may be able to use it for working applications as well. Now some other popular

VR headsets include the Valve Index and the HP Reverb, both of which are tethered devices. There

are also things like the Sony PlayStation VR, but as this is entirely focused on gaming applications,

I'm not going to talk much about it here. If you go to Amazon or eBay, you'll find a huge amount of

very inexpensive VR headsets. Most of these are just slightly more advanced versions of the

cardboard VR headset, in that they're really just empty shells where you put your phone in to

actually do all the heavy lifting. But, at the other end of the scale, there are advanced VR headsets

that don't focus on consumers but on businesses and specific high-end applications, like research,

design, simulations, military applications, and so on, companies like Varjo, XTAL, and Star 3D. I'll

completely admit I haven't tried any of these products. I'd like to. I'm an early adopter, and I've

owned multiple VR headsets. But just as one example, the XTAL 8K is $9000, and that's a little bit

pricey for my personal VR budget. We also have several head-worn devices for augmented reality

experiences. The main devices here are the Microsoft HoloLens, now on version 2. There's also the

MagicLeap, where version 2 of this is expected very soon. And the Google Glass, this actually

started as a consumer-focused device, didn't find much success there, and quietly moved to a

business enterprise focus, where it's had more of an impact. Now right now, none of these

dedicated AR devices are really targeted at consumers. They're all targeted at businesses,

manufacturing, healthcare, education, and training. And they're often called smart glasses, but the

manufacturers themselves don't really use that term. Microsoft called the HoloLens an ergonomic,
untethered self-contained holographic device. MagicLeap and Google just called theirs wearable

computers. On the horizon, we know Apple have been investing huge amounts of resources into VR

and AR for many years. They've been acquiring companies, they've been filing patent applications

for a decade, they've added augmented reality features to iOS devices, and developed a lot of

supportive technologies like the LiDAR scanners I talked about earlier. So we fully expect Apple to

release some kind of dedicated extended reality device. Most of the rumors, it'll be a more of an

augmented or mixed reality device, rather than full VR. People even call it Apple Glasses. But it's

Apple, and they're excellent at keeping things a secret. So until they actually announce something,

we wait. And while we're talking about upcoming hardware, Facebook, or now Meta, have teased

two forthcoming devices, a pair of AR glasses codenamed Project Nazaré, and also their next VR

headset, which is currently codenamed Project Cambria, and this will be a high-end, premium-level

device, rather than an inexpensive Oculus Quest type of product. So, some interesting products

available right now and more coming down the pipeline.

Headset Features

Now, if you read any product descriptions about headsets, there's a few terms you'll often see. First

is FOV, or field of view. That's because when you put any headset on, it will reduce the amount of

what you're able to see. You'll lose some of your peripheral vision, both horizontally and vertically.

Now, the inexpensive Oculus Quest 2, this has a horizontal field of view of about 90°, which is on

the lower end. If you take the HTC VIVE Pro 2, that has a field of view of 120°, but it costs

significantly more because to expand the field of view and maintain the same level of quality, you

have to increase the size and resolution of the little screen inside the headset, and that's expensive.

Now, related to field of view is something called foveated rendering. This isn't something you have in

most consumer-level headsets right now, but you can expect it in the next generation of equipment.

This is the idea that your field of view isn't all the same, meaning that if you get a page of text, it's

readable if it's right in front of you. But if you move it off to the side and don't look right at it, you can

see it, but you can't read it. You don't have the same level of visual acuity for anything that's not in

the center of your vision. So, if you had a headset that doesn't just track your head position, but also
keeps track of your eye position inside the headset to know where you're actually looking, then it

can use more of the computing resources for what you're directly looking at, for more visual detail

there and less on what's in your more peripheral vision. So, you get better results with the same

level of hardware. Now, if you've ever look at the lens of a VR headset, you'll see that they typically

don't look completely smooth and clear. You usually see a series of concentric circles or grooves

etched into the lens. It's almost like the lenses that you see on lighthouses. It's kind of for the same

reason, which is that lighthouses use these lenses called Fresnel lenses because they can be

smaller and lighter and placed closer to the light source than normal lenses would be. And like so

many things in VR, it's not all benefits. There are a couple of downsides. A positive point is that if we

didn't have lenses like this, then we'd be trying to focus our eyes on a tiny little video screen that's

an inch away, and we couldn't do it. We'd have to make the headset much larger to push that

screen further away, or we'd have to have much thicker, much heavier lenses. So, that's a good

thing about it. But one of the downsides is that if you have a lot of contrast in a VR environments,

say you're in a dark room with a single light source, and, depending on the angle, the light can

suddenly start hitting all those different little steps in the lens and it starts to glare and blur. It's kind

of like somebody has smeared Vaseline on the lens. It's even called God rays. I have to exaggerate

the effect here because you can't capture it directly. It happens between the screen and the lens

and your eyes, but it's similar to this. Also, in the early years of VR, there are a lot of complaints

about something called the screen door effect. This was often from the early headsets having lower

resolution where certain graphics or combinations of color, you become more aware of the actual

pixels that made the image up. It's kind of like pressing your face close to an old monitor where you

see all the pixels. It feels like you're looking through the mesh of the screen door. This is less of an

issue these days, not just because of better hardware and higher resolution, but also because the

developers of VR experiences have started to recognize what kinds of situations lead to God rays or

lead to the screen door effect, and they just avoid doing those things.

Moving in VR
Now VR experiences are often described as having two main modes of use, stationary VR and

room-scale VR. With stationary, I'm expected to stay in one place, either standing or sitting down.

Now I might turn, even completely around. I can lean forward and back, but I'm just not going to take

several steps in any direction. Whereas room-scale, as it sounds, is where I can walk around in my

physical room and have that movement mirrored in the virtual space. Some VR experiences are

naturally stationary. If I'm in the cockpit of a flight simulation or sitting at a conference table or using

VR to learn piano, it doesn't make sense to walk several feet in one direction. But if I want to step

around a VR sculpture or play a game of virtual tennis or walk around the simulation of a new

kitchen, then it would be a preferable experience if I can walk around in that space. But room-scale

does require a couple of things. You need a room where you can walk freely around without

bumping into anything, and this is one of the problems with room-scale VR adoption. It might be a

preferable experience, but most people just don't have a spare, empty room to use just for VR.

Okay, it doesn't have to be a dedicated room, but you do need a completely empty area of at least 2

m x 2 m or 6 ft x 6 ft. You usually want more than that and a bit of a buffer on all sides. Now some of

the headsets I showed come with base stations. Those are used to improve the accuracy of

positional tracking in room-scale VR. They do a much better job of figuring out exactly where you

are in the space, and that makes it more realistic in the environment. But one of the things you need

to do with any VR equipment is before you begin, it's going to ask you to define the boundaries of

the available space. This is usually done by taking one of your VR controllers and you mark out the

edges of your room. And when you're immersed in the experience, if you start moving towards the

edge of your physical space, then the virtual barrier, a grid, will appear in your view to remind you

you can't go any further than this or you're going to walk into the wall or fall down the stairs or bump

into the table. Some setups like the Oculus call this your Guardian, others call it your Chaperone. It's

the same idea. And you might wonder, well, what if the movement that I want to do in VR is more

than just room size? What if I want to explore that entire building or climb that mountain? Well,

usually more significant amounts of movement use the hand controllers. In the early days of VR, we

tried using these like conventional video game controllers, so you just push forward on the joystick

and you'd just start moving forward through the space. But in VR, that's too much visual stimulus,

and most people became motion sick very, very quickly. One technique is that when moving in VR,
the edges of the screen are temporarily dimmed, so you don't have so much motion in your

peripheral vision. But it's more common to use a teleportation idea where you use the controller to

point at a new location to move to and you're instantly transported to that spot. Now, when we talk

about augmented or mixed reality, we really don't have the same issues because you're already

aware of the space that you're in. But we've talked about the types of experience, the qualities of

headsets, the kind of hardware, we've covered quite a bit of terminology and jargon. So with that,

let's now explore a few more real-world applications of this.

XR Applications and Use Cases

Virtual reality is often demonstrated with games. While that's not our focus, we can recognize that

what works so well with VR in entertainment, that ability to be inside an environment, to shut out the

world and be immersed in what you're doing, that's exactly what makes it so useful in business. But

one thing to keep in mind, when you just see a still image or watch video of a VR experience, what

you're not seeing is the single most important thing about it, which is that sense of immersion of

being inside the experience. So as I go through a few more examples, it's useful to not just look at

what's happening in that, but also think about what would that be like to actually be present in that

environment? Now there's a few general applications of extended reality that could apply to any

business. First, education and training. Now we already have a lot of educational experiences

available on any XR platform. Some focus on exploration like putting yourself at the top of Everest or

touring the great museums of the world, but there are also apps for teaching specific subjects like

anatomy or astronomy or geography. But of course, these ideas can all be applied to corporate

education and on-the-job training, even just your own personal development. Now some people

think about VR in education and imagine some simulated classroom, and actually, I think that's kind

of missing the point because with VR we can get out of the classroom and into the experience, into

the environment. Think of VR apps like Mondly for language training. They'll put you in specific

situations like a train journey or a taxi ride or checking into a hotel and use voice recognition so you

can rehearse and take part in the conversation. And then you've got companies like Walmart and

Verizon who are actively using VR for workplace training and new employee onboarding. They'll use
it to simulate different in-person customer service interactions. They'll use it to train people on new

equipment or store layout. Verizon even trained employees on what to do in the event of a store

robbery. And we could move from the more general into the much more specific technical options

like pilot instruction. I mean, we've now gone from these massive, expensive flight simulators to

something that can realistically be done with consumer-level hardware. While I said that we don't

need a simulated classroom, well, one of the places where that can be useful is public speaking,

using VR to rehearse and increase your comfort levels of speaking in a classroom or lecture hall or

conference room. And while we're talking about ways to improve our communication, we can also

think about any data that we're presenting. Your data can be a lot more persuasive. You can

actually put people in the middle of it, and even more useful for yourself if you have more ways to

view it, to interact with it, to manipulate it, and bring it to life. Now earlier, I talked about VR

conferencing applications like Horizon Workrooms from Meta where you and your colleagues can

bring your avatars into a conference room. You can talk, you can use hand gestures, you can draw

on the whiteboard and share documents. If some of your colleagues don't have VR headsets, they

can dial into that room and use their webcam like a normal video conferencing application. And as I

mentioned in an earlier clip, you can add a virtual version of your real computer keyboard into the

space to make it easier to type and take notes. And moving across to kind of specific types of

business like construction, we can see how extended reality can be used across multiple different

stages and aspects of a large business process. Everything from the initial planning, design, and

architecture. These days, all major architectural software applications either generate or export into

virtual environments. Because just as people used to build physical models of buildings, we can now

generate virtual models. We can view them at many different sizes. We can step inside them. We

can even simulate specific weather or lighting environments to see how that will look. We could use

extended reality during the building phase itself, letting the engineers understand and see more

about the infrastructure of the building. It can be used to simulate the current state of a construction

site, so different teams can have virtual visits, and VR can be used after the build for virtual

walkarounds, which is happening a lot in real estate now. If we jump over to healthcare, there are

already multiple educational options for simulating operations and procedures and simulating

scenarios. It's also starting to be used for more diagnostic situations like 3D radiography. And other
simulations are being used in treatment of issues like anxiety, PTSD, and autism spectrum disorders

to either rehearse situations or practice social interactions. And it's even being used in personal

healthcare. There are popular VR applications for exercise and for meditation. The difference

between VR and AR applications might sometimes seem trivial, one's in a virtual room and the

other's in a real room, but it goes much deeper than that. A pure VR experience, we might simulate

a virtual repair of a piece of virtual machinery. But we could use AR to help in a real repair of a piece

of real machinery. Perhaps overlaying schematics or diagnostics, we could even bring in additional

assistants. You could connect two individuals in different locations and allow them to work in the

same part digital, part-real space. There are experiences that naturally work better or even only

make sense in augmented or mixed reality. And over the next few years, we expect that that will

become the most common option in business and enterprise environments, particularly once we get

more head-worn AR devices.

Closing

Some of the objections I've heard include, "isn't this just a gimmick, a passing phase, a technological

fad?" Or, "you know these are never going to take off, right? They're too big, too bulky, too

inconvenient." Or even, "do you seriously think normal people are going to carry one of these

around all the time?" And actually, I'm not talking about VR or AR here. I'm talking about mobile

phones, and the same objections we heard again and again with the first generations of these.

"They're too heavy, too bulky, too inconvenient, too hard to use, not useful enough, only something

that a techno-nerd with too much money would buy, and they'll never be popular. It will never be

normal to have one of these." Well, you see how that turned out. Okay, I'm poking a little bit of fun at

this. But it is technology. These will become smaller, lighter, cheaper, faster, more powerful, with

more features, better quality, more applications. There will be more and more compelling reasons to

have them. And sometimes, as with mobile phones, it might just become a little more convenient to

have one than to not have one. But as the hardware gets better, it becomes more useful to have

better applications, which means more people join, which means you get better hardware, you get

that tipping point, that positive feedback loop. And whether it takes 5 years or 10 or 20 to have this
deeper integration between the hardware, the massive virtual spaces, all the applications that we

need throughout our day, the ever-present high-speed internet, whether we end up calling that the

metaverse or just the place you sometimes go to work, sometimes go to meet friends, sometimes

go to play games or watch an event, it is coming. I hope you enjoyed the course. I'll see you next

time.

XR and the Metaverse Aftershow

Intro to the Aftershow

-Imagine a world where you can meet up with friends and family virtually in real time. I'm not talking

about video chat services. I'm talking about being in the same room and interacting with them, but

only, you're still sitting in your own living room. Well, hang onto your seats, because we're about to

find out about all of this and much more. Well, hello, and welcome. Today, we're talking XR and the

metaverse. And Paul, I'm excited that you're back and you're my co-host today. -Yeah, it's very

exciting. I'm really looking forward to this topic. We're talking about XR, or extended reality, and a

little bit about the metaverse. It's going to be a lot of fun. -Yeah, I was telling my kids last night that I

get to talk about this today, and I think they think I'm much cooler now, but maybe not. You never

know with teenagers. -You never know. But it is something that's out there all over the place. Our

kids are using it in the the gaming platforms that they have. We saw it a number of years ago with

Pokémon Go, which I was an avid fan of at the time, with extended reality popping onto the scene. I

think so many people have seen it in the movies, things like Ready Player One, and as a science

fiction fan, I've been looking at this for a while. And I also have to notice, as I get images on

Instagram from my kids and others, I often see a little bit of extended reality and augmented reality

popping up there as well, with the filters that there we're all so used to. -Yeah, I mean, what teen or,

honestly, what person doesn't love to use those filters? I mean, I can't resist the urge if I want to look

like a bunny or a deer. You know, it's all good. I'm sure, Paul, you've done the same. -I've done the

same. The same's been done to me, I should say, as well, as I'm sure all of our guests have as well.

-Yeah, well, and speaking of our guests, we have quite a lineup. I'm really excited about this show

and the experts that we have joining us today. So let me introduce them. We have got Marc
Carrel-Billiard, our Tech Innovation Lead, Dan Guenther, who's our Global XR Lead, Rori Duboff,

who's our Interactive Experience Strategy Lead, Krista Taylor, our Global Immersive Learning Lead,

and Jason Warnke, our Digital Experience Lead. So Marc, Dan, Rori, Krista, and Jason, welcome

and thank you for joining us. -Thanks, Sarah, I'm really looking forward to being here. -Thanks for

having us. -Hello. -Great to be here. -I think Krista wins for having the best t-shirt representing the

topic that we're talking about. -I agree. I agree. Krista, you're setting the bar high, so this is great.

This is already a good sign it's going to be a good show. -Yes, yes, exciting. -Okay, Paul, we have a

lot to cover, so where do you want to begin? -Well, you know, the best way to experience and learn

about the technology is to immerse yourself in a little bit, so Marc's going to tell us about a little bit of

a different approach that we're going to take this time around. Go ahead, Marc. -Thanks Paul. I'm

very happy to do that. So what we're going to do today is we're going to do an XR tour. It's very

exciting about what we're going to be doing. So, as we talk about the different technologies within

XR, we'll experience that through a virtual voyage. That's what we're going to be doing.

Augmented Reality

Okay, so a virtual voyage. This sounds cool. I'm not exactly sure what we have in store. How are we

going to get started with this, Mark? -Okay, well, I suggest that we start first with AR, or we call that

also augmented reality. And what is AR? It's just as the name implies. It's really augmenting and

enhancing our reality in some way. You know, I like what Paul said when he was talking about

Pokémon. I'm a gamer myself. And when you experience Pokémon, you know, you walk in the

streets and everything, and all the sudden, basically, on your phone would be your augmented

reality glasses. Boom! There's Pokémon guys that's just showing up, and you're going to go after

him, basically, you're going to chase him out. So that's exactly what is augmented reality. Is that

basically, you're going to be able to look through the glasses, your phone. You're going to see the

reality around you. And then we're going to overlay graphics, video or holograms in your world.

That's really cool. -Okay, so I get that. So when we were talking about like Instagram and Snapchat

filters, those are augmented reality. And you know, I hear, I hear people can even enhance their

looks online, you know, by applying a beauty filter or a costume filter, and you can appear like
someone else. -Yeah, exactly. I mean, but in that case, the part of the reality that gets submitted or

overlaid is you like when you do it like this. Look at me. -Okay, Okay. I see what you mean. That

makes sense, but let's maybe talk about business now. Aside from making ourselves look different,

and that's fun, let's talk about why a business would apply AR and what benefits it could have for

them. And, Dan, maybe you can help us with this one. -There's a lot of ways that augmented reality

can add value. Businesses are using it to bring products to their customers before they purchase it.

Think about a chair you might want to buy. What would it look like in the corner of your room before

you purchase it? Within the enterprise, augmented reality adds a lot of value to frontline workers. It

can bring them remote support in a hands-free manner or step-by-step instructions on a procedure

they're trying to do. With Airbus, we helped them implement this technology on their rear seat install

process. It improved the process time fivefold, and it removed all user errors from the process.

-Okay, this is starting to make sense. So it also reminds me that when I go to the IKEA website and I

want to see how a piece of furniture might look in my room, I'm able to actually do that and see the

furniture in my living room. -What you're talking about is product visualization. So we're seeing, you

know, a lot of companies, furniture companies basically letting people visualize, customize,

configure products, whether it be a couch, a table in their own home. We're even seeing also, you

know, on the higher spectrum luxury items, automotive cars. We see that those items, the ability to

see it firsthand in your own space through your mobile phone is increasing consumer confidence,

and that's the key to driving sales. -Yeah, I actually did that through Modsy. I used Modsy to see

how a couch would look in my living room, and then I bought it because I could see what it looked

like and how it fit. So, I see how that would totally increase sales. I think that's a great example. Ok,

let's pivot a bit, and, Jason, I'd love for you to jump in here and talk a little bit about the AR

capabilities that we have available to us within Accenture. And I know your favorite topic is to talk

about Teams, so maybe you could use that as an example. -I'd love to work in Teams somehow.

And if you think about it, we've actually had the ability to use augmented reality for a couple of years

in Teams as we know it. It's an example that's a bit rudimentary, but if you think about it, it's a slightly

different example than what Paul and and Mark were talking about. They were talking about layering

things onto the real world. And what we do in Teams is you can do that with the Teams background.

You can actually put a false background behind you. It's another kind of augmented reality, just one
that we have, you know, probably dismissed as very, very simple. But the other that I think I've

heard a reference to, and I'll just quickly switch my camera to it, using a snap camera filter in Teams.

And this will be something that will just become more native as a part of Teams, putting filters in the

actual video, live video moment that you're experiencing in the example that we talked about with

the things that we've played with in our personal lives and now bringing it to work, being an avatar in

a call instead of your real-life camera like I was showing earlier. So, a very simple set of examples,

but I think a really good one to sort of show how we're already living this today. -Well yeah, Jason,

we use those backgrounds all the time in Teams, and they are very effective in the way we use

them. And I love the avatar you chose. Although, I was expecting maybe a cat face or something,

something interesting. So we'll have to play around with your avatar and see what else we can

generate.

Our Corner of the Metaverse

-I think we're going to move into some of the technology that's really exciting here. And Sarah, you

asked me to bring the VR headset with me, which I've done, so what do we do next? -Yeah, I've got

mine too. I was playing a little Beat Saber before we started, so I'm all about talking about VR. So

let's talk a little bit about that. -Yeah, yeah, talking about Beat Saber. Beat Saber's great. I was

actually playing some Pong over the holidays on my headset. And also, I was worried about not

enough snow coming. Turned out we had a lot of snow, but I was practicing my virtual

snowboarding using virtual reality as well, which was a lot of fun. But it's really exciting time with the

technology, because a lot of us have been talking about this technology for a while. I remember

talking to Marc and Jason and others about this a long time ago. But we've had these advances in

the device technology, the headsets, which is very profound. We've had advances in the

networking, communications capabilities, so we don't have to have these things tethered to

computers like we had to a few years ago. We've had the platforms evolve, so we have places we

can go, like Altspace, to build things. And then we have the applications that make it all real for us.

So all these advances are making it an exciting time where this comes together. It's something that's

exciting for us as individuals but really exciting from a business perspective as well. -Yeah, I think
we have a lot more to explore, and I think, Marc, you've promised us that we're going on a voyage,

so should we get started? -Absolutely. So let's put on our headset now, and let's all go into VR. Let's

go. -See you in VR. Wow, you guys, we made it. We're here. Look at us all. Wow, you guys look

awesome. Paul, you look just like you. This is awesome. So Marc, where are we? -We're in the One

Accenture Park, believe it or not. This is one of the universes of our metaverse. So that's the world

fair of Accenture. That's right, One Accenture Park, the world fair of Accenture. That's where we

onboard our recruits, you know, new recruits, during the pandemic, so we had to make it happen.

We built our own universe. -Oh this is amazing! And Paul, can we say we're in the metaverse now?

Have we visited the metaverse? -We are now in the metaverse, yes. This is amazing, and it brings

together virtual reality, brings together other technologies built in the cloud. We'll hear about how it

uses blockchain and other technologies, and it really, we're going to see some amazing things here.

-Yeah, I think we have a ton to talk about. So Marc, when we say metaverse, and Accenture's

created their own their own metaverse, is that the term I've heard, the Nth Floor? -Yeah, that's the

Nth Floor, exactly, and that's exactly what it is. And it's our concept of the metaverse. And within the

Nth Floor, we have created different universes, and we can jump from one universe to another one,

and this is what we're going to do today. And it's really cool because we've worked with Microsoft,

great collaboration. Jason on my right side here, who drives the virtual experience from the _____

(CIO) organization has worked with and helped to drive all these things. And so the platform we're

using to implement this metaverse is AltspaceVR from Microsoft. And we have a great collaboration

thanks to Jason and Tim. -All right, we have a lot to talk about, the metaverse, Nth Floor, One

Accenture Park, Altspace. I mean, we've got a ton to cover today and a lot of places, apparently, a

lot of universes to visit. And when we think about the world today and the pandemic and how

companies are pivoting and we have to do things virtual, I think the opportunities are probably

endless. So let's get started. Krista, Rori, you guys are experts in this too. Krista, what if we just take

a visit around One Accenture Park and find out what there is for us to do here? Does that sound

good? -Let's go. It sounds great. Come on. -All right guys, let's go.

One Accenture Park

Wow, this place is amazing! Krista, what are we doing in this space, and how did this come about?

Mark said it was for our new joiners, but can you tell us more about this amazing space? -Yes,

absolutely, Sarah. So a big part of our reimagined new joiner experience, or NJX as we call it, is this

world, One Accenture Park, and it is indeed our very own corner of the metaverse. So, this is a

totally imaginary world where our people can connect with each other and play fun games while

learning all about Accenture. And we're bringing clients in here as well on a daily basis. -And why

did we need to create this space for our onboards? I mean, obviously, the pandemic, but how did

we come up with this concept and what are we hoping it does for our new joiners? -Yes, absolutely.

So like most companies, we've been onboarding virtually for what? Almost two years now during the

pandemic. So, however, in talking with our new joiners, we heard that they were missing that sense

of belonging and connection during virtual onboarding. And then with the launch of our new purpose

and brand last year, we saw the opportunity to build more connection into the experience and truly

immerse our new joiners in our purpose, which as you know, is to deliver on the promise of

technology and human ingenuity. And what better way to demonstrate our purpose than a VR

experience that marries human connection with cool technology? -Yeah, I mean this is a great

example of that. It really does bring it to life. And, Jason, let's also talk about, I mean, we have this

amazing experience in what we've achieved here in One Accenture Park, but at the same time,

we're in the middle of the largest global rollout of VR devices across Accenture. So tell us a little bit

about that. -That's right. You know, this is something we've dreamed for, you know, as long as we

have read science fiction books about what the future of virtual reality would be like, which is 20 plus

years ago. You know, it was really, at the time, just something of the future dreams. And finally,

we've gotten to a point where the technology and the cost of the technology and the scale, the

scalability of what we've got here is to the point where an enterprise like Accenture can really

capture the value. And we've done that in what you've described with the world's largest enterprise

deployment of VR headsets, 60,000 Oculus Quest 2 headsets are going out around the world so

that we can have our people experience the future now so that we can help our clients do what

we're doing. Arguably, we're at a very early stage of this sort of enterprise deployment, but we hope

that the learnings will help fuel the offerings in the way that we help our clients do the same very
thing. -Yeah, it's exciting, and it's exciting to think about all of our people around Accenture one day,

all of us sitting there with our VR headsets on and leading the way, like you said. It's exciting. We're

leading the way, and we're learning as we go, and I can imagine we're learning a lot. So, so much

more to talk about. And when you said we've been talking about it for 20 years, I mean, you were

like, you know, five years old probably when you first started talking about it, right? -(Laughing)

That's right. Exactly. -Awesome. Well, Krista, I mean, we could probably stay here all day, but we

have lots of universes to visit. Is there anywhere else we should go before we leave One Accenture

Park? -Yes, so many places. Let's for now head over to our TQ experience. -Oh, TQ experience! All

right, that sounds great guys. Let's go! -Go that way? Alright, let's go. -Wow! Look at this, a TQ

exhibit. Guys, this is so cool! -That's fantastic! It looks like a destructor dinosaur. -So, what can you

tell us about this? -But before she does, I was just saying there's the TQ brain. I always knew there

was a big TQ brain somewhere. -I thought you were the big TQ brain. -Yeah, exhibits like these are

concrete ways we can introduce new joiners to concepts that are key parts of our Accenture culture,

whether it's in technology fluency like we teach in TQ, client stories or core values. These

installations are a way to explain in a symbolic way what Accenture is all about. So, this one is our

TQ exhibit. It's kind of like an abstract exhibit that you would see in an art museum. So it may not

make sense right now, but when you step into someone else's shoes and have that different

perspective, it starts to make sense. So, let's let's step on the circles, and you can see what I'm

talking about. I'm on Artificial Intelligence. -This is so cool! So when you step on a circle, it lights up

for you and explains the concept to you. -Exactly. -That's amazing. I'm on Automation here, and it

brings it to life. And art, very cool. -Nice. -Our human ingenuity and technology altogether. -I love it.

-Well, we could probably explore this exhibit all day, but I think we have a lot more to cover. But,

Rory, before we leave, you know, obviously this is a great example of how we use VR for learning,

but I've got to imagine there's other situations and other capabilities that clients are using VR for.

What other things are we using VR for? -Yeah, well, in addition to the ways that you've already

shown in terms of onboarding new employees, we see that the immersive training and learning

space has been a huge area of growth for our clients. So it's everything from hard skills to soft skills.

So soft skills, just doing what we're doing here, having conversations, you can imagine for customer

training, for education, the ability to have conversations, there's, how do I say it? There's less of an
intimidation factor here because you're able to repeat and do it over and over. We also see with

areas like hard skills. If you think about healthcare and surgeons who need to perform procedures

and need to do it accurate like heart surgery, there's abilities to do these things, to create over and

over, and it helps improve accuracy. Also, we see for other clients that need to train their employees

in sort of areas that are hazardous that might be difficult, we can recreate those environments here

until they feel comfortable. So yeah, it's really incredible. And some of the benefits, obviously, are

decrease in costs because you're not traveling anywhere, you're not using physical materials to

other areas because it's a growing area, a growing space in terms of how our clients are using VR.

We also see that commerce is a big area. So in terms of imagine this whole space around us turning

into a product showcase. Imagine an automobile in the center, imagine a car launch, All different

products that you can display, that's a big area, and customize and change. And lastly, going back

to the idea of community and events, more and more media, as we see with things being canceled,

having different entertainment and media together inside of these spaces. It's really tremendous the

amount of opportunity we're seeing with our clients across all different sectors, all different

industries. -And I think that's a really amazing point, and that's a big reason why we're here and so

excited about this. A lot of people think about the VR and the metaverse and everything as a place

to play, and games, and things. But you just highlighted great examples of how this really will be a

game changer in terms of how we work, how companies work, how processes are transformed,

which is why it's so exciting that we're doing all these cool things at the front edge of the innovation

to explore what's coming. -Yeah, and, Paul, on that note, I think maybe we leave this world. And is

there a place that you talk about where we do meet with clients? How do we use VR in these

universes and the metaverse to meet with clients? Is there somewhere we can visit? -That's a great

question. And yes, there is just such a place. Let's go there now. -All right, okay, well let's go guys.

Time to leave One Accenture Park. -All right, let's go. -Great!

VR Possibilities

-Wow, this place is another amazing universe. Marc, what is this place? Where are we? -Hey Sarah,

this is the lounge. Do you like it? I think it's fantastic. -I like the lounge. It looks beautiful. This is
where we welcome our diamond clients. And so during pandemic, obviously, we could not travel too

much, and then, of course, we need to be also sustainable, thinking about how we reduce our

carbon footprint. So we felt it was good to invite our clients here. And, you know what, they love it

too, because also they don't have to travel so much. So meeting in person, I would say, is

something that we do here, and this is really good. -This is awesome. Yeah, I can imagine meeting

with clients here, but we already meet with clients over video, the capabilities that we have on

Teams. So Rori, what's the difference between meeting with clients over video or bringing them

here? Is there a difference? -Yeah, that's a really good question, and you'd be surprised. It's easy to

trick the human brain. It's amazing how putting a headset on, these virtual reality technologies,

especially as the headsets get lighter and lighter, it can kind of convince you that you're actually in a

space, moving around and talking to people. And that sense of what we call presence becomes so

important when you're trying to make sure that you have the attention of other people. We find that

with Zoom or Teams meeting, it's really easy to have like six screens on your desktop open, you

could be texting on your cell phone, and I know now, standing next to you all, you can only be doing

one thing. It's very hard to multitask in VR. And so that's really important. We also find that there's a

sense of inclusivity that VR is allowed to create, that you don't necessarily---often in video meetings

you're asked to appear as who you are. Here you have the opportunity, like myself, to change my

hair color a bit, Marc, especially. All of us can look a little different. But those are things over time---I

don't want to negate the importance of identity and authenticity around that. But but there's a lot of

really different, unique, and interesting elements, that if you're trying to have business meetings, do

design workshops, really getting to know a new client and you can't be in person with them, we find

that virtual reality settings actually are really helpful creating that immediacy and presence. -Yeah, I

think we probably all feel it today. It feels like we're all really here together. It's a totally different

feeling than we're on Teams. Don't you think, Paul? -Absolutely. -Yeah, it's exactly like Rori said.

I've been here several times with clients. Marc and I hosted multiple clients here for one tour. We

went through different labs and navigated around. The clients say two things. First is, they just love

the ability to see more of Accenture so quickly. In one hour you can jump around and see so much,

so it's bringing the best of Accenture to our clients virtually, instantaneously. And the other thing they

love is that we bring this experience to life. They all say they've never seen anything like this. So it's
us leading and bringing this kind of experience to our clients, which is really important. -Yeah. Well, I

think we should check out more while we're here. Should we all head down to the next level and see

what's there? -Let's do it. -Let's do it. -Let's see more. -All right, let's make our way down here, you

guys. This looks amazing. Look at this space. -Look at what you can see. -Look at the big screen,

huge. -And Jason, maybe you can explain to us a little bit. Marc talked a little bit about Microsoft and

Altspace, but what is Altspace, and how did that come about? -Yeah, absolutely. Several years ago,

Microsoft acquired a small startup that was a burgeoning early-days VR company, and they were

just called AltspaceVR. And it was meant for group events, concerts, get-togethers, even stand-up

comedians gathered in AltspaceVR. In the early days, Microsoft saw the vision for bringing this sort

of experience into the enterprise. And just maybe a year ago, they started this concept of meshing

this with other technologies like Teams, and they introduced a technology and architecture called

Microsoft Mesh, and that will really bring the Altspace experience, bridged together with Microsoft

Teams, which allows for a much smoother move between those different modalities. So as you may

have seen, Ellen and I participated with Satya in the Microsoft Ignite Conference. And we started to

call on Teams, and then we went into AltspaceVR, we put our headsets on, and we went into a

world like this. So the underlying technology is based on the early-day investment in AltspaceVR,

and they then brought that into their Microsoft Cloud to bridge this with Microsoft Teams and a

technology called Mesh. So it's super cool. -Yeah, and another great example of how we partner

with our ecosystem partner in Microsoft. And Paul, this reminds me, I feel like every TQ show that

we do, we talk about how all the technologies come together to make whatever we're talking about a

reality. It's never one standalone technology. We've got Microsoft as our ecosystem partner, what

are the other technologies in play, because we're all just here moving in real time? -Yeah, Jason

gave a great overview of how this is working. And like you said, it's about bringing the best magic

from our ecosystem partners together to to make this happen. I remember probably six years ago

being in the research labs of one of our partners with virtual reality, and I had this big cable sticking

out of my head on the headset, because we didn't have the networking capability to make it work.

And at the time, there were issues with the headsets, where the the latency was too slow, which

created a lot of nausea and discomfort among people. That's just examples of the technology issues

that had to be solved, but like everything else, over time, the technology improves and accelerates
exponentially and these problems get solved. So the devices improved, the networking improved,

we have the cloud, which gives us the ability to create these amazing worlds like the ones that we're

in, and powered by amazing software and artificial intelligence and everything else. So it really is the

embodiment of a lot of other technology, combinatorial technology, coming together like we've been

talking about throughout the TQ series. -Yeah, bringing in our cloud, 5G, AI, it is amazing. And how

far it's come, and I can only imagine how much better it's just going to keep getting as those

technologies advance. Well, we've only been here a short time, but I feel like we've got a lot of other

universes to visit, and I'm thinking we should go check out another one. So Marc, we've been here.

This is where we meet with our clients. Are there any Accenture offices we might be able to visit?

-Hey Sarah, why don't we go to New York? Why don't we go to One Manhattan West? And that's a

chance for me to snap my fingers. Let's do it. -Let's go.

Accenture's Role in XR

Well, Paul, here we are in New York, your home office, and this is amazing! Can you tell us about

this space? -This is amazing, and I'm just amazed to be here. We were just in one of my favorite

cities a minute ago, San Francisco, and now we're in another one of my favorite cities, New York

City, and this is our 1 Manhattan West office that we opened not too long ago in Manhattan. And I

tell you, it looks just as great in virtual reality as it does to be there in real life. We can see the views

and the amazing space we have here, which is the space was designed really to just bring people

together and create spaces where people could learn together, and work together, and bring our

clients, and ecosystem, and others in. And the same is true in virtual reality, which is what we can

do here. So it's really just amazing to see this brought to life virtually. And in fact, we had virtual

reality available. We worked with Jason and team to get virtual reality renderings of the building as it

was being built and designed, so we could lay out and model how the space was going to work. So

it's really been amazing to see all the technology come to life in addition to our real space, which is

just fantastic. So, why don't we check out another space? One of my spots. People who know me

know I love coffee, and we have a wonderful coffee bar right over there. So why don't we take a

walk and get a cup of coffee? -Alright, let's head to the café. -Let's go right over there. -Well, Paul, I
love that you brought us to the café. This is beautiful! So, I have a question for you, Paul. Is this

what we would call a digital twin? -Yeah, I would think about this as a simple example of a digital

twin we're experiencing in a environment virtually. But when we talk about digital twins for our

clients, we're also talking about real-time data and data in simulation to model a client's

manufacturing processes, for example. And we talk about artificial intelligence insights from the

simulation, how to operate a plant with less energy utilization, for example. And then we also have

processed knowledge built in, so we can actually improve the client's operations by optimizing the

digital twin and how it works in the real world. So this is a great, simple example of a digital twin, and

it really shows how it can come to life and I can use virtual reality and really powerful technologies to

really create these experiential environments for our clients to use digital twin environments. -Okay,

all right. That makes a lot of sense. So, I mean, we've seen all of this. It's amazing, as always, what

Accenture can do. And Mark, I'm wondering if you can talk a little bit about how is Accenture

differentiated? How do we differentiate ourselves from the rest of the market when we think about

XR? -Sure, Sarah. First of all, I think what's really amazing with our organization is that we really

walk the talk. So when we talk about XR, it's like Jason was mentioning that we're partnering with

Maxsoft and Facebook, and we've got like 60,000 of those headsets. That's pretty amazing. So

that's the number one thing, and that really amazed our client. I think the single thing that I would

say is that we've been very upfront working with many partners and looking with our industry leads

in how we could apply XR and the metaverse, if you want, to every industry to bring client values. I

call it the applied XR, applied metaverse, and I think that's quite unique at Accenture. And a lot of

our clients and also our competitors envy what we're doing here. -Yeah, I can imagine. So, Paul,

when we think about going to a client and talking to them about XR and VR, I mean what are the

scope of services we even offer? -Yeah, I mean that's the beauty of this is we're so well positioned

to help our clients with every every aspect of implementing virtual reality. And really, it starts with the

fact that we really invent the future. And Mark and I talk a lot with clients about research to results.

How do we take cutting edge R&D and turn it into results? And this is an example of us being early

and innovating and bringing out technology to help clients envision the future. So we can help them

with the strategy, sorting out and envisioning what they're going to do. We can help them with

building the virtual reality environments, with building the technology, creating the content through
the virtual reality studios that we have around the world, which is a unique capability that we have

combined with all the technology. We have hundreds of professionals who are trained and know

how to use the technology. And then now we've got the ecosystem partners that we've already

talked about, the relationships. We can bring the partners together for the clients with the right

experts with the understanding of their industry and their business problems and make it happen for

them, and that's what's so exciting and why with Accenture with all the services we provide and the

One Accenture view, we're really uniquely positioned to help our clients really do some amazing

things. -Yeah, that full end-to-end services. And again, you mentioned partnering with our

ecosystem partners. And, Jason, as you think about the work that we're doing with Microsoft, what

stands out in your mind that really differentiates us there? -Well, one of the things that's so cool

about our organization and our scale and our relationship with our ecosystem partners like Microsoft

is that we get to put this stuff to the test at a very early stage and push our ecosystem partners to

really adapt to the needs of an enterprise like Accenture. Of course, we've got needs around

security and scalability. And the use case today inside of Altspace was really facilitated because of

that strong ecosystem relationship where we could actually ensure that right from the start this was

going to be enterprise grade. With that, security needs, if you go into Altspace, you sign in via your

Azure AD account, for example. That's facilitated through that great Microsoft cloud capability and

their security capabilities that we continue to work with them to make sure that this really fits the

need of an enterprise like Accenture when we do that. It makes that whole provider network and

ecosystem ready for our clients' needs as well. -Yeah, so we're really in the beginning shaping it

with them, which is really cool. And, Rory, maybe one last thought here. We think about all these

amazing services that we offer and how we work with our ecosystem partners. I mean, how are we

positioned within Accenture? How do we differentiate within Accenture to be able to do all of this?

-Well yeah, I mean, I think that, obviously, we've been talking about the amazing technology

capabilities that Accenture has, but what's wonderful is the recognition that to do this space right is a

spectrum of talent. So it's everybody from traditional technologists and developers, but we've got

game designers, we've got producers, 3D developers, data scientists. There is a recognition that to

make this future right, it's got to be a combination of skills. It's also including all of the SMEs across

the various industries from retail, healthcare, beyond. So it's that group of individuals coming
together, and we're constantly focusing on, I think, the next technology. So whether it's volumetric

capture or facial recognition or what's going on with the NFT space right now, we have the team,

this multidisciplinary team that's really able to move forward with that. So, that's very unique. And

additionally, there's the 82 patents we have. We've got, I don't know, 30, 50, many, many case

studies around what we've been doing in XR over the last few years and working with our different

ecosystem partners, as well as accelerators in different areas. So we have, I'd say, we're very well

positioned with all the talent, and technology, and capabilities. -Yeah, so it's clear. We're leading the

space. We bring the technology. We bring the people. We bring the ecosystem partners together,

and we're really differentiating ourselves. Well, I mean, we visited your home office. And, Paul, this

has been amazing, but I think Mark feels like maybe his home office is a little bit nicer. So, Mark,

should we go check out your home office? -Yeah, let's go to Sophia Antipolis. -Let's do it! From New

York to France. -All right. -Let's go!

XR in the Industries

Wow, here we are in France. Mark, Krista, we made it. I think Paul and Jason and Rory are around

here somewhere exploring, although maybe they're out having some chocolate and cheese since

we are in France. I don't know. -Probably, probably. I guess so. Do you like the place? -So Mark, tell

us a little bit about where we are. -Yeah, so this is the Sophia Antipolis lab, that's the largest lab we

have in Europe. In the South of France, so close to Nice, Cannes, Monaco, all those nice places

here. And what you see here is we're in the industrial zone. And so, the way we build all the labs, we

have zones. So, we have the customer zone, the banking zone, the manufacturing zone, and this,

and that's how basically we bring our clients. And they feel at ease because this looks almost like a

Disney park, and they can experience stuff. You have pipes, you have valves, you have peepholes,

and stuff like that. So, that's how we replicate some of the applied research we're doing in real life

almost. And now we're doing it naturally because since 2 years when we were starting to digitalize

all our labs all over the world, so we have 7 labs. And you see over there, there's this little tripod

called a Matterport tripod, and that's a laser scanner. And this laser scanner is used basically to

digitalize in three dimensions all those spaces, and that's what we've done. So, now we're shipping
these to our clients, and they can visit our labs. -Yeah, I can imagine this is probably amazing for our

clients to visit. And Krista, the one thing we haven't really talked about yet today is how are we

bringing this to our clients? I imagine we have got some really good examples. Do you have an

example you could share with us today? -Tons of examples. Yes, we are especially adding value for

our clients in the immersive learning space, which is the offering I lead globally. Immersive learning

is a powerful approach to training, allowing enterprises to deliver highly engaging, safe, and effective

training at scale. And Sempra is a great example, so that's a utilities company. Our team should be

so proud of that, our XR team. So, what started as Accenture developing an immersive VR tool to

better train Sempra's utility workers on how to conduct overhead power line inspections has now

grown successfully to include a full-scaled XR factory. And congrats to our our XR team and

specifically OG to our XR team, Brent Bloom, and the great work that that group is doing. It's very

impressive. -Oh, that's amazing. Yeah, a lot of great client examples, and I'm sure we can talk about

a lot more. But maybe, Mark, while we're here, is there more of the lab here that you want to show

us? -Yeah. No, absolutely, definitely. If you want to walk with me, I can show you around if you want

to. Yeah, absolutely. We can go. -Let's do that. Thank you. -Okay here, this is basically where we

show some robotics capabilities that we have in our labs. -Wow, Mark. I'm going to guess this is for

the banking industry because I feel like I'm at a bank. Where are we now? -You're absolutely right,

Sarah. This is the next generation bank. And as I told you, it's like in our lives we have different

zones for different industries, so this is the zone for financial services. As you can, see we're kind of

in an agency, like a modern agency. We have a clerk over there, which is a little bot. We have

different places, and that's where we entertain clients, and we talk about many things. It could be

quantum computing and portfolio management. It could be many things, and they love that. And so

we have many zones like this all over the place and many labs. I'd like to take you to more zones,

Sarah, but I think we're running out of time. So, there's one more place. Come on. There's one more

place I'd like to go, and it's further east. Let's go to Bangalore. -All right. -Let's do it. -All right, I'm

going to snap my fingers. -Let's go. -Whoa, here we are in India. We're all in the same place again,

but we're not avatars anymore. And Paul, I see you're back from your chocolate and cheese

extravaganza, and we've got Dan joining us. Well, this is a really cool space, and it seems like we're

now using some kind of new technology. Dan, can you help us understand what technology we're
using now? -Yeah. In this case, we've combined extended reality technologies like VR alongside

CGI and green screen. In fact, we're able to record ourselves in entirely different places across the

world and bring us together into the same place. This may seem like science fiction, but it's actually

something that the movie industry has done for years. And with the pandemic, they've really

accelerated this technology to not only give us a common background, but to put us into a VR space

here together. -Yeah, this is cool, and it does seem like it's an amazing experience. We've seen it in

the movies, and Hollywood's been doing it, but we know we're not in Hollywood. I don't think. So,

Mark, maybe you can talk to us a little bit about why we're now able to use this technology and why

it's making its way out of just being in Hollywood. -You are absolutely right, Sarah. Hollywood and

movie production companies have been using green screens and computer-generated imagery for

years. But until recently, the tech was out of reach for anyone that was not in the entertainment

industry. What is really truly amazing is what we call technology consumerization. Technology gets

cheaper and cheaper. And so now, almost every business that is not in the entertainment industry

can afford to buy this kind of green screen and technology. Think about that. Even at home,

YouTubers can rig up basic screens these days. -Yeah, it's become much more reachable and

usable by almost anyone. So, Paul, this is cool, right? We continue this virtual voyage. We have this

amazing technology. But I still hear those questions around, well, it's fun, it's cool, but where is the

real actual business value in it? Could you talk to us a little bit more about that? -Yeah, no, that's the

exciting thing is that this is creating real great outcomes and has tremendous potential for the

companies and the clients that we work for. And you can think about it on a few basic dimensions.

It's a growth driver for our clients as they think about new ways to engage with customers and

consumers. It's an efficiency driver as they think about new ways to structure work and work

processes across all the different virtual kinds of technologies that we've experienced on this great

tour that we've been on. And how do you do that? It's about creating the experiences, whether they

be for employees, workers, partners, or consumers. It's about new products, new services, new

ways of doing things, and I think we've gotten a great taste of that on the world tour that we've done

here. And it's really exciting to think about how the end-to-end capabilities that we have that we've

talked about a little bit in this session come together to position us uniquely to be able to help our

clients envision, create, build, and then operate in these virtual worlds that are really going to define
the future of a business. -Yeah, there's a ton of value when you think about it simply increasing

revenue, decreasing cost. And if we look around where we are today, we're in India. It looks like

we're in a manufacturing space. So, when you think about the capabilities we can bring to our clients

in different industries, Mark, can you tell us a little bit more about that? -You're absolutely right,

Sarah. You'll notice that we're in a manufacturing space here right now, and I think what's really

crazy is that today we can build this kind of environment for any type of industry. So, tomorrow,

you're meeting with clients in the healthcare, you can build a whole hospital, and then we can

welcome them. After that, you can build other industries. So, I think it's really cool that when you're

having, for example, a meeting with the manufacturing client, you do that not in a regular conference

call, but you do that in this kind of environment. And with this Sarah, I'm really sad to say that this

will conclude our virtual world tour. Sorry for this. -Well, that is disappointing. This has been an

amazing experience, and I know we probably love to visit like 100 more places. But okay, I agree. I

guess we have to end our virtual world tour. This is our last stop.

Key Takeaways

Wow! Okay, I have to say, this has been my favorite Aftershow. Now, let's not tell any of our other

guests, but they were all great! We went on a worldwide virtual voyage here, and we haven't done

that in any other show. This was fantastic! And I can see we're still only at the beginning with this

technology, and it's really just starting to hit its stride. I mean, if we were to think back a year ago, we

probably would never imagine that we are where we are today. And so I can only imagine when we

think about a year in advance, in the future, where might we be? I mean, it's exciting to think about

what's coming and how the environment is going to become more elaborate, more realistic, and our

ability to operate in them are going to be greater. So, I'm looking forward to our XR TQ show in a

year to see what we can come back with. Okay, so to end the Aftershow, as we always do, we want

to give a tip from each of our speakers and talk to people about what they can do to be a virtual

voyager. This technology is new to almost all of us, so I think everyone appreciates some tips and

some key takeaways. So, Krista, let's start with you. What would you tell someone that's just getting

started or they want to learn more? -Yeah, thanks, Sarah. If you want to quickly soak up a wealth of
XR knowledge, our very own Nicola Rosa has a great monthly podcast. It's called Field of View that

he hosts in partnership with the Academy of International Extended Reality. Each episode focuses

on interesting XR projects with special guests from around the world, like our very own magical

Marco Tempest, our XR lead in Zurich who works on top secret projects with NASA and is the

mastermind behind Accenture as the most immersive collaboration platform. How about you,

Jason? -I always like to say know Accenture's own story so that you can experience it yourself,

really understand the story so that you can contribute, but also so that you can share that with our

clients. And I think we've got such an incredible story to share. If you experience it firsthand, you'll

have those great examples to offer your clients. That's my key takeaway. -I love that. And Rory,

what about you? What would you tell people? -Yeah, I would say the most important thing is to

experience it yourself. I think when, you know, whether it's getting a virtual reality headset on, which

Accenture has made a lot easier, just put it on, try it, or whether it's engaging online, and the NFTs

we all know are taking off, and looking, searching, buying, a lot of these technologies are not as

intimidating as they sound, once you get into it. So we're at the point now where everybody should

feel comfortable trying and experiencing, whether it's creating or interacting with this content. -I think

that's great advice. All right, Dan, what would be your key takeaway? -The key takeaway I would like

everyone to take is that success at Accenture for us as individuals and as a company always relies

on helping our clients have one foot in today and one foot in tomorrow. You should be confident that

you can bring this technology to your client today, and it can be applied for value. And have a point

of view on how this technology lays a foundation to unlock further value well into the future. -That a

great one, Dan, I love that. Okay, Mark, you're up. What's your tip or key takeaway? -So you know,

I'm a big fan of the New Applied Now. So we talked about the New in the metaverse, and we really

talked about the Now, that we need to experience it; I want to talk about the Applied. I really believe

that Accenture has amazing opportunities to applied metaverse, how we're going to be really

creating the value for our customer, and not only on retail, because a lot of people talk about retail. I

think it's across every industry in the world that we're serving. So, think about Applied metaverse for

Enterprise. -Love it! The opportunities are endless, so that is a great point. And Paul, why don't you

sum it up for us? What would be your key takeaway? -You know, I'd just say, this is really our space

to own, and if you think about what Accenture does and what the world needs, this is really our
space to deliver on the promise of technology and human ingenuity around how all this is going to

come to life. And the good news is, you've heard from this amazing team that are amazing guests in

the program, we are leading today. We're leading and applying at Accenture. We're leading in the

early work with clients around extended reality, as well as the other components of the metaverse

that are forming. So I think this is really exciting. I think it's the next generation of what we're going to

see happen. And I'll just build on what Mark said, it's about applying it. We understand the

technology, we understand the industries that our clients are operating, where they need to apply

this technology for their own customers or for their workers and employees or partners, and we

understand the experience of how to create the experiences that are so important in making this all

work. So, very exciting time. And again, ours to own. -Yeah, it is exciting, and I love that point to end

on. Well, thank you everyone! Paul, thanks for co-hosting. Thank you to all of our amazing guests.

This TQ XR and Metaverse Aftershow has been amazing, but we're going to have to take a wrap for

today. I'm sure we're going to have much more coming on this topic. We're just at the beginning. But

remember, it's up to you to learn more and, as we said, apply this, and think about what you can do

with this. And you can head over to the TQ homepage, as always. There's more content in there,

there's case studies, there's study guides on this topic where you can learn more. So, get involved,

get started, and learn it and experience it. That's where we all need to start. Okay, well, we'll catch

up soon back at the TQ HQ for our next TQ topic. There's always more. So until then, happy

learning! (Music lyrics) "TQ, where would I be without you? TQ, what would I do without you? I

always feel like I have my head up in the clouds, now store my data there, my applications are

running wild."

Course author

Accenture
Accenture is a leading global professional services company, providing a broad range of services
and solutions in strategy, consulting, digital, technology and operations. www.accenture.com.

Course info
 Level Beginner

4.87912 stars with

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Duration 1h 44m

Updated 4 Feb 2022

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