Virtual Reality (VR) technology is a core ingredient of Lenovo New Realities – an immersive, first-person cinematic experiences amplifying the voice of 10 change-making young women from around the world. The films, launched in celebration of International Day of the Girl on October 11, help shine a light on the role smarter technology plays in furthering their missions to drive empathy and positive change in society.
Credit for making the project an inspirational success goes to the brave women and Lenovo’s collaborators in the project — Girl Up, the gender equality initiative of the United Nations Foundation (UNF), and award-winning filmmaker Ava DuVernay. Yet, it should be noted that Lenovo’s ThinkReality had a small, but significant, role to play as well.
The genesis
New Realities was conceived and executed as an immersive experience for audiences using 360-degree filmmaking and VR technology. Lenovo sent Mirage VR S3 headsets to over 100 journalists and influencers around the world so they could experience the films as intended by the director and the protagonists.
Why is it important to experience the films in full VR? Because studies show that audiences perceiving content through VR are 4X more focused and 3.75X more emotionally connected.[i] Smarter technology helps achieve learning and empathy among users.
Lenovo built the Mirage VR S3, an enterprise-quality VR headset with a focus on ease of use, because not everyone is a VR expert. The New Realities audience using the Mirage VR S3 could take the headset right out of the box and quickly be transported to a Brazilian favela, an Indian tea plantation, and the streets of Paris and Detroit — seeing the realities of women working to make a positive impact in our world.
Better management
Managing content and devices with the ThinkReality platform is also nearly just as easy. The Lenovo ThinkReality platform lets users manage devices remotely and securely – regardless of where they are. Through a dashboard, you can distribute applications, update headsets, and share content. For the New Realities audience, headsets were sent out all over the world, and the movies were immediately downloaded when users turned them on and connected to the Internet through wi-fi.
Without ThinkReality, the alternative would have been to spend hours laboriously side-loading the content individually to each headset — hardly a smart solution any enterprise or institution would want to choose. This is the ThinkReality difference, we help make new realities easier to build and scale throughout the enterprise, so our customers can create the experiences they need to change their world. Smarter technology for all is how we envision tomorrow.
[i] PWC – The VR Advantage: How virtual reality is redefining soft skills training
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