Perfect your patter with VR

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This article was published 30/07/2018 (2620 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The best way to quell nerves caused by the prospect of public speaking isn’t power posing or even picturing an audience in their underpants.

According to the teenage creators of a new app called Beyond VR, public speaking can be perfected with virtual reality software.

Jonah Perron and Eric Steinke are behind the award-winning startup business that has over 5,000 installs in the Google Play store and a revamped public speaking toolkit getting ready to be rolled out for consumer purchase.

Steinke, a 17-year-old fresh off of graduation from St. Paul’s High School, said he and Perron have been working on Beyond VR in earnest since the start of 2017. The app, when paired with a virtual reality headset available in the toolkit, simulates the public speaking experience, he explained.

“We’re able to track how many filler words you use, your eye contact, if you’re looking at the audience, voice volume, voice speed, and it helps people practise for an upcoming presentation,” Steinke said.

What differentiates Beyond VR from other options on the market is the app’s ability to make the user feel as though they are speaking to a real audience — whether that’s in a job interview, pitch meeting, or formal speech — with their own material and slides, Perron said.

The St. Paul’s alumni — including partners Lukas Phangurah and Connor Egan — went as far as snapping a photo of the auditorium at their convocation this June to use in the app as one of the practice settings.

“We use 360 images and real people, not avatars, to make it as real as possible,” Perron noted. “Everyone is filmed in front of a green screen and put into the app, so we can put people in different environments.”

While initial versions of the app used public speaking lessons developed by Perron and Steinke, the creators have since reached out to TJ Walker — a U.S. based public speaking expert — to write content and lessons for the app.

“Now that we’re working with TJ, he’s really the brains behind the lessons and the educational aspect, and we bring the VR component to really bring together this toolkit,” Perron said.  

The group has also received a hand from Oculus, a manufacturer of virtual reality headsets, through its Start program in the way of developer support, software and headsets. Perron added that Lesley Klassen of Flipside (formerly Campfire Union),  Chris Schmidt, chief executive officer of Geofilter Studio, and Microsoft Canada chief technology officer John Weigelt have all offered mentorship and guidance throughout the development process.

In May, Beyond VR was also the winner of the Manitoba High School New Venture Championship, held at the University of Manitoba and the group went home with few grand in scholarships.

Before heading to their respective universities to study computer sciences and business, the Beyond VR team intends to focus on their venture full-time at their Linden Woods home office for the summer. Long term, they hope Beyond VR will become a leader among virtual reality education apps.

“We want to be one of the big players in VR education, branching away from just public speaking,” Perron said. “We want to explore astronomy, history, and other parts of education that we think can be enhanced and become more interesting with VR.”

“We really see the potential of VR as it gets more mainstream,” Steinke added. “We can see it being quite large in four to five years.”