Imagine this: Wearing an Extended Reality (XR) headset, you look through digitised lenses and watch the world around you transform. Ergonomic controllers become your tools, spanning many worlds at command – magical obsidian swords in one, surgical instruments in another.

It is suddenly possible to live many lives, fending off zombies in dystopia or in an operating theatre practising a surgical technique to gestured precision. No matter the experience, the vision that surrounds you is realistic, fully immersive, and 360 degrees.

As I write this, I find myself in an uncanny déjà vu – transported two decades back, again standing between physical reality and an iteration of the great big metaverse beyond it.

In this memory, girlish chatter surrounds me on a too-sunny school day at Crescent Girls’ School, and I learn of my cohort’s privilege to become a pioneer in innovative education – the very first in Singapore to integrate ‘tablet learning’. (Look, ma, we’re in the news!)

While this article dates to 2014, my school had already adopted digital learning a good decade ago, in 2004, and was befittingly named by the Ministry of Education in 2007 as FutureSchools@Singapore.

The way we learn has been evolving for as long as we know how to learn. Fast forward to 2023, digital tools have become the universal language – students scroll endlessly on Wi-Fi channels or lavish stories by the art of typewriting keypad prodding – without too much conscious thought.

Backed by science: Virtual world with real impact

XR is essentially augmented reality (AR), virtual reality (VR), mixed reality (MR), and all immersive technologies, including those still to be created. XR extends the reality that we physically experience by combining some physical sensations in full virtual immersion.

Surprisingly, XR does not need to look hyper-realistic for our brains to believe it, according to this Vox video, which explores how the tech ‘tricks’ our brains. The good news is how we benefit from this ‘trickery’.

Also Read: Is virtual reality the next big marketing channel?

Studies point to the real advantages and surprising legitimacy of XR as a training solution – XR can help improve access to quality care, create meaningful interactions with patients, connect global clinical consultations, and accelerate how fast you learn.

Besides gaming, there are countless sectors where XR is being applied and/or developed further, from education to training simulations. Importantly, XR has supported healthcare organisations in recent years with simulated surgical procedures for complex training.

French healthtech VirtualiSurg, for example, has been innovating XR simulations since 2017 to democratise surgical training and improve patient outcomes at scale. With XR simulators that uniquely combine virtual reality and haptic arm robotics modelled after real medical instruments, users experience multi-sensorial force feedback as they practise technical gestures requiring precision.

On tangible impact, VirtualiSurg improved on-site training at the Georges Pompidou Hospital in Paris, boosting skill proficiency across nursing staff and patient safety and enriching the learning experience, too.

When Zuckerberg introduced META a year ago, he shared plans to build the next chapter of social connection, envisioning a future where people have more ways to play and connect in the metaverse, albeit with cartoony avatars to start with.

Under a year later, he unveils a groundbreaking update when he speaks to Lex Fridman hundreds of miles away, but with the feeling of being in the same room, thanks to photorealistic Kodak Avatars in 3D with spatial audio. The technology is astounding and immersive, and the nuances of facial expressions are exactly captured. Fridman muses that it looks like the future of how humans can connect meaningfully on the internet.

What might the future look like? To start with, here’s an invitation to step beyond our physical world into the metaverse, where what’s real can be debated, and what’s reality can be extended in fascinating ways. You might just marvel at how far you get to see.

And if you’re feeling bold enough to be part of what the future can be, financial analytics projects great investment potential of up to US$900 billion by 2030, with just enough time to scale.

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