The future is on the horizon and virtual reality and augmented reality, or mixed reality, technology will soon become as commonplace as our cell phones. Virtual reality is a fully immersive experience. Your eyes are completely covered and you are transported from your current location into the Olympics or the Grand Canyon. Augmented reality is a bit different in that it will overlay your current surroundings with images from a device. The potential for a Managed IT Support provider such as ourselves to utilize augmented reality to give our clients excellent and efficient support is exciting news!

This week PTC demonstrated a new Vuforia-based app currently called Project Chalk. This app will allow you to interact with others through video calling with some additional features for service providers. Project Chalk will definitely be more than just a marked up image within a video chat. No matter how much the user moves the device they are using, the markings will stay fixed to the area or device that they were drawn on by the tech.

Currently, if an internet connection goes down, or a hardware issue occurs at one of our clients we can attempt to walk them through some solutions. This will usually involve a lot of back and forth guessing on both parts. It may even escalate to a client taking photos with their phone and trying to send them in so we can assist them better. Finally, if we can’t reach a solution, a tech may have to be dispatched to the site, which can take even longer to obtain a resolution.

With Project Chalk, time-to-solution for clients could be reduced significantly. While video chatting through the app, the end user could bring the device into the server room, and the tech can mark up the video from their device. With these markings, it will be much easier for the user to find the firewall to reboot it or the cable that happens to be plugged in incorrectly. This can save both the tech and the end user a significant amount of time.

This new technology would really bridge the gap that Managed IT Support providers have a hard time crossing. We want to be able to solve IT related issues quickly, to get our clients back up and running in the shortest amount of time possible. It looks like, with new AR apps like Project Chalk, we can solve problems even more efficiently than we already do!