Immersive content is a hugely powerful way of engaging your audience where they actively participate in the storyline. Unlike traditional linear videos, interactive videos provide viewers with choices that influence the narrative’s direction, often through clickable elements like buttons and hotspots, branching storylines, and scoring. These elements transform passive consumption into an immersive and personalised journey.
Thanks to Near-Life, the ability to make interactive content is now available to anyone and everyone – so you can get your point across easily and effectively without spending large amounts of time and money.
According to American academic administrator and scholar Bernard Bull: “In order to create an engaging learning experience, the role of instructor is optional, but the role of learner is essential.”
What is immersive content?
Immersive content is all about the viewer engaging with what they’re seeing, and feeling present in the experience. This could be achieved through interactive content, where the end-user can interact with the video, make decisions and/or give answers. In a branching scenario, the choices the end-user makes will impact their pathway through the video and what they see. Other forms of immersive content typically rely on two technologies: virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR).
Virtual reality immerses the user in a digital simulation, and most experiences use special hardware to do so. For example, there are plenty of apps you can download on your mobile phone that use this technology. You can use these with a VR headset to have a fully immersive experience in a virtual world.
Augmented reality uses technology to create a computer-simulated layer on top of real-world information. It doesn’t create a whole new virtual world. For example, an app on your phone may use your mobile’s screen to show you where constellations are in the sky as you move your phone around.
Near-Life specialises in immersive content and interactive videos. It allows you to build interactions using text, buttons, images, pop-ups, and even hotspotting areas of your screen to make interactive. With Near-Life’s tool, you can track the user’s interactions, using tools like inventory to remember what the user has found or achieved so that they can use it later in the video. For example, finding a bandage will allow the end-user to use the bandage to wrap around a wound and continue their journey.
Near-Life also offers an AI image generator. Check out our interactive video made using Near-Life’s AI here.
Immersive 360º content
You can create 360-degree videos, also known as immersive or spherical videos, using a special type of camera. The omnidirectional camera, or multiple cameras, record a view in every direction at the same time. This will leave you with a 360-degree video. You can then scroll through it to see the shot from any direction, using a compatible device or app to view it on.
An example of this content would be ‘street view’ on Google Maps. It allows the user to view and move around a virtual area with a 360º scope. It provides a uniquely accurate experience of exploring and viewing an area that otherwise you just wouldn’t be able to do.
Virtual reality takes the user into a digital or ‘virtual’ world, so the photography or virtual space is created digitally. The user can normally ‘walk around’ or explore the virtual world. With 360 video they are limited to the filmmaker’s movements or standpoint. 360-degree video is real film taken of the real world, so it is not the same as VR.
An amazing way to take the immersion of 360-degree content even deeper is through interactive video. Not only are you engaging the user visually, but when they also are making choices or answering questions, you are engaging their brain too.
With Near-Life, you make your 360-degree or VR content immersive by adding interactive elements like buttons, icons, and other overlays. Click here to see an example of an interactive VR space station tour made with Near-Life.
What’s so special about immersive content?
- Making immersive content is a great way to get the most out of your content.
- A study by Educause Review found that immersive experiences can increase retention rates by up to 80% compared to traditional methods.
- Immersive content is the clear next step for learning – you don’t have to learn real-life skills and behaviours only in real life anymore.
- Immersive technology comes with the added benefits of large scalability and lower cost. This makes it incredibly useful to the public sector in particular.
- For those who may not have access to suitable learning resources, are working remotely or just struggle with engagement, immersive content provides an opportunity to learn effectively in an environment as close to a classroom or workspace as you can get.
How it can help organisations or emergency services
Immersive content can play a huge part in helping organisations or emergency services.
Let’s say you manage a team of people who handle specialised equipment. Perhaps there’s recently been an accident, or you don’t feel the right precautions are being taken. Or maybe you just want to carry out a routine health and safety rundown. Immersive content such as VR can give each individual an in-depth rundown of how to handle the equipment. It can even be used to simulate disaster scenarios. These are scenarios that are often incredibly difficult to prepare for.
This means virtual simulations are a real game-changer. Firefighters are another example, as they require extensive on-the-job hours and simulations. However, immersive experiences can create a near-perfect simulation of countless scenarios that they’d otherwise be unable to prepare for – all without any actual risks. On top of this, the same immersive video can be used over and over, year after year. It requires no teacher or instructor to be present.
To see an example of an interactive simulated experience made with Near-Life, check out this video for St John’s Ambulance.
How it can help teachers and students
Multiple studies have shown that just reading or listening to information from a textbook is almost useless when it comes to learning. Yet students are still being thrown huge chunks of information on a daily basis without the necessary tools to process it. And their teachers expect them to remember it all in twelve months’ time.
Immersive content offers a fun and far more effective alternative. Learners are genuinely engaged and involved in the process as the brain is being stimulated. Studies show this is a huge factor in learning. If you’re not using some part of your brain to process and go through the steps of the information, it’s just not going to stick.
Immersive content almost completely removes the need for a teacher. One person can make a piece of content that thousands of individuals can use over countless years. So what does this mean? Just that the educators of the world who work tirelessly to keep us informed can save money. And finally be left with some of the most valuable resource on earth: time.
Check out our example of an interactive Chemistry video about acids and alkalis here.
How can I create immersive content?
Near-Life is sharing the ability to make exciting, professional immersive content with the world, to take learning to a new level. This means you can use the platform regardless of the experience you have. You also don’t have to worry about the costs of special video production technology. In just a matter of hours, you can plan, prepare and create an immersive video that you can use again and again, forever.
Near-Life makes it easy for learning professionals, educators and anyone seeking to communicate knowledge effectively to create immersive and engaging interactive video, VR, and gamified content.
Click here to get started.