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Firefighters\nneed to train like any other professional, and their training usually\ninvolves setting a mock set ablaze \u2013 which, as you might imagine,\nwould be costly to reset. Enter RiVR, who are using 360 video and\nphotogrammetry to recreate these practice blazes digitally. CEO Alex\nHarvey and Alan have a heated discussion on the topic.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nAlan: Hey, everyone, my name is\nAlan Smithon, your host for the XR for Business Podcast. Today we\nhave Alex Harvey, CEO and creative director at RiVR, a virtual\nreality training and visualization company based in the UK. RiVR\nharnesses the power of VR and photogrammetry technology to create\ninteractive, immersive training experiences. They\u2019re currently\nworking with the UK Home Office, UK Fire Service, Police Service and\nthe Department of Defense in the US. Their ultimate goal is to\nenhance the way humans learn (I love that). Alex has a deep\nunderstanding of the games industry, having worked on commissions for\nthe likes of Codemasters, the BBC, and Ford Motor Company. He\u2019s\nobsessed with harnessing the latest A/V technology to make the real\nworld differences that we all need. He gets to work with incredibly\ntalented people to make this happen, and to quote him, \u201cI love\nthe feelings and memories we can evoke in VR when technology,\ncreativity, and innovation collide.\u201d I love that quote. RiVR\u2019s\nexhibited at six different VR shows this year, including CES Vegas,\nand their technology has been reported on by the BBC. To learn more\nabout RiVR, you can visit rivr.uk. \n\n\n\n\nAlex, welcome to the show, my friend.\n\n\n\nAlex: Hi, Alan. Nice to meet\nyou. Nice to speak again.\n\n\n\nAlan: Yeah. We\u2019ve been kind of\nback and forth on LinkedIn, and emails, and it\u2019s really finally great\nto sit down and have a conversation with you.\n\n\n\nAlex: It is such a busy world,\nand it\u2019s great to chat in person.\n\n\n\nAlan: Listen, let\u2019s dive right\ninto this. Explain to us what RiVR is and how it\u2019s making a\ndifference.\n\n\n\nAlex: RiVR is \u201cReality in\nVirtual Reality.\u201d We\u2019ve been creating VR experiences now for\nprobably nearer to three years with the production company, starting\nback in 2014, but we started obviously with 360 video doing things\nfor Thomson Holidays \u2014 you experience what it\u2019s like to be on a\ncruise ship, or be on a plane. That was three years ago. Then we\nstarted moving into the room-scale photogrammetry world, with very\nmuch a significant push at RiVR for training, and using photorealism\nto make sure that the users of our experiences are completely\nimmersed. I often say to people, \u201cI want you to feel like you\u2019re in\nthe world, and not in a Simpsons cartoon world.\u201d It is very much\npushing photogrammetry and photo realism into VR. You know, there\u2019s a\nlot of people doing photogrammetry now, but two, three years ago? It\nwas only of the likes of\u2013\n\n\n\nAlan: That was you and Simon!\n\n\n\nAlex: Yeah! [laughs] Me, Simon\nand Realities.IO. They were the guys that were pushing it. And it\nreally felt like when I saw those early experiences of Realities.IO\nand Simon\u2019s stuff, it felt like I was inside a video, but not quite?\nI want to try and be inside video content. I think that\u2013\n\n\n\nAlan: Let me kind of unpack this\nfruit for people listening. So, what Alex and his team do is they go\ninto a space, and they will take hundreds of photographs \u2014 if not\nthousands of photographs \u2014 of the space, and they\u2019ll convert that\ninto a game engine-based experience, where you can actually walk\naround. Now, what I think is really mind-blowing about what you guys\nhave done at RiVR is, not only do you create the environment, but\nthen you take specific parts of the environment \u2014 for