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It\u2019s been said on this show before; XR doesn\u2019t have a technology problem, it has an adoption problem. In Dan Lejerskar\u2019s experience, everyone from universities to governments see the value of XR \u2014 they just lack the content to make it a worthwhile, everyday tool. He and Alan explore how EON Reality is addressing this discrepancy.\xa0\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nAlan: Hi, it\u2019s Alan Smithson\nhere. Today we\u2019re speaking with Dan Lejeskar, founder and chairman of\nEON Reality, a world leader in\nvirtual/augmented reality based knowledge transfer for industry and\neducation. They believe that knowledge is a human right and it\u2019s\ntheir goal to make knowledge available, affordable, and accessible\nfor every human on the planet. We\u2019re going to find out how, in the\nnext XR for Business Podcast. Dan, welcome to the show, my friend.\n\n\n\nDan: Thank you so much.\n\n\n\nAlan: I\u2019m really, really\nexcited. I know you guys have been working\u2013 well, you specifically\nhave been working in the 3D virtual space for many years now. How did\nyou get involved in VR and learning?\n\n\n\nDan: In my past, I used to work\nwith simulators \u2014 big aircraft simulators, etc. \u2014 and I got really\nexcited about seeing the effect it has on pilots and soldiers, and I\nalways thought that it would be useful to do the same, but for normal\npeople, nurses, etc. But obviously these people couldn\u2019t afford a\n$50-million simulator. So I had to be patient and wait until the\ncomputers follow Moore\u2019s Law; become cheaper, faster, better. And by\n\u201999, the hardware was there, so you can start running this on PCs. So\nwe were very early adopters of virtual reality already in that\nperiod.\n\n\n\nAlan: We\u2019re talking 20 years.\nMost people know VR and AR as if kind of something in the last five\nyears. But what was it like kind of going through these growing pains\nof going from a million dollar simulator \u2014 millions of dollars\nsimulator \u2014 to now we can buy an Oculus Quest for 500 bucks?\n\n\n\nDan: It\u2019s been an interesting\njourney, with a lot of ups and downs. And very much VR has been like\nAI. I\u2019m sure you\u2019ve read about the \u201cAI Winter\u201d, when things\ndidn\u2019t go that well. We\u2019ve had quite a few ups and downs in virtual\nreality. \u201999 was fantastic, because that was the era of dot-coms. And\nwe started with something called Web3D, so you can do 3D on the web.\nIt had actually millions of users. Then we had a hard landing 2001.\nRemember when dot-com crashed? And we had to move our business from\nindustry and education to defence because we had September 11th. So\nthat was kind of what saved our business, doing homeland security\ncenters and the like. And then slowly and surely, we picked up the\nbusiness up to 2007, 2008. And during this period, there were several\niterations. There was something called people avatars and virtual\nworlds, that was very popular around 2007. That raised and crashed\nalso, pretty tough. But we managed to navigate those water until I\nwould say 2011, 2012, when the hardware became available for mobile\ndevices. So this was before Oculus. Already then we could see where\nthe industry was going.\n\n\n\nAlan: Oh, you guys, you never\nlost your path. You\u2019ve veered a little bit from military, to industry\nand education, back to military, and then back to industry and\neducation. Obviously, the passion is in the industry, knowledge\ntransfer and education. What are some of the projects that you guys\nhave done in the last few years that really just made you go, \u201cWow,\nthis really is something that, quote unquote, normal people can use?\u201d\n\n\n\nDan: So, you\u2019re right. We\nrealized quickly that the biggest value has to do with knowledge