The Future Of Virtual Reality (VR)

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You may think you've experienced virtual reality, and you may have been quite impressed. Especially if you are a gamer, there are great experiences to be had (or rather, in there) today.

The future of virtual reality (VR)

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But over the next few years, in VR, as in all areas of technology, we're going to see things that make what's cutting edge today look like Space Invaders. And while the games are amazing, the effects of this transformation will be far wider, affecting our work, our education and our social life.

Today's most popular virtual reality applications involve taking full control of a user's senses (sight and hearing, in particular) to create a fully immersive experience that places the user in a entirely virtual which looks quite realistic.

Climb something high and look down, and you'll probably get a sense of vertigo. If you see an object moving quickly towards your head, you will feel an urge to duck.

Very soon, the creators of VR will extend this sensory diversion to our other faculties - for example, touch and smell - to deepen this feeling of immersion. At the same time, the devices we use to visit these virtual worlds will become cheaper and lighter, eliminating the friction that can currently be a barrier.

I think

extended reality (XR)

– a term that covers virtual reality (VR),

augmented reality (AR)

, and Mixed Reality (MR) – will be one of the most

most transformative technology trends

of the next five years. It will be enabled and augmented by other technology trends, including ultra-fast networking, which will allow us to experience virtual reality as a cloud service, much as we currently consume music and movies. And artificial intelligence (AI) will provide us with more personalized virtual worlds to explore, even giving us realistic virtual characters to share our experiences with.

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Virtual reality in education and training

Virtual reality is already making big inroads in education, with a slew of startups and established companies offering packaged experiences and services aimed at schools.

The Engage Platform

is used by Facebook, HTC and the European Commission to enable distance learning. And a study published in 2019 found that medical students trained using virtual reality were able to perform certain procedures.

faster and more accurately

than their peers trained using traditional methods.

Teslasuit

is likely to make waves, which uses an all-around combination to deliver haptic feedback, enhancing immersion through the sense of touch. It also offers a range of biometric sensors to measure the wearer's heart rate, sweat and other stress indicators. The suit is already used in NASA astronaut training, but its potential uses are limitless.

For training, it could be used to safely simulate a number of dangerous or stressful conditions and monitor how we respond to them. For example, Walmart used it to train retail staff to work in

black friday situations

, teaching them how to operate best in busy store environments with long lines of customers.

In addition to training us for dangerous situations, it will also greatly reduce the financial risk of letting students and inexperienced recruits lose expensive tools and machinery in any industry.

VR in industry and work

The pandemic has changed many things about the way we work, including the massive shift to working from home for a large number of employees. This poses challenges, including the need to maintain an environment that fosters cooperative activity and the building of a corporate culture. Solutions involving virtual reality are rapidly emerging to help address this.

Spatial

, which creates a tool best described as a VR version of Zoom, reported a

1000% increase

in the use of its platform since March 2020. In total, the value of the professional VR equipment market is expected to grow from $829 million in 2018 to $4.26 billion by 2023, according to research by ARtillery Intelligence.

Communications giant Ericsson (which provided Oculus VR headsets to employees working from home during the pandemic for VR meetings) spoke about the creation of "

Internet of the senses p>

." It is about developing projects that simulate touch, taste, smell and sensations such as hot or cold. He predicts that by 2030 we will be able to enter digital environments that will appear completely real to all of our five senses simultaneously.

This will lead to the advent of what he calls the "cloudless office" - where the office effectively disappears from our lives as we are able to create fully interactive and collaborative working environments wherever we are in the world, simply putting on a helmet and any other device necessary for the task at hand.

There are already a number of VR-based social platforms that allow friends or strangers to meet and chat or play in virtual environments, such as

virtual reality cat

,

Altspace VR

and

Rec Room

. As with virtual reality in other fields, the increasing level of immersion possible thanks to new technological developments will make them more useful and more attractive to the general public throughout the next decade.

This year Facebook, which has long had a stake in VR due to its acquisition of headset maker Oculus, unveiled its platform.

Horizon

. Currently in beta, it lets people create and share collaborative worlds online where they can hang out, play games, or work together on collaborative projects.

We will always make time to meet friends and loved ones in the real world, as our work and school lives become increasingly distant, it is likely that more of our social interactions will also move into the realm. in line. Just as we are no longer deprived of career or educational opportunities due to an increasingly virtualized world, we will have more meaningful ways to connect with other humans as technology improves. in this domain.

And of course - VR in games and entertainment

The “killer app” for VR is gaming, and the reason the technology is growing at its own pace is due to the vast market of people willing to spend money on the most awesome and entertaining experiences. immersive.

Sandbox VR operates virtual reality centers where equipment that would simply not be practical or affordable to use in our homes provides some of the most immersive experiences ever created.

Using full-body haptic feedback suits, they offer five games - one licensed from Star Trek - that allow groups to cooperate or compete in deep space, aboard ghostly pirate ships or during adventures. an infestation of zombies.

see here

, he told me, “the bottom line is that you believe in the world – it's very real, and to progress you and your friends have to communicate and work together. One of the best ways to describe it is that you're the stars in your own movie - that's basically what we created. "

It makes sense in many ways that there could be two markets for consuming VR entertainment – ​​at least in its early stages. While the most immersive and impressive technology is big, expensive and requires technical skills to operate, it's more viable to offer it in dedicated locations rather than as an in-home experience. As with the movies, stay-at-home deals will provide something a little less spectacular but more convenient - at least until we get to the point where we can have full-size Star Trek holodecks in our own homes!