Tag: Future of virtual reality
- Introduction
- A Brief History Of Metaverse
- A Simple Definition Of Metaverse
- Metaverse And The Future Of Work
- Metaverse Applications In Our Work World
- Potential Concerns Around Metaverse
- Metaverse: What Lies Ahead?
Introduction
Metaverse is the next generation of the internet. Blending the elements of virtual reality, augmented reality, online games, social media, and cryptocurrencies; metaverse ushers in a novel phase of interconnected virtual experience, that reimagines the future of work. This blog will take you through everything you need to know about Metaverse – from history to how it will impact the future of work!
A Brief History Of Metaverse
In his 1992 sci-fi novel Snow Crash, author Neal Stephenson coined the phrase metaverse – probably the first time most of us heard it. The novel portrayed metaverse as a successor to the internet, depicting the author’s vision of how a virtual reality-based Internet might evolve in the immediate future.
Today, the metaverse is moving from hypothetical to real, inspiring enterprise tycoons to rebrand and innovate. The recent rebranding of Facebook, Inc. into Meta Platforms, Inc. was solely inspired by metaverse. In the Founder’s Letter, Mark Zuckerberg underscores that “We are at the beginning of the next chapter for the internet. The next platform will be even more immersive — an embodied internet where you’re in the experience, not just looking at it. We call this the metaverse, and it will touch every product we build.”
Ever since the publication of Snow Crash, the notion of metaverse has enjoyed constant popularity. The concept has highly inspired the creators of online virtual worlds such as Second Life and Active Worlds. The success of Snow Crash was such that it was made a mandatory read for Microsoft’s Xbox development team.
Until recently, the application of metaverse was restricted to internet-based video games and social media. Metaverse was predominantly used to improve the quality of immersion in virtual reality environments. The past two years witnessed a tremendous shift in the work culture, with remote and hybrid workspaces becoming the new normal. The application of metaverse technology in improving work productivity, creating interactive learning environments, and facilitating virtual reality home tours is on the brink and companies like Fingent are already on the track with best-in-class POCs and ace development skills.
Read more: What’s in Store for Real Estate this 2022?
A Simple Definition Of Metaverse
Metaverse is coined by joining two words; “meta” meaning beyond and “verse” referring to the universe. Literally, metaverse stands for a virtual world that lies on top of, or beyond the physical world. Metaverse is an extension of the real world that is amplified by emerging technologies such as extended reality (a combination of VR, AR, and MR), non-fungible tokens (NFTs), cryptocurrencies, AI, IoT, and more.
Metaverse And The Future Of Work
When the COVID-19 pandemic swept industries and stomped economies, the internet, and other work-from-home technologies helped us stay resilient and ensure business continuity. Many industries became technology-intensive, such as education, retail, conferencing & event management, etc. Metaverse will further transform these sectors by implementing virtual reality (VR) based wearables that allow users to experience and/or purchase the services with the help of immersive virtualization (without leaving the premises of their homes).
Imagine you want to go for a movie with a colleague after working hours or hang out with a friend for dinner. With metaverse, you’ll have alternatives for all these social interactions, especially when you want to avoid the hassles of a physical word, such as social distancing.
Metaverse will significantly transform the way we work by leveraging VR:
- Offers multiple choices with respect to work location and ways of working. Employees will no longer be confined to their workstation cubicles.
- Metaverse helps build a centralized digital work environment that will smoothen the transition to remote working.
- Freedom from tedious daily commutes, in-person meetings, expensive business trips, and professional office apparel.
- Guarantees physical safety from getting exposed to harmful viruses like COVID-19 or Omicron. Virtual collaboration reduces the spread of transmittable illnesses.
- Makes idea-sharing and collaboration more effective and accessible than ever. Easy to join virtual meetings and participate actively in discussions by gaining a near-physical experience.
- Eliminates the risks and hazards present in the physical world and makes the workspace safe and convenient for employees.
Case Study: How Fingent enabled a leading educational establishment to innovate their campus visits by leveraging virtual reality. Download now!
Metaverse in real-life: Two leading examples
One of the best examples to demonstrate the impact of metaverse on the future of work is the recently launched Horizon Workrooms. Introduced by Facebook, Horizon Workrooms is a virtual meeting space that allows you to collaborate with your coworkers virtually without feeling isolated or deprived of workplace interactions during remote work. The underlying virtual reality technology will help you join meetings as an avatar or dial into the virtual room using your computer through video call. Powered by VR and delivered via the Oculus Store, the Horizon Workrooms aims to leverage VR as a new computing platform that will reimagine the future of work.
Another notable example of the metaverse in a workplace is the latest Microsoft Mesh app. Mesh leverages a mixed reality experience that allows you to connect, share, and collaborate with your coworkers in immersive, near-natural virtual environments. Using Mesh, you can create AI-enabled 3D avatars that enable you to join meetings, visualize and annotate content, and use 3D objects to explain and point out features. The purpose is to make users feel like they are physically present in the meeting room. Currently, Mesh-enabled experiences are available for HoloLens and AltspaceVR users.
Metaverse Applications In Our Work World
In no time, the COVID-19 pandemic forced corporate employees and industries to shift from physical to virtual. Platforms like Zoom and Slack facilitated remote collaborations far and wide, and across different time zones. Organizations are discovering the new and improved possibilities offered by virtual collaboration tools, making metaverse an inevitable technology in the future of work.
Case Study: Fingent develops a unique mixed reality application for a leading university by combining facial recognition technology. Read more.
Top three industry applications of metaverse:
1. Real estate: In 2020, Upland.me, the leading blockchain-based metaverse tagged to real-world addresses sold a virtual property of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) for a mammoth 23,000,000 UPX (US$ 23,000) in their year-end auction. While Upland’s target was to sell the virtual property at a premium of 65%, the deal secured them a massive premium of 368%.
Real estate brokerage firms and property trading companies can leverage metaverse to combine physical and virtual worlds, allowing users to buy, sell, and trade simulated properties that are mapped to real addresses. The application of blockchain-based cryptocurrencies will ensure the safety of transactions and the true possession of digital assets in the world of the metaverse.
2. Commerce: Fashion brand Gucci’s digital-only Dionysus bag was sold at a higher price than its physical version during an auction on Roblox- the leading video game platform. While the bag’s physical retail value was $3,400, it commanded a virtual resale price of $4,115, despite its non-transferability outside the Roblox environment.
Metaverse will offer consumers a more interactive in-store experience that allows them to try new products and explore novel brands using AR and VR sets. It’s a step ahead of the current e-commerce applications that will give way to 3D virtual shopping powered by metaverse.
Read more: Extended Reality: Six ways it is improving customer experience and helping brands grow
3. Education: A recent study reveals that around 91% of the world’s student population have experienced educational disruptions over the past two years. While emerging technologies accelerated the transition to online education, the academic world is still in a constant chase for immersive, inclusive, and interactive learning technology that can improve the educational ecosystem.
Education is a key focus area of the metaverse. Facebook recently announced that it will partner with Coursera and edX to develop a versatile AR curriculum. In the 2021 ASU GSV Summit, the Arizona State University exhibited a VR classroom that allows students to virtually explore a sanctuary of endangered species, which aroused the curiosity of the participants. Subjects like astrophysics, biology, surgery procedures, anthropology, etc. can be taught more effectively by leveraging metaverse.
Read more: How virtual reality improves the standard of medical education and training
Potential Concerns Around Metaverse
Statista reports that an average of 34 million units of VR headsets would be sold by 2024. As industries increasingly embrace VR to meet both enterprise and consumer demands, the universal adoption of full-fledged metaverse applications doesn’t seem fair. However, we still need to overcome a few challenges that slow down metaverse adoption.
- New verification methods should be developed to solve identity theft and reputation loss in the metaverse. This is important to prevent crimes such as facial forging, footage and voice tampering, etc.
- Any online environment isn’t devoid of data and privacy concerns. It’s vital to improve data security and privacy protection methods to keep your data safe in the metaverse world.
- Robust digital currency and payment systems should be developed to ensure the security of transactions in the metaverse virtual marketplace. To ensure safe trading within metaverse, built-in transaction verification systems should be implemented.
- As metaverse is expected to bring more people from different countries together in a virtual collaborative space, it’s important for lawmakers to devise the legislation that governs virtual interactions. Countries need to focus on setting up virtual legal domains and making the digital space safe for users.
- Upgrading the application of metaverse from the realms of gaming, fun, and entertainment to the domains of learning, corporate work, and industries requires careful planning. The progression should be correlated with both the business outcome as well as the demands of customers and employees.
Read more: Reality technology services offered by Fingent
Metaverse: What Lies Ahead?
Though metaverse is advancing to take us to the threshold of a virtual universe, the technology is still at a nascent stage. As more tech giants and startups join the bandwagon, we can expect that metaverse will combine the best of reality technologies like AR, VR, and MR to transform the future of work. John Riccitiello, the CEO of Unity Technologies (developer of Unity game engine) observes that by 2030, Virtual Reality headsets will be as common as today’s gaming consoles.
Amidst the challenges that choke businesses during the pandemic, promising experiments around metaverse prove that remote work is a huge problem that VR could resolve. Industries that were hitherto dependent on on-site and field activities are taking a different path by embracing VR. We can expect that metaverse will soon be the efficiency driver in the new normal of work. If you have any queries on metaverse or need a demo on how VR can help you do business better, write to us.
Experience Next-level Collaboration
Collaborate with your teams like never before using a pool of ready-to-use collaboration apps integrated with InfinCE.
Explore InfinCEWhile Augmented Reality(AR) and Virtual Reality (VR) have existed for quite some time, it has only recently had a revolutionary influence on the corporate sector. However, in the next few years, both AR and VR will compel every business to leverage it in some form to drive growth. According to Statista, the AR-VR market will grow up to $209 billion by 2022 worldwide. Additionally, the report states that the AR and VR application downloads are expected to reach 5.5 billion by next year.
A recent study suggests that consumers are more likely to buy from a brand that leverages immersive technologies to market themselves. AR and VR technologies help customers explore virtual showrooms, touch, feel and experience products and completely transform the shopping experience. From a 360-degree catalog to an engaging digital experience, both AR and VR technologies can help shoppers to immerse themselves into the Ecommerce experience and at the same time accelerate sales and drive growth.
Read more: Augmented Reality, Virtual Reality, and Mixed Reality Detailed with Real-life Examples
Benefits of AR and VR
According to reports, about 78.65% of shoppers abandon their carts before completing their purchase. This shows the need for new ways to persuade customers to go ahead with the items in their carts and make the payment. Also, the pandemic has changed the customer behavior towards Ecommerce immensely, and customers now want to interact with your products digitally before visiting your store.
Sephora, IKEA, and MOSCOT are a few Ecommerce brands already using AR and VR to help convert prospective customers to clients.
Here are a few benefits!
1. Reduce friction in the online buyer journey
While the pandemic has accelerated Ecommerce adoption, some friction in the online buyer journey still exists. AR and VR help reduce that friction. Both AR and VR technologies enable consumers to find products quickly and try them on before purchasing them. Customers can also use the VTO technology to find answers to their queries without speaking to the customer service team.
Put simply, these immersive technologies disrupt customer experience completely and help convert a prospect to a client.
2. Improves digital marketing efforts
Facebook is piloting AR Ecommerce ads, and Google plans to incorporate AR product images into both paid and organic search results. Going ahead, AR and VR may improve the online marketing efforts of businesses.
3. Reduce returns
The ‘try-before-you-buy’ ability of AR and VR technology gives shoppers the chance to visualize a product and even try it on virtually, making them more confident in their purchasing decision. This eliminates the need to buy several versions of the same product and thus helps reduce returns, especially in the fashion industry.
Read more: What are 3D Web Configurators? How do they Boost Ecommerce Sales and Drive Customer Satisfaction?
Top 6 Ecommerce AR-VR Trends for 2024
1. Virtual Showrooms
Virtual stores are going to change the way people shop. A virtual showroom converts an empty room into a digital one completely and helps customers explore a variety of products. VR glasses allow customers to view distinct products along with their characteristics just as they would in a physical store.
For example, Kia, an automotive brand, is already taking advantage of VR’s benefits in its Ecommerce. Their customers can go through different car models virtually and choose a car easily. In addition, Kia allows their prospective clients to drive their dream cars on a 1-1 scale.
2. Virtual ‘try-on’
By 2024, it is estimated that a vast majority of Ecommerce stores will incorporate more virtual try-on technologies. This will help customers with what they’re buying. For example, the AR-embedded mirrors enable customers to ‘try on’ their desired clothes or shoes without actually wearing them.
While the virtual try-on solutions are popular in clothing and shoe stores, it is now available for furniture, makeup, eyeglasses, and accessories.
3. In-store Navigation
Augmented Reality makes it possible for customers to easily tour a shopping mall and find what they have been looking for exactly. In-store navigation powered by AR mostly comes in the form of a mobile app. These apps leverage advanced programming language features such as Python try-catch to provide users with much more than just AR routing.
AR-driven apps can help shoppers find an optimized shopping route, show the desired product’s exact location, and even guide them to gifts and discounts sections. For example, Lowe, America’s leading home improvement brand, uses an in-store navigation app to help customers shop conveniently.
4. AR Filters
Many businesses are leveraging AR filters to help their customers visualize products and make informed purchase decisions. Customers can try on products such as sunglasses, makeup products, and more using AR filters.
Warby Parker Sunglasses Company and Sephora are using AR technology to win their customers. Sephora has developed a virtual assistant that uses facial recognition to help customers try on different colors of makeup.
5. VR for In-store Experience
With customer behavior shifting to online shopping, Ecommerce businesses must consider investing in VR to close the gap between traditional stores and online shopping. With 3-D products, customers can move around in a VR store, interact with friends and even ask a virtual staff member for support if need be.
6. Interactive User Manuals
In years to come, interactive user manuals will become the norm, especially for online stores that sell a steep learning curve of a coffee machine. Customers can simply scan the product and get access to a virtual walkthrough of the product and understand its features, set up process, and more.
Read more: How Top Brands Embrace Augmented Reality for Immersive Customer Experiences
Wrapping Up
From furniture, luxury cars to makeup, Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality have brought about tangible transformations. As they deliver real and measurable results to online brands, they are indeed here to stay!
As a professional software development company, we help you realize unique concepts and projects. With our VR and AR services, we help create unusual solutions for your business. Our cost-effective AR/VR apps enable businesses to boost operational efficiency and drive user engagement. As a result, our solutions help businesses unlock unique opportunities that scale business growth and efficiency.
Leverage AR/VR for your Ecommerce business today! Our team of custom software development experts at Fingent can create the best solution for you. Call us now!
Extended Reality (XR), is an umbrella term that encompasses immersive technologies – AR, VR, and MR that merge the physical and virtual worlds. While XR technologies are still widely used for gaming, social media and entertainment, it is being implemented extensively in industries and supplementing humans in unimaginable ways. Experts believe that the XR market will grow from 33.0 billion dollars in 2021 to 125.2 billion dollars by 2026, at a CAGR of 30.6%. This blog will take you through the top 6 reasons why your business needs to implement the rising capabilities of Extended Reality!
What is Extended Reality?
When put simply, XR is reality tech that covers VR, AR, and MR to extend reality by merging the real and virtual worlds. Here’s a quick look at what VR, AR, and MR are!
- Augmented Reality(AR): AR connects the physical environment with the virtual world through tablets, smartphones, smart lenses, and AR glasses to augment real-life scenarios.
- Virtual Reality (VR): This technology merges the physical environment with the digital one to create a whole new virtual world. Virtual Reality headsets and head-mounted displays help provide immersive experiences of the digital world.
- Mixed Reality(MR): With the help of MR headsets, mixed reality brings together the virtual and the physical environments to deliver unique experiences.
The term Extended Reality first popped up in the 1960s, when Charles Wyckoff filed a patent for his silver-halide XR film. The film was intended for photographing bright light events such as nuclear explosions. More recently, XR has moved into the mainstream with a few enterprises leveraging it to launch applications aimed at extending the customer experience.
Read more: Augmented Reality, Virtual Reality, and Mixed Reality Detailed with Real-life Examples
Industries Transformed by Extended Reality
AR, VR, and MR are developing at a rapid rate and transforming the way businesses are operating, communicating, and collaborating. Here are some of the business industries that have undergone a drastic change with these technologies.
- Marketing and advertising
- Healthcare
- Education and training
- Manufacturing and engineering
- Real estate
- Retail
- Gaming
- Art
XR offers endless possibilities and so any field can benefit by leveraging XR into their business processes.
Reasons Why You Need to Leverage XR Technologies for Your Business
1. Cultivates brand awareness
With changing customer demands and fierce competition, it is getting difficult to attract potential customers. Simply launching new products and services is not enough if you want to grow your business.
XR technology helps deliver a unique experience for users, foster consumer loyalty, and build brand awareness. For example, Gucci offers AR-fueled apparel and accessories try-on app that encourages users to try their accessories before buying thereby providing a stand-alone experience for users.
XR technology not only helps capture the attention of your customers but also promotes a positive experience with the brand.
2. Better customer experience
Customer experience is important for the success of any marketing strategy. XR’s ability to deliver immersive experiences will help you connect with your customers better and establish deeper emotional connections. XR helps transport your customers to different places and even attend live events without leaving the comfort of their homes.
L’Oreal leveraged AR technology to help their customers ‘try’ skincare products before buying and saw its conversion rate triple.
3. Increases customer engagement
As per a report by Deloitte, 90% of the companies are implementing AR and VR technology in their business. Another report reveals that 40% of customers are willing to pay more if they can experience it through Augmented Reality technology. Yet another report reveals that 58% of customers are more likely to buy a product if they have tried it out.
These statistics suggest that extended reality technology must be implemented in your business if you want to grow. XR allows customers to get detailed information and visualization about the products and services. It enables them to try out various products in various combinations and even test patterns and colors before purchasing them.
With XR technology, brands can increase engagement rate significantly and attract more customers and also provide them with a positive experience.
Read more: Augmented Reality Vs Virtual Reality – The Future Technology
4. Offers convenience
There’s no denying that online shopping is convenient and now with the pandemic forcing people to stay indoors most of the time, it is only becoming more popular. XR helps brands improve the shopping experience and also makes it less time-consuming. It helps consumers find what they are looking for faster and eliminate uncertainty from purchase decisions.
IKEA, for example, allows consumers to use their Place app and place a piece of furniture in their home using their phone. This improves the level of convenience, delivers a better customer experience, and eliminates any uncertainty before purchase.
5. Smarter Libraries
Data is the key to thrive today’s digital era. XR technologies place data in the context such that users can get better results.
For instance, you can use smart glasses to get a visual walkthrough to understand the true impact of the data collected instead of poring through spreadsheets and dashboard metrics for hours. XR technologies can help you make better and informed business decisions.
6. Create positive associations
Extended Reality provides brands with endless opportunities to create and implement emotional campaigns for their products. Based on the visual cues you include in your brand campaigns, you could encourage consumers to conclude your brand’s qualities.
XR helps connect with your audience in a way that activates their emotions and thus helps build a positive brand association. This will ensure consumers prefer your brand over others and establish loyalty. North Face, for example, launched an immersive VR experience of the Nepal landscape to its customers to identify with the brand’s identity.
Read more: Accelerating AR/VR Adoption Among Customers
Takeaway
Today, customers expect an intuitive experience from their brands and XR is becoming the new form of a conversation between brands and customers. Using immersive technologies, enterprises can nurture a culture of digital transformation and increase efficiency and profitability in the digital space.
Driven by immersive technologies, we at Fingent top software development company, can help your brand increase awareness, engagement, and conversion. We have systems in place to help support large-scale communication. If you have a project in mind, we can help convert it to reality. Call us today!
A few years back, Augmented Reality (AR) and Virtual Reality (VR) sounded revolutionary, more like the utopian world of the Jetsons. But today, with miraculous capabilities of accomplishing seemingly impossible tasks, AR and VR are invading our lives. With the popularity of Google Earth and Pokemon Go, 2017 showed us remarkable growth and awareness of these technologies. According to Statista, the global augmented and virtual reality market size is expected to reach 20.4 billion U.S dollars in 2019.
Although AR and VR are rapidly transforming various industries, thoughts like-what exactly are these fast-moving digital wonders and which one would mainstream first, linger in many minds. Here are the answers to all!
Augmented Reality – Augmenting the Real World
Augmented Reality is an interactive technology that capacitates the power of augmenting the real world environment with computer-generated perpetual information. What’s amazing about AR is that it brings components of the digital world to the natural environment. With the capabilities of narrowing spaces between reality and technology, augmented reality is expected to revolutionize the world.
Fun Fact: Studies reveal that by August 2017, the total number of downloads of Pokemon Go from Google Play market alone was 100 million.
Augmented reality is known best from the Pokemon Go and Snapchat filters. The IKEA Place app has also managed to win hearts by enabling users to decorate homes using the AR technology. According to a Statista report, augmented reality is expected to generate a revenue of 118 billion U.S dollars from AR devices and 68 billion U.S dollars from AR services.
Fun Fact: The survey conducted by GlobalWebIndex in 2018 showed the following consumer’s perception of augmented reality’s potential in various sectors.
Augmented reality with its capabilities to deliver an interactive and enhanced experience, is expected to project its best in retail and marketing industries. Increasing the array of channels to guide purchases, AR can turn to become the next big thing for retail stores. With AR technology, advertising and marketing industries can also provide more fluid customer experience by utilizing real-time user preferences and data.
Related Reading: Augmented Reality is also growing its pace in the travel industry. Take a look at how innovative travel apps are mesmerizing customers.
Virtual Reality – Exhibiting an Artificial Reality
Virtual Reality is an immersive technology that lets you experience a three-dimensional computer generated environment incorporating a mixture of interactive hardware and software. This technology blinds you out from the real world and takes you to a virtualized reality or an artificial environment. Literally speaking, virtual reality possesses the power to make you believe that you are teleporting.
The most popular forms of virtual reality we witness today are the VR Headsets. Google Earth and the other 360 degree videos on Facebook and YouTube are also versions of the VR technology. According to Statista, the market size of virtual reality hardware and software is predicted to increase from 2.2 billion U.S. Dollars seen in 2017 to more than 19 billion U.S. Dollars by 2020.
Experts predict VR to project rapid growth in entertainment and education industry. Possessing abilities to provide an immersive experience and a unique level of interaction, VR has the potential to evolve faster in these industries. With virtual reality headsets and mobile games, VR has already marked a significant position in the entertainment field.
Fun Fact: According to a survey in 2018 conducted by the GlobalWebIndex, the following is an estimate of consumer’s perception of virtual reality’s potential in various sectors.
Although, adoption of VR in the education industry is very much in its infancy, yet it is expected to transform classrooms and the way students explore colleges in the near future. The one VR miracle that has already gained popularity among students is the Gear Up NC VR app that is enabling students to screen through North Carolina colleges hassle-free.
Fun Fact: Nearly half of the population (42%) predicts that the education industry will become commonplace for VR projects to grow in the next five years. 97% of the people who have used VR for teaching have agreed that VR has the potential to engage students better.
Case Study: Fingent assists the university in developing projects involving upcoming technologies such as AR, VR, and AI
AR or VR – The Technology to Create the Big Impact
Although both the technologies have their own share of pros and cons, augmented reality has a lower awareness rate as compared to virtual reality. This, however, could be due to the age group engaging with the technology. According to a survey, both AR and VR technologies have engagements mostly clustered around the 25-34 age group.
Speaking of potential, although AR is statistically proved to be less popular, yet 50% of the population who have used both these technologies, believe AR to have more potential than VR. Only 47% of these technology users believe VR to create a big impact in the future.
With both augmented and virtual reality offering very different experiences, the fight on which technology ranks the best still remains as an unsolved puzzle. Like how Google’s Clay Bavor once tweeted – “VR vs. AR cheat sheet: VR can take you anywhere. AR can bring anything to you. Both are important. Neither will win”.
Only the future can decide on which technology would steal more hearts and create a big bang. Some experts believe that with the development of more equipment, the line that delineates these two technologies will probably start to get blurry. However, in today’s world, both augmented and virtual reality are equally transforming industries in its own ways. To learn more about how AR and VR can reshape your business, get in touch with our tech consultants now!
What is the first thing that comes to your mind on hearing the term, Virtual Reality? Do you get images of Neo and Morpheus strolling about in “The Matrix” or is it that of Johnny Quest with his father fighting it out in their “other world”. Either way, you are about in the right track. To think that these were characters created as part of the fantasy world in the past.
Virtual reality is a concept that is fast becoming common and popular these days. It opens a whole new range of exciting opportunities with it as well, especially in the world of gaming. Leading techs are already in the game, with their much-anticipated products such as Facebook’s Oculus Rift, Microsoft’s HoloLens, Sony’s Project Morpheus and a comparatively low-cost entry into this field, the Google Cardboard.
A lot of these devices are already being used in a number of industries across the world, as virtual reality is one of the most versatile technologies ever to be innovated in the recent past. To know what the hype is all about, let’s take a detour to find out what virtual reality is.
What is virtual reality
Virtual Reality is basically a concept in which computer technology is used for creating a simulated three-dimensional world. One in which the user can manipulate, maneuver and explore stuff while experiencing a feeling of actually being in that world. Nowadays, it is also known as Virtual Environment. Though there are different theories and opinions on what exactly comprises a virtual reality experience, the basic constituents are:
- three-dimensional, life-size images from the user’s point of view
- the power to monitor the user’s movements and change the images and features in the virtual display to reflect the changes in perspective
There are several devices and applications these days that have been created solely to achieve these goals.
A peek into how it works
The user feels a sense of “immersion” on being in a virtual reality environment. Immersion refers to a feeling of being inside or part of a particular world. Once the user starts interacting with the environment, he gets into state of “Telepresence”. Telepresence is a combination of the sense of immersion and interaction with the environment.
A proper Virtual Reality environment will actually make one feel detached from the real world or real surroundings and get you to focus only on your existence in the virtual environment. Computer Scientist Jonathan Steuer says, “Telepresence is the extent to which one feels present in the mediated environment, rather than in the immediate physical environment.”
Devices are designed by the developers with the help of technology to create these feelings among the users and provide rich virtual reality experiences.
The future
The two main custodians of larger-than-life experiences – the gaming industry and the film industry are the pioneers in using virtual reality for business. They are likely to take virtual reality to new heights and set the pace for other industries as well.
For example, the 700 billion dollars worth glamour industry in the United States, Hollywood uses virtual reality to make amazing movies. Nokia’s new Camera Ozo, is likely to become a huge hit in this regard. With the ability to capture audio and video in 360 degrees, Ozo has been reported to give the most amazing experience with surround sound and images. Users actually felt the voices in their surroundings and were able to turn around and see the characters talking.
There are a number of other companies also looking to invade the film industry like Samsung.
The gaming industry too has a fairly large amount of loyal followers who are highly enthusiastic and encouraging about new innovations. For example, Rebellion, the leading game makers are looking to launch a virtual reality integrated version of their old 1980s classic Battlezone. There are also other companies yet to set their feet into this huge wonder.
Tourism is also another industry which is starting to make use of virtual reality with the South-African tourism being the pioneers. Their shark diving experience is something that is likely to become the next big thing leveraging virtual reality.
From the looks of it, this is already starting to be a revolution which is not going to stop with the present day. Into the future, maybe we’ll have people watching pyramids being built in the early days of Egypt or maybe how the Empire State building was set up in America or watch a play in the original Globe theatre. Books could also be made into jaw-dropping movies or even games with virtual reality supported cameras. We have tons of talented developers waiting, with all the skills to ideate, conceptualize and produce amazing worlds for us to explore and experience. All we need to do is wait for it.