Virtual Reality: The Promising Future of Immersive Technology

Less of technology, more of a destination.

Imagine you're heading on a trekking trip and want to shop for new sneakers. 

Even after checking out a few options at a nearby store, you couldn't make up your mind. Sensing your dilemma, the salesperson hands over a pair of virtual reality glasses and directs you to an in-store arena.

The glasses let you explore the trek location while wearing the sneakers. You experience the comfort, robustness, and wearability of the gear in a practical scenario and end up buying them. 

What you witnessed was a trip down the virtual reality lane.

From gaming and social networking to education and healthcare, there are many applications for virtual reality that resemble our daily actions. You’ve probably already participated in a virtual reality experience and didn’t even know it.

Commercial businesses use virtual reality software to bring their product presentations to life and allow their patrons to consume content in an immersive environment.

Also known as the technology behind the "metaverse," virtual reality combines multiple virtual spaces focused on building social connections. One day spent in virtual reality space is equal to thirty minutes of time spent in real life. 

Unlike augmented reality, where you can overlay digital objects in your space and interact with them, virtual reality places a user in a virtual dimension through computer graphics, AI sensors, head, and body trackers. Combining VR hardware and software components creates an immersive experience for the end user. Objects like walls, tables, or sofas, act as a demarcation in the virtual world to prevent bumping into any obstacle.

Importance of virtual reality

Everything that makes up our perception of reality is due to our senses. So, in theory, everyone's truth is unique to them. If you provide your senses with simulated or artificial information, your perception of reality changes – creating a new, virtual one.

As market trends continue to evolve, virtual reality gives scope for a generous profit leap for diverse businesses. Many have already started investing in VR to create virtual demos of products and empower their workforce.

Modern-age gamers stream their content via VR projection from different geographical locations to expand their reach. However, the other industries are not far behind. Real estate, retail, supply chain, and logistics sectors are also eyeing VR for themselves.

Let's figure out why: 

• Customer-driven:  Virtual reality crafts personalized virtual experiences as opposed to traditional modes of media, below-the-line marketing, newspaper, and press releases.

• 3D Product visualization: Virtual demos showcase every minute detail in an extensive 3D environment.

• Artistic inclinations: VR experiences are art-influenced and create a dominating stride for consumers.
  
• Virtualized meetings: Meetings, training sessions, conferences, concerts, and other cross-team interactions can be held in a commonplace via VR.

• Unpleasant confrontations: Hesitant interactions with peers and superiors can be significantly decreased in a virtual space.

• Built-in haptic and audio sensors: A full VR experience constitutes haptic (touch) and audio stimuli to immerse a user completely till they lose touch with reality.

• Excellent branding:  Companies can provide 3D feedback access to consumers to establish a brand reputation.

• Undisrupted training: VR creates an undisturbed learning flow for employees and trains them on soft skills with ease.

When humans identify objects, we use their size relative to each other to judge distance and purpose. In the same way, VR mimics the natural brain actions and body movements to evoke a sense of realism for the user.

Here’s how humankind set foot on the virtual reality journey.

History of virtual reality

Virtual reality has come a long way in the last 50 years but is still considered an emerging tech. Funny how that works.

The first VR flight simulator was designed in 1929 and was known as a Link Trainer. Edwin A. Link, the inventor, used it to train pilots under dangerous flying conditions. This simulator emulated real flight windshields for them to practice flying an aircraft.

Some decades later, in 1961, Thomas Furness, a military engineer, developed the first flight simulator for the US Air Force. It sparked a lot of interest in VR technology and how it could be used for training purposes.

The actual term "virtual reality" was coined much later in 1987 by researcher Jaron Lanier.

Let's learn about how virtual reality technology traversed from the olden days to its golden days. 

Components of virtual reality

The components of virtual reality are mainly twofold; virtual reality hardware and virtual reality software. Virtual reality hardware comprises VR headsets and motion controllers.  Virtual reality software is a comprehensive platform that uses computer vision and 3D modeling to generate, move and clone images in a digital environment.

VR headset

VR headsets are head-mounted wearables that track information generated by human senses. When you wear a VR headset, your natural field of view (FOV) is replaced with a computer-generated field of view.

Components of a VR headset include screens, cameras, motion sensors, and infrared LEDs. VR headset works in sync with input trackers like sensing gloves, full body suits, treadmills, joysticks, and motion trackers to produce output.

Your headset can also connect to an additional wired PC or your smartphone to access a VR software application.

VR headsets can be of many types: wired, wireless, PC-based, or console-based. A great example of a wireless VR headset is Microsoft HoloLens.

Microsoft Hololens 2.0 VR Headset

Source: MSPoweruser

Lenses and screens

VR headsets have embedded stereoscopic lenses positioned between a built-in LED screen and eyes, distorting the image so it looks 3-D and real. 

The headset passes two images through these lenses, one for each eye, similar to our vision. Additionally, infrared cameras adjust the light to the user's power of accommodation. The content displayed on the screen also shifts as we move our heads to navigate.

Source: realnewworld

Latency and Field of View (FOV)

Latency and FOV are features that supply virtual information to the real world. An average human can see the environment around them in a roughly 200 to 220° arc around their head. The eyesight from our left and right eyes overlap at a 114° angle, which enables us to see in 3D.

Source: semiengineering.com

Generating a 3D environment over a user’s real FOV also depends on their physical movements. The delay between the user's movement and the change of display of the VR device is known as VR latency or end-to-end latency.

Today's headsets reduce latency and provide 114° 3D space to deliver instant virtual transition, but no headset provides zero latency or accommodates the entire FOV of the average human. Right now, VR hardware designers are creating devices that will allow a 180° FOV and latency of 30 to 40 milliseconds, ideal for a highly immersive experience.

Enabling ultra-low latency immersive VR experiences:

Source: UCSanDiego

Frame rate

From a physical standpoint, we know that human eyes can see up to 1000 frames per second (FPS). The human brain, however, never receives such detail via the optic nerve. Humans can interpret frame rates up to 150 FPS. But beyond that, information is lost in translation on the way to the brain.

The frame rate for a movie you see in a theater is 24 FPS, but those kinds of films aren’t designed to simulate reality. For VR applications, most developers have found that anything less than 60 FPS tends to cause disorientation, headaches, and nausea. Most developers aim for a VR content "sweet spot" of about 90 FPS.

Going forward, most VR hardware developers will start pushing for a frame rate of 120 FPS or more to provide a more true-to-life experience for users.

3D Spatial Audio

Another crucial technical aspect of VR is the use of sound effects to convey a sense of three-dimensional space to the user. Anyone who’s ever been in a well-designed immersive theatre knows how sounds vary based on where you sit in the performance space. Today, cutting-edge VR relies on spatial audio technology to create a simulated audio landscape that matches the IRL experience.

Remember that a VR headset must compute the audio in real-time to sync with the user's movement. Many companies are already using 3D audio to provide immersive sound to their customers.

• Spotify: Provides high-resolution HD Audio, UHD Audio, Lofi, Hifi, and Lossless
• Facebook 360 Spatial Workstation: A free software suite for designing spatial audio for 360° video and cinematic VR
  
• YouTube: Creates first-order ambisonic audio that embeds four geolocations of sound sources perpendicular to each other
• Conquest VR: Builds an immersive experience for multiple audiences to capture the essence of a 3D virtual environment
• Google VR Audio System: Offers sophisticated yet easy-to-use audio in spherical imagery.
• Samsung gear VR: Supporting mono, stereo, and multiple formats of spatial playback audio
• G'Audio Works: Mac-only plugin that leverages object-based mixing for a proper sound reverb in 360° VR space

Head and position tracking

The real magic of VR doesn't come from how convincing the visuals or sound are (although those are critical foundational elements); it comes from the fact that users can move within a virtual space that adjusts to their position using motion controllers. It separates VR headsets from other HMDs.

This process is known as head and position tracking. Companies use two types of head and position tracking simulators in VR headsets:

• Three Degrees of Freedom (3DoF): The user can only look left and right up and down.
• Six degrees of Freedom (6DoF): The user can look everywhere in the 360° space and even move in circular paths. It mainly contains pitch, roll, yaw, left and right, forward and backward, and up and down.   

VR platforms like Google's Daydream use 3DoF, which is capable of rotational tracking only. You can only turn your head left and right, look up or down, or tilt your head to one side or another. But if you move the rest of your body, they won't pick that up.

Virtual reality motion controllers

VR motion controllers are a type of virtual reality hardware component that allows users to take action in a virtual environment through handheld devices. With its help, users can navigate between spaces, pick things up and put them down, climb or descend a hill, and perform other interactive activities.

How does virtual reality work?

Virtual reality builds a low-latent, quick refreshing virtual ecosystem for end users. Interestingly, people who have already experienced virtual reality claim as if they have been teleported to an imaginary world. This type of immersive experience that VR creates is a testament to its successful future.

Virtual reality works on the basic principle of our perception of the environment and scene understanding. VR headsets are programmed to capture our reflexes to natural stimuli, which is backed by artificial intelligence-powered software.  The stimuli are then stored in form of a featured dataset used to craft virtual objects in a spatially mapped environment. VR designers carefully capture the intricacies of real-world objects and clone them well enough to trick the human brain.

With built-in skeletal trackers, the VR headset controls the way you move within the virtual space. The latest VR headsets allow you to move in a 360° space and interact with virtual characters, similar to real-life. An external computer tethering keeps the system alive 24x7 so that the flow of immersion isn't disrupted at any stage. VR software also adds to the dynamics of your VR experience, by providing support like language assistance, digital content, or supplemental brand information.

What is virtual reality marketing?

Virtual reality creates moment marketing experiences by brilliantly showcasing features that resonate with consumer intent. More than just a tool of advertising, it also creates an emotional connection with the customer, which makes them trust your brand more than others.

Nowadays, customers run after highly affordable, durable, and sustainable products. VR projects a product's features in an ideal space, overlaying either instructions or semantic brand experience in 3D in the user's surroundings. 

A company can achieve its conversion goals effortlessly by banking on virtual reality in a few ways.

• Immersive storytelling: Virtual reality can create immersive storytelling experiences for brands to personalize their outreach. While a compelling go-to-market campaign does standard promotions, VR educates the audience through real-world events, examples, and case studies to determine what is best for them.

• Building an emotional connection: Going to every nook and cranny to solve customers’ challenges imprints a permanent brand recall in the customer’s mind. VR accentuates the emotional connection between the brand and the customer by providing simulations of product applications in a practical scenario.
  

• Product commercials: Use virtual reality to produce sweet commercials that pull on your customers’ heartstrings. Creating a 360° VR video with voice, audio, and video effects to make ads that show how deeply you understand your users’ problems and how to solve them.
• Content marketing:  Only a content marketer gets the real struggles of creating a compelling content strategy that works for every kind of persona. Virtual reality technology lets you explore new avenues and methods to create 3D content for your audience, thus improving engagement and attribution.
•  Gamification: Virtual reality is a powerhouse when it comes to creating game-style mechanics that educate people in a stress-free environment. In a corporate setting, VR gamification can train workforce employees while adding fun elements to the training.

Types of virtual reality

Consumers employ VR practices in different ways with varying degrees of immersion. The more immersive a VR experience is, the higher the probability of a brand’s success.

Non-immersive virtual reality

Non-immersive reality is a type of VR where you can interact with the virtual environment through a computer screen, possibly a video game, or a driving simulator. It comes under the virtual reality category because you can control the movement of virtual objects on screen up to some extent.

Behind-the-wheel driving simulation is an excellent example. You get inside and take the driver's seat to practice your skills in a semi-realistic setting. Your actual feet control the navigation of the car on the screen. 

The driving simulator allows you to experience what it’s like to drive on the road using the clutch, car gears, accelerator, and brakes. When you reach the clutch's biting point, you put it in first gear and accelerate, the car on your simulator screen automatically moves forward!

Semi-immersive virtual reality

Semi-immersive virtual reality provides a partial immersion by overlaying digital components over real-world objects. This type of VR is mainly used for educational and entertainment purposes.

Aircraft crew or flight engineers use semi-immersive heads over the display (HUD) technology that shows virtual content on flight windshields for engine checks or fuel checks.

Source: AIMultiple

Semi-immersive virtual reality does not give an illusion of a different reality. Instead, it supplements the natural environment with virtual segments generated through VR software to expand your knowledge and help you take the next necessary action.

Fully immersive virtual reality

Fully immersive VR provides a 360° sensory simulation for the user to step in and experience. Special equipment like smart glasses, gloves, treadmills, and sense detectors detect 3D data processed by VR software to create groundbreaking virtual experiences.

This type of VR is commonly used for gaming and other entertainment purposes in VR arcades or even in your home (empty, non-fragile room advised).

Fully immersive VR makes it hard to distinguish between what's real and what's virtual.

Use cases of virtual reality

If you think you can make great strides in your business with VR, you think correctly. 

Whether in education, construction, or healthcare, virtual reality is a great practice canvas for professionals to perform activities in a virtual environment that can be risk-inducing otherwise.

• VR in recruitment:  VR recruitment helps employers seek out innovative ways to drive a quality workforce. It also allows professionals to learn and refine their expertise before joining a company.  Generating employee-friendly virtual interactions increases motivation, productivity, and retention percentage.
  

• VR in Customer Service: VR creates customer-friendly 3D experiences that show off a brand's unique side.  VR has the potential to surpass in-store initiatives and give real-time virtual assistance to customers anywhere in the world.
• VR in Gaming: With VR gaming, you can explore different bits and pieces of an unknown universe in 3D through modern-age gaming consoles, controllers, and VR headsets. Many gaming systems, like HTC Vive, Samsung Gear VR, and Oculus Quest, provide immersive gaming experiences without breaking the flow of virtual immersion.

• VR in Construction: Construction companies are using virtual reality to fine-tune sketches, enable remote collaboration for architects and workers, and protect the health, safety, and environment (HSE) protocols for green buildings.
• VR in design: Programs like Yulio VR allow companies to share 3D models with clients or collaborators to incorporate real-time feedback and simulate building designs.
• VR in travel and tourism: VR lets you conduct virtual tours and guide clients through their travel booking process. A virtual tour is a collection of 360° panoramic rotating images stitched together to form simulation effects. Unique cameras, headsets, and methods elevate the visual experience of the viewer who wants to explore a destination without leaving their desk.
• VR for Mental Health: VR tools deliver recreational experiences for people with PTSD, depression, and other cognitive challenges. Virtual experiences can trigger certain emotions in patients and may increase the production of serotonin, aiding in recovery.
• Virtual reality classroom:  Elementary and higher educational institutions encourage students to learn in VR. By wearing a head-mounted VR headset, a virtual space is created where students can interact, examine and move objects in 3D, thereby increasing attention, concentration, and learning ability.  
  
  

  Did you know? As per MDPI's recent research, Classroom Virtual Reality as a part of extended reality (XR)  is an innovative tool in sports education.  It helps players train in a 3D, immersive environment. It enhances a student's psychomotor skills, motor perception and helps train and regain body balance much faster. 
  

However, it’s still important to understand that investing in virtual reality training and hardware devices is a costly decision that has to take into account the company's budget, staff, and time constraints.

Benefits of virtual reality

The magical wand of VR can transform an ordinary place into an extraordinary realm, with purple gallinules flying all over and huge waterfalls cascading from a height. 

Outside of gaming use cases, virtual reality has been adopted in education, medicine, design, real estate, and so many more industries.

Companies use VR to co-author their discoveries via narratives. VR is a way of creatively reaching out to the correct target groups and coming to your consumer's use. Here are some other benefits of VR that put it in the business spotlight: 

• Improved customer engagement: VR creates a realistic 3D product experience so customers can visually analyze all the features and align them with their needs.
• Improved customer retention: Customers differentiate between brands that offer VR-enabled tech and brands that engage in push marketing tactics.
• Product designs: VR software combines various counterparts of a design sketch in a virtual space to mix and match which vector goes where. 
• Optimizing ROI: VR can take up to a few months to a year to execute profitability. As it optimizes every value chain stage, customers and deals start flowing in. 
• Reducing cost: With VR, expensive training procedures are a thing of the past for employee onboarding, performance evaluations, and appraisal meetings in a virtual environment. 
• Remote connectivity: VR headsets spatially map different environments to bring everyone in the same vicinity. It pretty much resembles a holographic representation but with added audio connectivity.

Challenges for Virtual Reality

Virtual reality is undoubtedly emerging as a trending innovation that simplifies and enhances end-user experience across industries. However, a downside of VR technology stands in the way of its widespread adoption. 

From high costs to unethical computing, users should be aware of the many challenges that come with conforming to VR.

• Digital fatigue: A prolonged duration with VR headsets causes digital fatigue and exhaustion. As VR is a laser-based technology, human corneas are risk averse to high exposure to laser beams, making a person feel lightheaded and teary-eyed.
• Low cognitive function: VR technology claims to simplify our lives through the accomplishment of tasks in a remote way rather than going to a specific location. However, some use cases of VR, like teleportation, artificial twins, and so on, reduce the human brain's natural ability to build logic.
• Expensive training: If you consider using VR for your design, creativity, and content creation processes, you need to right-size your market budget for the same. However, it also depends on your vendor proposal, type of content, and client requirement.
• Miniaturization: Infusing high-scale VR experiences in small systems or headsets require high processing power, vision compatibility, memory space, and batteries. Although current VR systems claim to solve these issues, the existing miniaturization disrupts the flow of interaction.
• Unethical hacking: Hackers can easily break into protected databases using AR/VR headsets with built-in motion detection to steal sensitive information, including banking data, passwords, and credit card numbers.
• Cyber addiction: VR-based games can result in a cyber addiction related to the game's virtual characters, which deteriorates mental health and personal and professional relationships. Immersive environments can exert more pressure on the brain, contributing to depression, ADHD, and other neurological diseases.
• Low working service: VR hasn't been extensively explored in many countries. Therefore, no one’s ready to conduct cross-border operations on VR simulation.

What is virtual reality software?

VR software helps build immersive 3D environments to experience, play around with, and interact with digital counterparts that are artificially created and placed in the real world. 

Brands use VR software to create augmented demos for their customers so that they virtually test a product before buying it. It involves developing sharp graphics, adding sensory feedback, and creating different levels of immersion based on consumer needs.

Believe it or not, there are even VR social platforms that customers use to collect product reviews and feedback. Learn more about different types of virtual reality software required to create different kinds of user experiences.  

Industry-specific virtual reality software

Different VR software works to generate different experiences across distinct industrial domains. 

In medical colleges, it is used to teach students how to explore human anatomy and perform necessary procedures.

In aviation, trainees use VR to learn and inspect parts of an aircraft remotely in a completely immersive environment. Pilots test difficult and dangerous scenarios without putting anyone's life at risk. It also overlays necessary information on the windshield regarding pre-take-off checklists and pilot briefings. Regardless of the purpose of VR in different scenarios, the result is always positive. 

Here are some examples of virtual reality software:

VR Collaboration Software

VR collaboration software allows users to interact with each other in remote environments. Be it a project discussion or a daily brainstorming session, VR collaboration connects people in minutes, helps them choose their avatars, and interacts with them through speech and text recognition. 

VR collaboration platform has the following features:

• VR world is the adaptation of a real-life office scenario where employees can come together, sip coffee and attend conferences.
• 3D avatars are digital twins of employees inside the virtual world who perform the above actions on behalf of the employees.
• The VR-compatible device helps view and control the movement of avatars. It could be a PC headset, mobile headset, or standalone headset.
• Computer streaming is a wired hardware system or remote desktop that accesses software.
• Productivity tools like drawing, video playback, and 3D modeling enhance the overall experience.
  
  

VR content management systems

A VR content management system (CMS) collects, stores, and analyzes VR-enabled content in a centralized location. A VR CMS allows users to create interactive blogs, articles, or websites via drag-and-drop functionality. The content is managed from multiple applications.

VR Marketplaces

Virtual Reality Marketplaces are online shopping platforms customers use to shop and explore. They can connect their VR headsets to interact with shop owners or retailers in real-time, view reviews and ratings, and place an order virtually to confirm a purchase. 

VR game engines

VR game engines provide game developers with a robust framework to design, build and test different video games. It helps create highly interactive games with 3D simulation and spatial sound effects.

Future of virtual reality

With the passage of time, the use cases and applications of virtual reality will extend beyond its current capabilities. Future VR headsets will come pre-equipped with powerful 8K processors and integrated artificial general intelligence (AGI) sensors to generate photorealistic images and conversational experiences in the virtual world. 

Coming generations will prefer living and working in a virtual environment to the physical world and invest their time, money, and efforts towards the same. People have already started investing their dollars in virtual lands or NFTs. Virtual reality will be a common name, and the headsets will be a standard gadget of a household or workplace, just like the smartphones of the present.

Delegates of larger communities within different countries would use VR to communicate and receive information from any time, anywhere, as if omnipresent. If you think VR can secure your country from the invasion of battalions, you think correct.

Virtual reality will transform the world into a hypersphere, where everyone can connect and share their thoughts, feelings, and ideas.

The digital winds of change

Although in its elementary stages, virtual reality has paved the way for humanity to imagine a digital future. Achieving noteworthy milestones within a short time is a testament to how efficient and life-changing virtual reality will be for generations to come.

Whether having a good time with friends in a gaming arcade or discovering the potential cure for cancer, virtual reality is here to surpass all modern research methods and emerge as a sustainable solution for prolonged challenges.

Don't let data stress you out! Virtually collaborate with your peers and analyze your business data in 3D with VR visualization software.