Virtual reality really took the spotlight once the gaming industry got a hold of it. Putting players in virtual environments and topping it with an immersive experience was a big plus for a lot of people, especially during the covid-19 pandemic. Business leaders really capitalized on that opportunity since having billions of people stuck at home would be the best time to release virtual reality technologies to potential customers.
Guess what, it worked! This play gave gaming companies a big competitive advantage during that time. So let’s break down how the birth of virtual reality impacts businesses in this period of time.
Casting a Wide Net
Much of the excitement surrounding the arrival of consumer Virtual Reality headsets last year centered on their potential to improve entertainment experiences. According to Tractica research, corporate use of VR is expected to outperform leisure use in the next years, with investment reaching $9.2 billion by 2021.
Virtual reality can imitate almost every process that can be performed in the physical world, including customer service, marketing, finance, human resources, and production. In general, the tasks that it can perform can be divided into two categories: training and practical application.
Manufacturing and Production
VR allows any attribute of a part, process, or mechanism to be replicated and tested in manufacturing and production-driven businesses. Under every scenario, performance or dependability may be evaluated and examined significantly more cost-effectively, rapidly, and safely.
Of course, there is usually platforming and tooling costs upfront. However, problems are more likely to be sorted out by the emergence of VR-as-a-service (more on that in a bit.)
Millions of dollars can be saved by conducting initial idea exploration in VR rather than building full-scale operational prototypes. Today, technology is employed widely in airplane design, with Boeing and Airbus both heavily utilizing simulated environments to build and test new features and models.
As you can see, immersive technology is a major advantage in the manufacturing industry, and also sparked the birth of virtual reality business too. The fact is, this really is amazing technology in business can only go up from here.
The New Consumer Experience
Every company can use virtual reality to rethink how they present to and interact with their customers. As a marketing and customer service tool, VR gives up new avenues for exhibiting products and services. Later on, it is likely to become a one-of-a-kind source of information about client behavior. This is because when someone interacts with you in a virtual, digital world, a massive amount of data about how they act, react, and engage becomes available.
Customers who live increasingly digital lifestyles will simply put on a headset and appear in a virtual showroom rather than visiting a physical one. All they need is a VR headset and a decent ISP to get started.
VR Training
The most obvious advantage of training in VR is that if something goes wrong, you just push the reset button.
This is already being used in healthcare, where surgeons are utilizing it to train in making life-or-death decisions while performing difficult operations on youngsters. This simulation even goes so far as scanning and producing 3D models of the real nurses with whom the trainees will work, so they will recognize familiar faces when they enter the real-life operating theatre.
Other medical applications enable doctors and surgeons to experiment with new instruments and techniques in a safe virtual environment. Because VR allows for such close monitoring, equipment manufacturers get crucial feedback.
A New Service Industry
Although VR represents a huge cost saving as compared to traditional, room-based simulations, there might still be significant upfront fees. This is especially true if your training requirements necessitate the creation of custom simulations and environments.
To address this need, businesses offering ready-made services ranging from hireable VR suites to world-building tools are beginning to appear. As you can see, there are always gaps to be found, even in the virtual reality market.
Marketing agencies that have equipped themselves to develop virtual and interactive experiences for organizations and brands come into this category as well, and they are likely to play a more prominent part in the marketing landscape in the near future.
The Road Ahead
VR technology is bound to improve more, bringing our experiences in virtual worlds closer in line with those in the real one. Recent advancements that may have a broad influence include the development of eyeball-tracking technology, which allows us to interact with and activate components of a simulation simply by looking at them.
Experiments with connecting brainwave activity are already being conducted in the future, perhaps allowing us to change our environment simply by thinking. Now that’s wild!
Other advancements are anticipated to fix some of VR’s current limitations, such as the fact that current applications might feel quite isolating at times. High-end VR systems are still often powered by pricey, specialized computers, but this is likely to change as standalone headsets grow more competent.
As you can imagine, it’s likely that an increasing portion of our business lives will be conducted in virtual reality as time passes.
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