Many brushed off the importance of virtual reality as being another 3D TV fad. It’s understandable why, because VR headsets are all the more inconvenient that wearing 3D glasses. But, it’s not just about how we will consume content from our homes, it’s also about professional industry applications that VR is providing.
The next couple of years will be big for VR. They’re still on the fringe for both consumers and business, but the scope for its applications are ever-increasing. It may start and end with a MetaVerse, but there’s to cover in-between. Here are 5 industries where VR will make an impact.
Sports consumption
This is a controversial one as we are yet to find out how much it will take off, but there have been increasing efforts to provide a feed for live sports events to VR users. Top sports garner millions of viewers for each game, but something that keeps people buying matchday tickets is the atmosphere and seeing it with your own eyes.
This is precisely what Sky Sports tried to replicate when showing Premier League games in virtual reality. Not only is it more immersive – and therefore closer to the real experience – but the atmosphere can pull you in, too.
It’s still far from mainstream yet, and it could be a way to go, but with MetaVerse users increasing, it seems only natural to watch games inside it. Furthermore, it’s actually more social, which is another element of watching sports, because you can be in a virtual room with a friend watching it. This could be a post-pandemic solution to get people “together”.
Architecture
Architects create future, potential designs that the consumer can envisage for their home. Clearly, the biggest issue here is to actually communicate this vision and to immerse yourself within it to see if you would actually enjoy living within this space.
This is where the benefits of VR are truly overwhelming. Creating designs on 3D simulation tools that can be shown to clients through a VR headset is a game-changer, as the clients can virtually walk around and indulge the design as if it were temporarily built already.
This is the premise of Your Home Made Perfect, a British TV show in which architects compete to win over the subject by virtually walking them around their newly designed home. This a resounding success for a proof of concept, and its application of it will only grow. Plus, those who are tech-minded will be able to create these designs themselves.
Therapy
As most of us are aware these days, veterans who return from conflicts often have PTSD, making it difficult for the to re-integrate back into society. Virtual reality is here to solve this problem, as the American Psychological Association is using VR to help create a virtual Iraq, virtual Afghanistan, and so on.
This may sound odd but that’s how PTSD can be treated, by exposing the subject to the previous environment of the trauma, but this time with more control. Such exposure therapy can also be used on other sufferers, like phobias. Let’s say you have a phobia of leaving the house, a therapist could walk you through virtually leaving the home as a stepping stone.
19 out of 20 veterans had signs of improvement after using the VR therapy.
Healthcare
VR has been in healthcare for a long time now and it doesn’t seem to be going away anytime soon. In 2016, VR was used to help doctors practice surgeries, as well as stroke victims using it for recovery by playing stimulating games. It has also been used for to give sick children some respite and escapism by entering a VR world from a hospital bed.
Telehealth is a quickly growing industry, in which doctors are treating patients remotely. Again, this can only be enhanced by VR, and it could even be a way to remotely perform surgery.
Education
Finally, education appears to be a highly promising space for virtual reality, particularly in the aftermath of COVID-19 in which remote learning became a bigger part of our lives. Of course, anyone who tried to sit down with their child to learn about maths during the pandemic knows how difficult it is to engage them, let alone to understand the content yourself.
Online tools and games were useful, but VR could take this to a whole new level. The one thing that was never replaced was the classroom environment, but VR can solve this. With a VR headset, children can be transported to a virtual classroom, even one-on-one, and visually watch a history or science lesson in action.
This could be pre-recorded and shown to all students, but it could also be live tuition in which it becomes even more interactive – with the microphone active. It’s even possible to have a classroom virtually together too, perhaps with the teacher having the ability to mute the microphones of those being disruptive. This is a game-changer for visual learners, as content and games can be created and distributed around the world, as opposed to the teacher having to manually prepare for each and every lesson.
With the backlog of VR games increasing rapidly, it makes sense that the education genre will too.
