From large machines that dangled over your heads, to sophisticated, head-mounted displays with processing power that could rival supercomputers of yesteryear, virtual reality (VR) has come a long way. Considerable progress has been made in VR over the last 15 years than since its conceptualisation during the 1950s.
Just about every major technology introduced over the past few decades began with entertainment, gradually making its way to productivity. Take, for example, how the development of superior game engines forced advancement in computer processors and graphics cards. In a similar way, virtual reality content developers would want to utilise the technology for other things as well.
Various industries, including health care, entertainment, automotive, real estate, and education, have taken a keen interest in virtual reality and have actively dedicated resources for creating VR content. This progress hasn’t gone unnoticed by large companies, many of which are taking in VR and looking at the endless possibilities it has to offer. For businesses, this tech can greatly help with customer-facing scenarios, such as product demos and 360-degree tours.
From virtual training for employees, virtual conference rooms to automotive designing, virtual reality can and will be implemented across a multitude of industries. VR could change the way we work in our offices. Imagine not being confined to your desk or not having a limit on the number of monitors you could put on that desk; instead, imagine having a 360-degree work environment with multiple desktops floating in the space in front of you and having the freedom to move them around.
And it’s not all wishful thinking when it comes to VR applications in the business world. The following are a few examples of how virtual reality could change the way work gets done.
It’s quite well known how nightmarish it is to have an audio conference call. You can’t tell when you’re supposed to be talking or, frankly, who is talking when you have a bunch of people on the line. Most companies are switching to video calls as a reprieve but VR is likely to take it a few notches higher by representing people in virtual spaces, no matter what part of the world they’re in. By simply moving your hand in air, you could bring up presentations, documents, illustrations and share them in a virtual meeting room.
For the real estate industry, virtual reality is the new open house. Realtors are taking home sales beyond glossy pictures. Virtual reality can do wonders for getting buyers to consider a property, which is why real estate companies are finding it important to get real-world properties in the virtual world.
You can put on a VR headset and take a tour of a potential apartment or building, whether or not it has been built in real life. Showing a home in person could become old-fashioned. Buyers can now slip on a virtual reality headset and be transported to a home where they can wander from room to room and size up whether it feels right without really visiting the place. The technology brings home listings directly to the buyers, whether they live down the street or across the world.
For industries such as manufacturing, construction, and oil & gas, VR could be used to allow for virtual field trainings, giving participants an “in-person” experience before they move on-site. This could be an oil rig or a construction site in some remote place, which are not only inaccessible locations but also potentially dangerous worksites. VR can help simulate these environments to help acquaint workers with the sites while offering in-depth training.
For salespersons, long gone will be the days of driving from client to client, when rather you could set up a virtual appointment in no time and proudly display your competitive advantages in 3D. This not only creates a more immersive experience for customers, but also helps cut costs and improves margins.
VR offers exciting opportunities for learning and education, too. Not only will VR make learning more fun, but give students hands-on experience with the power of virtual interaction. Imagine 3D scanning historic sites that may not exist by the next hundred years. Not only would you be preserving a digital copy of mankind’s achievements and history for generations to come, students in classrooms around the world would get an opportunity to step in these sites and experience history for themselves. VR could also be used in libraries to transport students to places that they’d be reading about.
Our modern workspace has dramatically changed, and it’s only going to get even more extraordinary. It’s highly likely that the integration of virtual reality would greatly change the way we do our jobs. And eventually when virtual reality indeed becomes a part of our day-to-day lives, I’m sure more and more people would prefer to spend most of their time in virtual spaces.
The writer is Director and Co-founder of Merlin Digital.
