Virtual reality is getting more and more popular and has become very important to the development of our society. It is crucial to understand why it can be revolutionary in many areas of our lives.
Virtual reality is important because it is the next step in entertainment media, commercial interaction, and in healthcare. With the time and resources that are saved with virtual reality, it is really important for many industries to adopt it in order to remain ahead of the curve.
There are so many reasons that virtual reality is important for each and every one of us, despite our race, jobs, gender, or income level. Read on to learn more about how this amazing technology has an effect on you, your family, and those around you.
Virtual Reality’s Importance in Home Life
For most of the world, media entertainment includes movies, television shows, books, music, videogames, and etc. These forms of media have a lot of great aspects to them and are really important to our society as a whole.
Virtual reality has made its way into the homes of thousands of people throughout the nation, and in terms of media entertainment, it has become a staple for many. There are so many new aspects that VR brings that make it such an amazing addition to home life and media entertainment.
For now, virtual reality has relatively few applications when compared to text-based media or television, however, I use my headset to view those forms of media as well. As it gets more popular it will start to supplement those forms of entertainment.
Media Consumption
For example, watching Netflix on a virtual reality headset is one of the best experiences out there. I love putting my headset on, choosing the next show on Netflix, and then laying down in my bed. The comfortable yet futuristic experience of doing this beats everything else out there. If you haven’t given this a shot yet, you need to ASAP!
The experience is similar to sitting in a dark private theater but instead of couches, you can sit in any position that you want. Imagine an IMAX theater that follows the direction that your head is facing all the time. You could have the TV on the ceiling and lay down in bed, or you could have it on the wall sideways so you can fully sprawl out and lay down that way.
Many of the movie watching apps are actually viewable wth friends. This means that you can sit back and watch your favorite movies and shows with the people you care about no matter where you are in the world. It is super fun to sit down and watch tv with friends in different places. That type of experience is perfectly suited for virtual reality and shows its value and importance in terms of family/friend experiences and interactions.
As people start to realize and experience for themselves just how amazing VR is in terms of media and entertainment in the home, they will then come to see that it is important to them and their family.
Virtual Reality’s Importance in the Entertainment Industry
Have you ever been walking through a mall and see a store with some booths and people going crazy playing VR? If you haven’t seen that yet, it is likely that you will soon.
Virtual Reality lounges are becoming immensely popular across the nation. Some of the high-end virtual reality headsets and experiences are very expensive, so the market has opened up for people to lease out space and provide that VR experience to excited customers. All that you have to do is show up, pay for the amount of time you want to play for, and then feel free to do whatever you want.
This is revolutionizing the arcade scene that was so popular a few decades ago. Now you can have your own opportunity for your entertainment to be futuristic and straight out of a movie.
This was actually the way that I was exposed to virtual reality. There was a small VR Arcade in the town where I went to college. My roommates and I went there to see how it would be and it blew our minds. Honestly, it was one of the most fun experiences I had during college.
Moments like these are important. For me, it shaped and molded my interests and business opportunities. For many others, virtual reality as a form of entertainment strengthens relationships, whether they be family or friends.
Selling Homes with VR
If you have ever tried to sell your house, you know that it can be a real hassle trying to coordinate with your agent. A lot of the time your home is not in a clean enough state to be sold.
With virtual reality, the home can be shown off in its most perfect and pristine state. Instead of trying to maintain, you can do one really thorough and spotlessly clean.
As mentioned previously, Real Estate is a prime example of why virtual reality is important in business and the workplace. There are so many difficulties that it can overcome!
Virtual Reality’s Importance in Business and the Workplace
The concept of using VR in the workplace is new and not many have grasped it yet. Those that have been seeing lots of positive results.
One of the most important aspects of virtual reality is that it is starting to play a huge role in the workplace and business world. Dozens of different industries are adopting the technology and realizing how big of an impact it makes for them.
With VR, a lot of corners can be cut to save time such as transportation, computer equipment, and plenty more. It is also an innovative and impressive way to show clients and competition how ahead of the curve a given company is.
Virtual Reality in Building & Architecture
Virtual Reality, Augmented Reality, and Mixed Reality (a combination of the two) are all starting to plat a huge roll for builders and architects. There is a huge development in what is now possible for these industries.
Architects, for example, are now able to design their projects and even enter them virtually through a headset to get a better understanding of the space and feel of the rooms.
Builders can show off their model homes to clients through a VR headset. They can also use augmented reality to show what the house would look like by adding virtual couches and scenery to spice it up.
The developments of VR in these industries are small at the moment, but in my opinion, once they get a good grasp of the potential they will profit from VR more than most.
Virtual Reality in Real Estate
Real estate is one of the largest markets in the world and is a great example of how VR can be a game-changer. The industry is so big that it can be really slow to adopt new technology. VR, however, is gaining traction really quickly and helping agencies take off.
Real estate agents face some very simple roadblocks, but each of them causes a lot of problems when you are trying to sell a home worth hundreds of thousands of dollars. Here are some of these problems:
Weather
In a lot of different parts of the country, real estate agents are faced with plenty of different weather situations that can really hinder selling a home. In mountainous areas, for example, cabins can be inaccessible using normal transportation. It is impractical for a real estate agent to take clients out to the cabin for a tour on a snow machine, but with VR they don’t have to.
A three-dimensional virtual tour can be created during the summertime when the cabin is at its best, making it really easy to show off to clients in a nice warm office.
The first impressions of a house are really important, and real estate agents are not going to want to blow it.
When virtual reality gets more mainstream, you will be able to real estate tours without a real estate agent at all because you will have all the technology that you need at home.
Distance
In order to visit 10 homes in one day, there is a lot of driving involved. Real estate agents waste a lot of time driving around in the car in order to show off how great their properties are in person.
The idea with a virtual reality headset is that you can have potential buyers come to the real estate office and then tour all of the properties without any more driving.
Client schedules
Working around client schedules can be difficult for real estate agents that are trying to show homes. Sometimes it is not good to have a family who lives in the home around when you are showing the home.
With virtual reality, you can show home in a pristine condition without having the clients work around your schedule. The agent can be perfectly confident about what the home is going to look like in VR.
Virtual Reality’s Importance in Healthcare
There are some very interesting new developments with VR in healthcare. This is not only starting to change how doctors approach their duties, but family members of sick individuals are now starting to be able to better understand what their loved one is going through.
VR/AR for Surgery
Doctors have been going to school for close to a decade by the time they are ready to really operate on somebody. That amount of schooling is difficult enough, especially since you can’t really practice the real thing without endangering life.
With the power of virtual reality, surgeons can practice virtually on the exact patient that they could be working on! This is great for training.
Alongside virtual reality practice, eventually, we will have an augmented reality set that will put overlay in the doctor’s vision to help them understand things that they cannot see. These head-mounted displays could show overlays of different scans that have been performed on the patient so that the doctor has all the most important information.
One last application is robotic surgery. With the help of robotic arms and virtual reality, a doctor can stitch up a wound that in reality is the size of a grain of rice, but to the doctor, it is the size of his torso. The surgeon would be in a virtual space, and all the actual actions would be performed by robotic arms. This means the doctor doesn’t even have to be in the same country as the patient that they are saving!
Alzheimer’s
Doctors have found a way to help families get a sense of what it is like to have Alzheimer’s through a virtual reality headset. For decades we have understood the disease, but we haven’t ever been able to fully comprehend what it must be like to have it. When we can‘t fully comprehend something like this, that makes it hard for us to fully relate and help those who are going through it.
The simulation is simple. A few symptoms of having Alzheimer’s are poor eyesight, muffled hearing, and a constant sense of anxiety. When putting on the VR headset from these doctors, most people’s first response is that the headset is broken. This is because the headset was designed to do just that. It alters the wearer’s vision, makes it hard for them to hear, etc.
Once the wearer understands this, the start to better comprehends what their loved ones are going through and can empathize a little more for them.
Both virtual reality and augmented reality are also helping doctors understand the body better by being able to view virtual renderings of certain aspects of the body.
Doctors are saying that VR is more than just an empathy machine, it is a powerful science that is quickly advancing the way they do things.
Virtual Reality’s Importance in Education
Imagine being in a classroom where instead of just reading about the amazon rainforest, you could go there. Instead of learning how white blood cells fight off infection, you could see them do it at human size.
Unlimited Access to the World
As a kid, I was always jealous of the kids in the magic school bus that could shrink or fly so that they could have some hands-on learning. Unfortunately, we don’t have a magic school bus. What we do have is virtual reality, and although it is not as good as actually being there, it is the next big thing. For the cost of 2-3 field trips, each kid could get a simple virtual reality headset that will change the way that they learn.
In the novel called “ready player one”, the main character doesn’t even actually go to school but instead attends school inside the virtual reality program called the oasis. Homeschooled kids could get a more enriching experience using this technology.
In a few years, virtual reality is going to change the way that kids are educated. Most of us learn new concepts the best visually. What better way to learn any new thing there is, whether it is science, math, or history-related that by experiencing it yourself visually through a VR headset.
Virtual Reality’s Importance in the Military
Military training is really expensive. There are so many different things that are required to adequately train a person in the military. It is expensive to set up real-life role-play situations. You need space and a lot of different equipment.
For now, virtual reality cannot fully replace every aspect of military training, but it can influence some. When you put in perspective how much all of the equipment costs, a virtual reality headset is really not that expensive.
We have known that this has been coming for a while. Virtual reality is only getting better, and it makes sense that there would be plenty of military training. Once the training simulations are made, you can send as many people through it as you want. For example, they can go through virtual combat training, appearing to be in enemy lands to get a sense of what they could be going through.
This isn’t just for the military but is also really important or police officers and firemen. It can be really hard to know what you need to do in each situation, but with virtual reality, you can know what to do in every conceivable situation.
Developments of specific VR implementations in the military are sparse at the moment, but as the technology evolves over the coming years it will be a perfect avenue to take to implement better training.