What is the future of virtual reality?

As the development of technology advances and new minerals are discovered that improve the performance of microprocessors, miniaturization advances. Thanks to this, it is possible that in the same processing size, more and more microchips can be integrated that allow greater speed, better graphics processing, more memory, and more storage, both in traditional computers and in newer devices such as those that allow us to virtual reality experience. With these advantages appearing every three months, we can have more realistic, faster, and more complex experiences in the world of computers. On the other hand, and thanks to the prolonged confinements that the pandemic brought us, we saw that it is possible to do more and better things remotely, with more productivity and greater efficiency, taking advantage of all the time available to balance work and personal life. In this scenario, technology is playing a very important role in the development of scientific advances, the connection between more people, and the speed at which scientific advances are known. All these elements contribute to the fact that the future of virtual reality is developing rapidly, with new functionalities on a regular basis and an increasingly agile adaptation process.

Virtual reality in training and learning

In working life, virtual reality is a tool that allows training more collaborators in an immersive way to go from learning retention in classrooms of 15% to experiential learning that can retain knowledge by up to 80%. With these mechanisms, each employee will be able to be productive in a third of the time that was previously invested in the initial learning curve and on-site practice, reducing the number of errors thanks to the muscle memory that is developed by experiencing the use of a virtual machine and avoiding waste. On the other hand, the trainer’s time can be dedicated to creating more and more immersive environments, becoming highly productive, without spending more money.

Virtual reality and communication

With the announcement of the metaverse, many companies are developing parallel worlds and digital twins within them to welcome the avatars that represent us, along with our personal properties and tastes. In these virtual worlds, it is possible to carry out the same activities in the real world, with the limitations of the virtual, since we could not have a coffee, but we can share spaces with our friends. There are virtual corporate environments to maintain team cohesion, such as video calls or trade fairs with avatars. An example of this is Virtual Involve: a private metaverse to which you can add your corporate image and receive hundreds of participants. In a virtual world like this, we can interact with our colleagues through their avatars, attend training with three-dimensional product models, or work collaboratively on design prototypes.

Virtual reality opportunities for marketing and advertising

This is a very prominent area of ​​which we have seen many examples today, such as telling the story of a drink by reading its label with our smartphone and discovering it instantly. It is also used on sites like Amazon to project the products we want to buy into our real space, allowing us to “see” them as if they were there, through the phone or tablet camera. As in the Pokémon game, we can live a journey abroad to find clues that lead us to our destination, go on a treasure hunt, make an application that combines experiences, and with it generates points that can be redeemed in physical and virtual stores.

Shopping in virtual reality

Thanks to virtual tools, we can travel with our large products on mobile and through augmented reality, give the buyer a vision of the product installed in their own spaces. There are also complex products or services that are better explained with an image; one of them is Smart Cities, which are easily understandable by anyone when viewing a simulation on a mobile device in which we can show the savings generated by a wind turbine or the dynamics of usable waste collection. Now that we are experiencing the difficulty of moving around, it has become essential for buyers and sellers to have virtual shopping mechanisms in countries and especially sites other than Amazon or Alibaba that can make local deliveries. Today virtual showcases are built for them on the Internet tied to e-commerce and logistics systems, with an improvement, such as the virtual advisor in the virtual showroom.

Machinery maintenance with virtual reality

Currently, we must train engineers and operators in extensive courses and many of them abroad with the manufacturers of this equipment. These contributors return with very little understanding of the content received. With mixed reality tools, it is possible to develop customized content to service and operate large machines from a mobile device as the simulator shows the maintenance stages when it follows the deployment step by step with the camera. It is also possible to connect with IoT sensors via Bluetooth and make adjustments to their internal systems, without even touching them.

Virtual reality and industry 4.0

With virtual, augmented, and mixed reality, we can provide operators with a pair of augmented reality glasses to show the viewer how many components are required to assemble a part, what is the step by step, and discount from inventories the parts used. As we can see, the use of these technologies in the Industry is becoming more frequent and intense given the automation of processes, the reduction of time, and the need to connect remote technical support at the very moment it is needed, allowing second-party support. . level to see live what the other person is experiencing on the other side of the world. Technology such as virtual reality came to improve our lives, connect easily and bring people, experiences, and especially knowledge closer together.