A Tour into the Virtual Reality World

What is Virtual Reality & How Does it Work?

It’s been a while since the early adoption of Virtual Reality (VR) technology and the field is booming rapidly. Virtual Reality, a computer-generated environment created and managed by clever programming and hardware, is achieved through a device known as a VR headset or helmet. It is a fully immersive environment that is artificially constructed through images, sounds, texts, animation, scenes, and objects that appear to be real to give the user an unforgettable experience. 

VR systems use computer vision, head tracking, positional tracking, room tracking, 3D positional audio, and advanced graphics. This strategy generates 3D images and videos that trick the brain into believing that the user is standing in a game, video scene, or other content, thus interacting with the content and allowing the user to look around and move within the digital space. This way, the user can explore the content of such environments using VR headsets, lenses, and controllers. It seems almost entirely real, but it is not. 

Virtual Reality Application in Real Life

Virtual Reality is a technology that completely blends now into our daily lives, and allows us to cross boundaries that would otherwise be unbelievable. Below are a bunch of VR applications that indulge in different industries to make our lives easier.

• Tourism: people can travel virtually to different countries and get to know cultures and famous places. It is efficient for people with limited funds, mobility, or health concerns.

• Museums: people can explore museums and galleries, and understand the history and culture easily.

• Gaming: players can live the moment and enjoy video games or even practice extreme sports without even moving from their couch.

• Education: students can gain and retain better knowledge through exciting and unforgettable experiences. It is considered helpful for students with learning difficulties.

• Training: people from different sectors and industries can learn how to respond to risky circumstances and find solutions to problems without being at risk.

• Journalism: people can watch what is happening around the globe with live streaming of 360° videos. 

• Architecture: architects can better present their projects to clients to give them a feel of what things will look like.

• Military: soldiers can benefit from training that improves their capabilities for piloting, equipment training, flight training, and weapons training.

• Real Estate: home buyers are able to view houses and visit them before they are even built or before their purchase decision.

• Engineering: engineers can visualize, construct, or train on building complex machines and systems.

• Marketing & Advertising: audience can engage more and connect emotionally with the brand through VR immersive ads that take an important role in advertising and marketing campaigns.

• Medication: doctors are able to access and view areas inside the human body, and patients can benefit from therapeutic purposes (physical therapy, patients with PTSD, phobias, Parkinson's, etc.).

• Prototyping & Design: researchers can use experimental models for testing and stimulating ideas to reduce money and time-wasting.

• Retail & Shopping: people can try before they buy by opening new possibilities of showcasing products and services thus making people’s shopping experience more realistic.

Industries and businesses can now benefit up to a great extent from VR technology, and its application in our daily lives. Thus, they can be early adopters to achieve a competitive advantage.

Introduction into Extended Reality

Due to the rapid expansion of the internet, technology, and the digital world, Extended Reality has emerged into our daily lives promptly. 

Extended Reality (XR) is a technology that relocates people in time and space. It is all about real-and-virtual combined environments and human-machine interactions, generated by computer technology and wearables. 

XR is an umbrella that combines technologically-enhanced realities, which include: Virtual Reality (VR), Augmented Reality (AR), and Mixed Reality (MR). These technologies use digital elements to escalate the user environment with unique experiences.

Here are more details about each of the technologies that fall under XR.

1. Virtual Reality: users enjoy an artificial environment by wearing a virtual reality headset or helmet, thus making the user feel immersed in their surroundings. It can be similar to or completely different from the real world, but closer to fiction. A great example of VR is digital gaming.

2. Augmented Reality: people live in a new world where it becomes the framework within which objects or images are placed. People stay where they are physically in which everything they see is in a real environment, but they engage with one another and observe what is happening around the world. A great example of AR is Pokemon Go.

3. Mixed Reality: people see virtual objects in the real world and build experiences in which the real and digital worlds synchronize and interact in real-time. So, it is a hybrid most up-to-date immersive technology that allows people to place digital things in the space they are in to interact with them the way they like. A great example of MR is 3D projection and simulation in education and training. 

Metaverse: The Future of Virtual Reality

We believe that almost everyone has heard of “Metaverse”, especially since Facebook has renamed its mother company “Meta” as they enter the world of virtual reality and metaverse. But what is it actually?

Metaverse is a broad term that generally refers to online spaces that allow people to interact with each other. The word Meta refers to “beyond” in Greek, and the word Verse refers to “universe”, so this implies the meaning of the metaverse is something “beyond the universe.”

Metaverse describes the future evolution of the internet that is gradually embracing 3D environments and virtual shared spaces, making interactions more immersive.

The idea of the metaverse sounds promising, which is why many of the world’s leading technology companies are investing in its development, especially with the unique features that it will provide through VR, AR, and MR. These features include:

• Horizon Home: it is the first thing you will see when wearing the headset. It is called home because it is where you can hang out with other people and invite them to socialize as if it is your actual house.

• Horizon Worlds: it is where you can build worlds and engaging experiences, and jump into the horizon by creating games and playing them with friends.

• Presence Platform: it is a range of machine perception and AI capabilities that blends virtual content in a user’s physical world to build mixed reality experiences and interactions.

• Messenger Calls in VR: it allows you to send a quick message to friends through the headset in which you can talk and not just type.

So, how do you think our lifestyle will change with the existence of virtual, augmented, and mixed realities, and the topic of Metaverse? 

Published on 2022-05-06
by Aya