Virtual Reality for Business | Uses and Examples of VR Technology

Despite the popular belief that Virtual Reality is a new technology yet to be explored, the history of Virtual Reality indicates that it is a technology with decades of development behind it, and that since the early twentieth century began to generate projects of interest.

However, the poor technological development of the devices that were used in the past, uncomfortable and heavy, was the big problem of Virtual Reality that made its democratization unfeasible. But this changed with the technological revolution of Oculus that began in 2012. For this reason, the greatest advances in Virtual Reality have occurred in the last 10 years, after the appearance of Oculus and the development of its first prototypes of Virtual Reality glasses.

After these last 10 years of constant technological advances, Virtual Reality has proven to be a technology that can provide value and generate great business opportunities, not only to the video game industry, but to the entire business fabric as you will be able to see in the examples that we will show you soon.

In addition, the growing technological trend of the metaverse is driving even more the use of Virtual Reality as it is one of the key technologies that generates a gateway to this new immersive experience. And for you to perfectly understand how this technology can help your company and what uses you can make of it, let's first conceptualize what Virtual Reality is.

 

What is Virtual Reality?

The Virtual Reality or VR (Virtual Reality) is a technology that allows teleporting the user, through sensory immersion, to an alternative environment perceived as real and that replaces his reality.

The fundamental principle of Virtual Reality consists of "separating" the user from the real world and introducing him/her into a new one, which can be totally generated virtually, by means of images and 360º video or even combining both technologies.

The key to Virtual Reality is based on achieving a complete immersion, making the user unable to distinguish whether what his senses are perceiving is his reality or the reality generated by this technology. And to achieve this immersion it is necessary to use technological devices such as Virtual Reality glasses, headphones or even haptic gloves.

Virtual Reality technology is within the framework of Extended Reality, together with Augmented Reality and Mixed Reality, all of them also known as immersive technologies, due to their ability, to a greater or lesser extent, to place the user between the real world and the virtual world.

Discover more about the technologies that make up Extended Reality!

Basic Concepts of Virtual Reality

To be able to generate attractive and satisfying Virtual Reality experiences for the user, it is necessary to know the 4 key concepts that manage to give veracity to the use of this technology and help to fulfill the purpose of the created experiences.

Immersion

Virtual Reality is capable of deceiving the user's brain to make him believe that the reality he is perceiving is true. But, How does this "deception" occur? It is all due to the concept of immersion.

Human beings obtain all the information from the environment around us through the use of our senses. Specifically we filter out more than 80% of the information we receive through sight and hearing, so by substituting visual and auditory stimuli, Virtual Reality manages to trick the user's brain and define a new world that is real for him.

This concept is known as immersion, and is based on sensory imitation supported by two fundamental principles of the human being:

• Sensation: It is the representation that our brain interprets of the world, detecting the physical energy of the environment around us to convert it into nerve-type signals. It is the most primary brain process and is the one that comes from the senses.
• Perception: It is the secondary interpretation of sensations based on the user's experience and memories, for example, we know that fire burns without the need to touch it every time we see it.

 

Virtual Environment

This is the alternate reality in which the content of the experience is displayed. Obviously, the rules and characteristics of this generated 3D world also collaborate in achieving that sense of immersion that brings realism and veracity to the experience.

This virtual world can be completely generated through 3D modeling and computer programming, being able to adapt it to the need of any type of experience. Although it can also be generated from 360º photographs of real spaces, creating an environment that is exact to reality.

Depending on the type of experience generated this virtual world can be unique for each user's session or it can be shared in which there is a single session that allows connectivity between the different users.

Currently and after the boom of the metaverse, virtual environments are being formed, such as Decentraland, Roblox or The Sandbox, in which companies are taking advantage to generate business. This is the case of companies such as Nike, which has created the "Nikeland" experience in Roblox, or the case of Heineken, which has managed to transfer its beverage to the Decentraland environment with humorous content.

Find out how to use virtual environments for your business

Interactivity

Another key element of all Virtual Reality experiences is the ability given to the user to interact with the environment and the objects around them. In this way, users through the use of hand controllers, or through hand tracking technologies, are able to pick up objects, throw them, hit them, etc...

In addition, thinking of Virtual Reality experiences for companies, other types of interactions can also be generated, including the display of corporate videos, the exhibition of products modeled in 3D, access to commercial presentations or catalogs in PDF format, etc...

 

Sensory feedback

This concept is defined as the need to return to the user a sensory response to the actions performed within the virtual environment. In this way, by intervening in the virtual world and interacting with it, providing the user with sensory feedback increases the sense of immersion which, as we have already mentioned above, is key to creating an engaging experience.

This sensory feedback is produced mainly through the senses of sight and hearing, as they are the easiest to replace. However, there are projects that through the use of haptic technology are revolutionizing this effect by also stimulating the sense of touch, especially in the hands.

Of course, in the future it is expected that technological advances will allow us to generate this sensory feedback, not only in sight, hearing and even touch, but also in the senses of smell and even taste, with the aim of managing to recreate a complete experience.

 

Useful examples of Virtual Reality in Companies

There are many companies that have already implemented Virtual Reality over the years, and this is why companies are constantly researching to understand new uses and formats to take advantage of this technology within their company.

For this reason, we are going to list and show some of the most interesting projects that we have done in DeuSens, over these more than 8 years doing XR projects, so that you can get inspired and you can see with your own eyes that Virtual Reality also has a place in your company. Next we will talk about useful examples of Virtual Reality aimed at companies.

Training and learning with Virtual Reality

In this project, we made use of Virtual Reality to be part of the learning of a firefighter, through the virtual simulation of a risky situation, but thanks to the use of this technology was carried out in a safe environment.

The benefits we highlight of applying the use of Virtual Reality in training and learning are the following:

• Avoiding real risk situations
• Accelerating learning processes in an interactive way
• Allowing unlimited repetition of practice
• Reducing material, infrastructure and time costs.