Virtual Reality in Everyday Life

By Max Rogers

Virtual reality (VR) is an upshot of human quest for new experiences and new possibilities that could make our lives a lot easier and enjoyable. VR is about capturing intense, realistic moments. Way back in the mid 1950's, a cinematographer by name Morton Heilig tried to mimic real world experiences with his 3D video machine called Sensorama that produces sound and vibration, wind blowing on the face and smells along the road.

While virtual reality started off as fun and games, it is gaining a strong foothold in our everyday lives and many serious human pursuits. While VR has been quite popular in the gaming world, many path-breaking developments have taken place over the last few years that clearly indicate that VR is not just a useful tool but something that is going to be indispensable in ways that we would never have imagined. Many exciting developments are being announced across the world showing its use in education and industries, sports and travel, shopping and real estate, fitness and healthcare, and engineering design, just to mention a few. The possibilities are limitless! Here we would see some applications of VR in everyday life.

Education

VR accelerates transformational learning moments. Thanks to Google Expedition, kids are now able to go on a virtual field trip to the moon to see its surface. With the help of highly detailed scene reconstructions, VR lets you study amazing places like Mendenhall Ice Caves in Alaska or the Amazon rainforests or the Naica Mine in Mexico, in an immersive environment from the comfort of your couch. VR lets you go on larger-than-life journeys to historical monuments and heritage sites, look at archaeological wonders in close vicinity and reach to inaccessible areas of the earth and experience them through the eyes of someone who was there.

Students of medicine can examine human anatomy in greater detail. VR gives the students of science and engineering a realistic insight into many complex phenomena and mechanisms that are difficult to visualize by other means. There is potential for students from practically every discipline be it arts, science or engineering.

Industrial training and Engineering design

Virtual reality provides access to risk-free experiential learning to industrial process engineers and operators in chemical plants using a game-like environment. "Innovative plant-specific simulations shorten learning times and enhance training retention, capitalizing on the human brain's ability to call back graphic memory and experiences." observes Andreas Geiss of Siemens. It is now possible to conduct training on industrial safety in hazardous environments or flight simulation without the associated risks using 3D immersive experiences that VR provides. VR is being used in energy, aerospace, ship-building and automotive industries for their virtual prototyping needs and assessment of their product designs with enormous savings in cost that is incurred on trials.

Real Estate, Hospitality and Shopping

VR allows home buyers a detailed property walkthrough from the comfort of their homes, giving them a 360 degree tour of their future house before they even decide to visit the actual location. As entire scenes are reconstructed directly from the meticulously captured videos and images, there is an element of authenticity and transparency in dealing. Customers can get immersed into the interactive videos any number of times at their own pace and inspect the property in every detail from different perspectives before taking their decision.

Architectural design software applications with VR features provide a virtual immersive environment to design engineers to evaluate their designs before physical construction even begins. Well-known market players in retail, fashion design and luxury boutique industry offer an immersive virtual shopping experience to their customers.

Some leading players in the hospitality industry like Shangri-La Hotels have produced immersive 360-degree videos of their hotels and resorts. They have introduced VR headsets across all their global sales offices for customers to see the property before deciding to stay over there.

Sports

Virtual Reality plays multiple roles in sports. VR systems allow coaches to conduct better practice and training sessions for players by repeatedly immersing themselves into the game experience using the player's eye-view of the game. Players are offered many possible scenarios they may face during the game, allowing them to spot missed opportunities and reassess their own games and that of their team mates. It lets players practice just before the tournament without getting hurt or facing inclement weather.

How about watching the game from the perspective of your favourite player? Trials have already started in this direction and some progress has been made. A 360-degree view of live streams of your favourite sports event is already made available by some market players. Efforts are being made to add the social element to VR, wherein you can watch live sports while feeling the presence of your friends.

Fitness and Healthcare

Virtual reality has opened up many exciting possibilities in the area of healthcare and fitness. It is being widely used in hospitals and rehabilitation centres to train doctors, surgeons, paramedics and other support staff. Studies have shown immense value of virtual reality in conducting surgery simulations and treatment of people suffering from autism, PTSD and physical disabilities. Psychiatrists have found it extremely useful in exposure therapy for treating their patients with mental disorders like anxiety, depression and phobias. By subjecting the patient to controlled exposure of situations that created the physical or mental trauma, they are able to achieve the desired results much faster.

A recent study in the medical journal, Frontiers in Neuroscience, shows how virtual reality could be used to treat the phantom limb pain after amputation. A combination of bicycle and VR headset, with necessary sensors and motors provide a motivating virtual environment for people who are fitness conscious.

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