After hovering on the fringes of mainstream culture for
years, VR was suddenly thrust into the spotlight a few years ago by developers
like Oculus, HTC, Sony, and Samsung. As their rapid hardware developments piqued
the interest of the entertainment world, the
biggest impact was unsurprisingly felt in gaming, with console manufacturers
scrambling to be the first to incorporate the tech into their products. As an
unfortunate consequence, VR was mistakenly viewed by many merely as a gadget for
gamers, a gimmick.
We’ve never seen it that way, and we’ve always strived to
combat this misconception by demonstrating the real-world impact this
incredible technology can really have. Right from our first VR projects with
Pagani and Audi two years ago, we’ve had the pleasure of working within an
international community of likeminded developers to apply the cutting-edge of R&D
VR innovations to commercial projects with car companies around the world, and
with the rate of recent hardware developments, we couldn’t be more excited
about our future Virtual Reality projects!
It’s not just in our sector that VR is maturing: recently, its
potential business applications have become
increasingly clear. The unveiling of Oculus for Business at OC4 is testament to
this, with several big-name brands partnering with the hardware firm to give a taster
of what VR can really do.
From the initial staff training at companies like KFC,
Walmart, and General Motors, to designing state-of-the-art passenger planes
with Boeing and Airbus, VR is impacting every level of working life. Staff can
now create and test new features and models, practice diffusing potentially
dangerous situations, and hold complex conferences all within a virtual sphere,
and they can do this from almost anywhere.
Despite these incredible innovations, though, it’s the
customer who has benefited most from VR’s dramatic foray into the business world. They can use this technology to design,
customise, and test an increasing number of products prior to purchase. No
longer reliant on their imagination, consumers are able to see a product in a
range of different surroundings, giving them unprecedented insights into potential
purchases, and with the recent addition of volumetric video environments,
customers can find themselves completely immersed within these life-like experiences.
The only way is up for VR in these exciting times!
If you’d like to join our team and
work with us on our upcoming projects, talk to our team at the Develop:VR
conference or view our current vacancies.
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| Chris O'Connor is Technical Director at ZeroLight and will be speaking at Develop:VR with his session entitled Building World-Class Commercial VR Experiences |
