Companies that use virtual reality are revolutionizing the way of understanding the market. In the last year, we have experienced a technological advance impossible to imagine before Covid-19. The so-called IV Industrial Revolution has brought with it changes that were not believed possible in a period of fewer than ten years. Companies are the great transformers, those responsible for integrating new technologies into our daily lives. The virtual replaces the physical in medical centers, schools, offices… and in this context, virtual reality becomes a field to be explored that exponentially multiplies the possibilities of differentiating through innovation.
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What Is Virtual Reality?
Virtual reality VR is a technology that takes us to a specific environment with which we can also interact through the use of simulation glasses or helmets. The key to virtual reality is that it gives users the sensation of being immersed in an immersive reality while keeping all five senses active. However, sight and hearing are usually involved with the virtual reality tool. Sometimes additional devices such as gloves or special suits are used to offer different stimuli to intensify the sensation of reality.
Virtual Reality In Companies
Today many companies resort to this, and there are also many virtual reality applications. It is easy to connect this technology with the video game, entertainment, architecture, or engineering sectors, but it is also very present in education, health, the public sector… Bain & Company anticipates a virtual reality adoption rate of 75% by 2023. Logically, the potential of virtual reality does not go unnoticed by companies, which have already normalized its use, favoring the sustainability of their models in very diverse dimensions.
Marketing And The Product Experience
One of the areas of companies that have previously been able to bet on virtual reality is marketing, which discovers in this tool a way of providing the customer with a product experience before purchase. The options are innumerable: product demonstrations (even before it has been manufactured), test simulations of a mobile device or a car… It is possible to offer the customer an almost real experience without any limitation for the first time.
Companies that focus on creating innovative workspaces are aware of the potential of virtual reality as a work tool. An excellent example of this can be found in companies such as Decathlon, which, thanks to virtual reality, allow their customers to get closer to the experience of using their tents in natural contexts: a forest, a mountain lake, a fire crackling next to the store… without leaving the mall. Undoubtedly, it is an added value with a very high return on investment possibilities.
Innovative Communication
Communication becomes innovative and delocalized. In the last year, the video call has been consolidated. Still, virtual reality allows us to go further and organize those same virtual meetings by introducing the participants to a particular virtual environment (it can be related to the subject that will be discussed in the discussion, such for example a visit to a building that is being built, or on the contrary, try to transfer the participants to a different context, for example, nature, to generate a specific climate).
On the other hand, virtual reality offers us the possibility of giving immersive messages: Stanford University, through the Virtual Human Interaction Lab, has carried out several projects in which, through virtual reality, it tries to make users aware of environmental matters. The use of virtual glasses inside a swimming pool allows observing the consequences of man’s action on the seabed. Understanding that our activities impact the bottom of the sea is not the same as seeing it with virtual reality goggles while diving.
Education And Training In Virtual Reality
Likewise, virtual reality is transforming training models in companies, also revealing itself as a tool that facilitates more sustainable formulas. Training to use gives way to new dynamics and intense experiences that reinforce learning, which is why today, this is a model already implemented in the training programs of many companies.
Knowing that our brain can retain 10% of what it reads, 20% of what it hears, and 90% of what it experiences, it is easy to understand the potential of virtual reality. Thanks to it, it is possible to transmit knowledge and interact with it without the need to physically transfer all employees to a particular context or invest in specific materials for each training. It allows us to recreate the use of heavy or dangerous machinery, learn about occupational risks without facing them during the learning process, play work contexts that would otherwise be difficult to access (for example, a surgical intervention…) The possibilities are endless. On the other hand, this model offers an attractive and practical learning environment for the worker, who is more motivated when faced with a new model.
Improved Productivity Thanks To VR
Creativity is the use of virtual reality that has no limits. This has allowed companies like Acciona to revolutionize internal procedures: they use a combination of virtual reality and augmented reality to review and improve the maintenance of their facilities and improve the productivity of their technicians.
Other companies incorporate this tool to simplify and speed up processes in the production phase, such as Volvo. Their engineers use virtual reality in factories to reduce margins of error in the process and improve products.
In short, we are facing a technology capable of digitally transforming companies and their procedures at very different levels. The future undoubtedly passes through technology, and virtual reality also shows us that it will help us progress sustainably. The only limit will be our creativity.
Also Read: Virtual Reality – The Future Of VR In 2022
