Consumer-level VR started with gaming. Video gamers are already accustomed to being engaged in highly interactive hyper-realistic 3D environments. VR just ups the ante.
Gamers are early adopters of high-end graphics technology. Mass production of gaming consoles and PC-based components in the tens of millions and competition between vendors leads to lower prices and higher performance. Game developers follow suit, often pushing the state of the art, squeezing every ounce of performance out of hardware and software. Gamers are a very demanding bunch, and the market has consistently stepped up to keep them satisfied. It's no surprise that many, if not most, of the current wave of VR hardware and software companies are first targeting the video gaming industry. A majority of the VR apps on the Oculus Store, such as Rift (https://www.oculus.com/experiences/rift/), GearVR (https://www.oculus.com/experiences/gear-vr/), and Google Play for Daydream (https://play.google.com/store/search?q=daydream&c=apps&hl=en), are for games. And of course, the Steam VR platform (http://store.steampowered.com/steamvr) is almost entirely about gaming. Gamers are the most enthusiastic VR advocates and seriously appreciate its potential.
Game developers know that the core of a game is the game mechanics, or the rules, which are largely independent of the skin, or the thematic topic, of the game. Game mechanics can include puzzles, chance, strategy, timing, or muscle memory. VR games can have the same mechanical elements but might need to be adjusted for the virtual environment. For example, a first-person character walking in a console video game is probably going about 1.5 times faster than their actual pace in real life. If this wasn't the case, the player would feel that the game was too slow and boring. Put the same character in a VR scene and they will feel that it is too fast; it could likely make the player feel nauseous. In VR, you want your characters to walk at a normal, earthly pace. Not all video games will map well to VR; it may not be fun to be in the middle of a hyperrealistic war zone when you're actually virtually there.
That said, VR is also being applied in areas other than gaming. Though games will remain important, nongaming applications will eventually overshadow them. These applications may differ from games in a number of ways, with the most significant having much less emphasis on game mechanics and more emphasis on either the experience itself or application-specific goals. Of course, this doesn't preclude some game mechanics. For example, the application may be specifically designed to train the user in a specific skill. Sometimes, the gamification of a business or personal application makes it more fun and effective in driving the desired behavior through competition.
Here are a few examples of the nongaming application areas that are proving successful in VR:
- Travel and tourism: Visit faraway places without leaving your home. Visit art museums in Paris, New York, and Tokyo in one afternoon. Take a walk on Mars. You can even enjoy Holi, the spring festival of colors, in India while sitting in your wintery cabin in Vermont.
- Mechanical engineering and industrial design: Computer-aided design software, such as AutoCAD and SOLIDWORKS, pioneered three-dimensional modeling, simulation, and visualization. With VR, engineers and designers can directly experience the end product before it's actually built and play with what-if scenarios at a very low cost. Consider iterating a new automobile design. How does it look? How does it perform? How does it appear when sitting in the driver's seat?
- Architecture and civil engineering: Architects and engineers have always constructed scale models of their designs, if only to pitch the ideas to clients and investors or, more importantly, to validate the many assumptions about the design. Currently, modeling and rendering software is commonly used to build virtual models from architectural plans. With VR, the conversations with stakeholders can be so much more confident. Other personnel, such as interior designers, HVAC, and electrical engineers, can be brought into the process sooner.
- Real estate: Real-estate agents have been quick adopters of the internet and visualization technology to attract buyers and close sales. Real-estate search websites were some of the first successful uses of the web. Online panoramic video walkthroughs of for-sale properties have been commonplace for years. With VR, I can be in New York and gauge the feel of a place to live in Los Angeles.
- Medicine: The potential of VR for health and medicine may literally be a matter of life and death. Every day, hospitals use MRI and other scanning devices to produce models of our bones and organs that are used for medical diagnosis and possibly preoperative planning. Using VR to enhance visualization and measurement will provide a more intuitive analysis, for example. VR is especially being used for medical training, such as the simulation of surgery for medical students.
- Mental health: VR experiences have been shown to be effective in a therapeutic context for the treatment of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in what's called exposure therapy, where the patient, guided by a trained therapist, confronts their traumatic memories through the retelling of the experience. Similarly, VR is being used to treat arachnophobia (fear of spiders) and the fear of flying.
- Education: The educational opportunities for VR are almost too obvious to mention. One of the first successful VR experiences is Titans of Space, which lets you explore the solar system first hand. In science, history, the arts, and mathematics, VR will help students of all ages because, as they say, field trips are much more effective than textbooks.
- Training: Toyota has demonstrated a VR simulation of drivers' education to teach teenagers about the risks of distracted driving. In another project, vocational students got to experience the operating of cranes and other heavy construction equipment. Training for first responders, the police, and fire and rescue workers can be enhanced with VR by presenting highly risky situations and alternative virtual scenarios. The National Football League (NFL) and college teams are looking to VR for athletic training.
- Entertainment and journalism: Virtually attend rock concerts and sporting events or watch music videos. Re-experience news events as if you were personally present. Enjoy 360-degree cinematic experiences. The art of storytelling will be transformed by virtual reality.
Wow, that's quite a list! This is just the low-hanging fruit. Unity Technologies, the company behind the Unity 3D engine, appreciates this and is making an all-out push beyond gaming for its engine (you can learn more about Unity Solutions at https://unity.com/solutions).
The purpose of this book is not to dive too deeply into any of these applications. Rather, I hope that this brief look at the possibilities helps stimulate your thinking and provides an idea of how VR has the potential to be virtually anything for everyone. Next, we'll attempt to define the spectrum of the types of VR experience.