VirtualRealityandItsApplications:AVirtualGlimpseintotheFuture
It's no secret that brick-and-mortar retail is struggling in times of booming e-commerce, same-day delivery, and discount battles for the favor of buyers. And especially in times like these, customers prefer to order from home. Thus, retailers face the challenge of making the shopping experience as efficient and entertaining as possible for those who do make the trip to, for example, a local furniture store. Particularly in the furniture segment, much has been achieved thanks to immersive technologies, including Virtual Reality. IKEA, for instance, takes visitors on a tour of a virtual living room. Via a VR headset and an immersive VR application, the interested party can design and configure their dream living room—from the wall color to the shelf and matching sofa cover, all the way to the lighting mood.
Overcoming Spatial Boundaries
What initially sounds like a nice gimmick to entertain the customer is of great benefit to the retailer. IKEA doesn't have to display every couch in numerous colors and variants in the furniture store to convince customers that the small gray sofa fits better in their red-painted shared apartment room than the large blue one. This, in turn, saves costs for personnel and logistics. A similar scenario can be found in car dealerships: Today's car dealership, with its limited exhibition space and thus limited brands and models, can be supplemented and expanded with VR applications to offer potential customers the entire product portfolio and personalized configurations—depending on consumer preferences.
In the field of cultural and city marketing, informative content as well as extensive and complex worlds are effectively staged and made tangible in the smallest of spaces. An example of this is the Discovery Dock in the Port of Hamburg. In the immersive interactive permanent exhibition, guests can, for example, virtually load containers as a crane operator or stand in 'Dock Elbe 17' and watch a container ship being serviced up close. Of course, purely virtually, otherwise this would not be possible.
Immense Cost Savings through Immersive Technologies
Virtual Reality offers novel brand and product experiences. Stories can be told and worlds visualized—seemingly without spatial boundaries. This benefits not only industries with a 'space problem.' Large industrial sectors such as the automotive industry, aerospace, construction and real estate, as well as entertainment and healthcare, are using immersive technology to optimize processes and make them more efficient. Or to minimize potential risks, improve a product, or increase quality. However, the main advantage of Virtual Reality is cost reduction—across industries. Whether it's development, travel, or planning costs: Especially everything that consumes logistical budgets or would have to be created solely for presentation and demonstration purposes can be saved by companies in the future. For example, the caravan that is to be exhibited at the CMT trade fair in Stuttgart does not even have to be built or shipped to be shown and sold.
Virtual Preview in Production Processes and Construction Projects
Whenever it comes to simulating processes and scenarios, immersive technologies allow a glimpse into the future. With the help of the virtual world, complete production facilities and processes are tested without interfering with existing production. For example, the car manufacturer BMW used VR technology to plan the production start of the new 3 Series—before the assembly line even started rolling.
In architecture and construction, immersive technologies offer a 'sneak preview' of a property, even though it only exists on the drawing board so far. Investors, builders, site managers, or architects can thus enter and evaluate a complex construction project from the very beginning. This not only simplifies coordination processes immensely but also better identifies potential hazards in terms of occupational safety. What works for individual properties also applies to entire cities: Fracture Reality—a British agency for mixed reality solutions—is currently developing a real-time city planning platform for the island and city-state in collaboration with the Singaporean government. Here, VR technology is used to address the challenges associated with densely populated areas on small land masses. For example, to eliminate bottlenecks in the city planning process, the process is reduced from months to hours.
Improved Safety and Routine through Virtual Training
VR-based training programs significantly reduce the crucial and necessary training times for companies in aerospace, public transport, construction, as well as in medicine and healthcare, while simultaneously improving employee performance. Dangerous or complex scenarios, such as working in underground construction sites, pilot training, or training for performing medical procedures, can be resource-efficiently and environmentally friendly trained with VR. When it comes to training for the operation of a bone fracture, VR technology is virtually indispensable. All an aspiring surgeon needs is the appropriate software, a headset the size of ski goggles, and motion control for each hand. Thanks to Virtual Reality, worlds, scenarios, and processes can be virtually visualized, trained, and simulated. In combination with eye-tracking, video analysis, and simulation of human-machine interactions in the Virtual Reality space, the possibilities seem almost limitless.
It remains exciting.