Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality software are on the rise they have become popular trends in the past 2 years. They’re emphasis is on the visual communication experience. Augmented reality (AR) adds digital elements to a live view often by using the camera on a smartphone, we often encounter it in games such as Pokemon Go and in social media apps such as Snapchat. Virtual Reality (VR) implies a complete immersion experience that shuts out the physical world, the most popular of the software-hardware VR is Oculus Rift. Although we are mostly familiar with their application in the gaming world, the VR and AR is starting to take over the business world as well. Today I wanna examine how the VR technology is impacting our lives in more ways than ever imagined. 

Virtual Reality in Remote Training

Today’s organizations are more geographically dispersed than ever before and employees on the same team might be living in different cities or countries. Although this has definitely led to exponential gains for the organizations, it has also added their expenses. VR training is a solution not only to reduce expenses, training courses and simulations benefit from VR, as well. For employees learning to use machinery, or learning how to deal with unexpected situations, a virtual environment provides valuable practical experience. 

Virtual Reality in Communication and Collaboration

Everything that makes VR effective for employee training purposes works just as well for collaboration. Team members who work remotely can now meet in a virtual conference room seeing each others gesturing and talking naturally. They can be part of the office or simply isolated to focus on the task at hand without the need to leave the office.

The application of VR isn’t limited to training and to collaborations, it’s a whole new age of communication where it affects the consumers’ behaviours when integrated in marketing experience and P.O.S. systems. Although the productivity VR and AR space is largely wide-open, a few solutions have already come to market, such as the virtual goods, virtual desktop (by Oculus Rift and HTC Vive), virtual real estate tours to name a few. 

Today more companies are using virtual reality (VR) technologies in their day-to-day work. Ford designers and engineers are using VR to test elements of the new cars, saving some 8M U.S.D. while Audi is outfitting dealer with VR kits to enable customers to configure vehicules. Sotheby’s International Realty is using VR to host open houses and to sell luxury homes.

Google Translate uses the camera on a mobile device, to provide a real-time translation of text in the real world. The app currently supports 29 languages with the real-time functionality, and 37 using still photos. Google has also introduced virtual reality (VR) in Google Arts & Culture App (Ios & Android) to give everyone the chance to view artworks curated in museums all over the world. 

One of the most interesting and most immediate use of VR is in training and education.  Recent studies has shown that those who learn and train in virtual reality (VR) retain the information much more deeply and for longer periods of time than those who simply use books and videos and other traditional methods. VR allows students to run the lesson as many times as needed, and they cannot be distracted while in the headset.

We are only starting to scratch the surface of the application of VR in business, education and arts. Such a powerful tool is going to impact the way we perceive and interact with the world in the very near future.