VR seems to be showing us the way to a new, maybe better, normal

VR
Image credit | vetkit/bigstockphoto.com

Think about VR, and you tend to think about gaming. A compelling, immersive 3D experience that gamers will become addicted to. And training, of course. VR has been used in training and associated areas for many years.

Now, though, VR is moving into some unlikely places and transforming them completely.

Take banking. It is highly unlikely that you would even think of using a sentence with VR and banking in it.

Yet, managers at financial institutions and banks are rolling out VR as a way of motivating their traders, who are now mainly working from home. Trading thrives on the ‘buzz’ of the trading floor. And VR can reproduce some of that interaction and excitement.

Not only that, but VR could also be a solution to that ‘water cooler’ moment when chance meetings with colleagues can spark ideas and set off what might well become profitable products or services down the line.

This is highlighted in the Feature we published earlier this month:

“The other day, I was finishing a VR meeting with somebody and as I was walking out of their office I bumped into a person who was coming in for another meeting and that interaction for a couple of minutes turned into a proper business conversation later.”

VR looks as if its time has come. It is not Zoom, of which we are all heartily sick, it is not one dimensional, and it is truly interactive and intuitive.

Of course, the market will be driven by gaming, and almost any research you read says that gamers are willing to pay a premium for 5G or whatever gives them the speed and bandwidth to play. Gaming will drive the consumer side of 5G until other applications catch up.

The good news is that these early, mainstream use cases will allow companies to speed up their research and investment into headsets that will no longer give you a headache because of their weight.

Like 5G, it seems that VR now has the perfect environment in which to thrive. The immersive, near-normal nature of the technology may well take over from Zoom (other video technologies are available) as a way of getting back to ‘near normal’.

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