How Businesses Can Use VR to Their Advantage

Why read about a product? Why not actually touch and feel it? The user experience is about to enter the next frontier. Consumers will expect a far greater 'experience', and that will require the business community to consider how best to use VR.

Let's be honest, Google glass hasn't taken off quite as spectacularly as it was supposed to. However Virtual Reality (VR) headsets and wearables have made considerable progress in the past year.

At this year's SXSW there has already been some serious showboating by competitors to the Oculus Rift VR headsets.

One of these is Glyph - from the Californian start-up Avegant - which has been showcased to massive acclaim and will be worth following when it becomes available later this year.

So a quick run down of Glyph:

•High-res LED displays built into the headband, which has to be pulled down over your eyes and the compulsory heavy-duty headphones

•You can be connected to your computer, console or mobile device

•Although not fully immersive like the Oculus Rift, you can still see your hands

•Really good for augmented reality

•Considered less clunky than a few others on the market

I'm excited by how smart it looks. Of course, each VR head device has its own pros and cons - whether style, functionality and the market has a few to VR sets to choose from. For example there is Valve's SteamVR (HTC), Sony's project Morpheus and Microsoft's buzz generation HoloLens system. It'll be interesting to see which one breaks through the market.

For my children VR headsets will mean remarkable new dimensions to video gaming, viewing films and it will eventually filter into their classrooms. I suspect that learning science and history will become much more fun than it was in my time. But business can also use VR to their advantage.

As virtual reality enters mainstream digital life, the implications to business will be considerable. Digital agencies like my own - Heath Wallace - will certainly be considering immersive marketing experiences.

Why read about a product? Why not actually touch and feel it? The user experience is about to enter the next frontier. Consumers will expect a far greater 'experience', and that will require the business community to consider how best to use VR.

Harvard Business Review even considers the impact of VR on leadership styles:

"Tomorrow's business landscape could well be alien territory for today's business leaders. At many companies, important decision making will be distributed throughout the organization to enable people to respond rapidly to change. A lot of work will be done by global teams--partly composed of people from outside the institution, over whom a leader has no formal authority--that are assembled for a single project and then disbanded. Collaboration within these geographically diverse groups will, by necessity, occur mainly through digital rather than face-to-face interaction."

Internally, the workplace will benefit from VR in terms of conferencing, meetings, pitches for clients and training. It'll be the end of power point as we know it. It will also be the end of the meeting as we know it. No more crushingly dull AGM's - and the away day never was filled with so much possibility.

Virtual Reality will not only be a great way to engage the employees, the possibilities for the business world are endless.

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