Virtual Reality (VR) is one of the most exciting and current trends today. The old dream of immersing oneself in a different, computer-generated world is within reach. In this article, we explain to you how far VR is at present and why you should keep an eye on developments around virtual reality.
VR with the Head Mounted Display
The tech evolution finally makes virtual reality feasible in the 2010s. Since the beginning of the year, the Oculus Rift, an excitingly and curiously awaited VR goggle, has been available. And this October the PlayStation VR came onto the market. VR glasses and head-mounted displays from other manufacturers, including HTC and Samsung, also came or will come onto the market in 2016.
While the higher quality models seem to make a cyborg out of their carrier, there are also low-budget variants made of plastic or even cardboard. Here the smartphone is clamped as a display and then strapped in front of the head or, as with the Google Cardboard, simply held in front of your eyes.
In all cases, the user gets the feeling of being in front of or even in a three-dimensional environment. He can look around and interact with the virtual world via the corresponding control device. In the narrower sense, the environment created on the computer is virtual reality, but 360° images can also become an immersion experience with the Head Mounted Display.
In its latest report “Content Marketing meets Virtual Reality”, the market research institute YouGov forecasts pronounced market growth for VR products and content in Germany. This is certainly also due to international developments: Investments are made, money flows into the development and advancement of technologies.
In 2014, Facebook took over the Oculus VR startup for an astronomical sum. Google, Microsoft and Apple are also investing more in virtual reality.
In recent years VR has been a topic at computer game trade fairs such as E3 and Gamescom as well as at this year’s digital marketing fair. A sense of optimism, high expectations and the first promising best practice examples.
Virtual Reality: The old dream of total immersion
The idea of making the viewer’s experience as lifelike as possible has inspired people for a long time. As early as 1896, the Lumière brothers promoted their public screenings by spreading the story that at the premiere of their short film “The arrival of a train at the train station in La Ciotat”, people had jumped into the front row screaming. They would have thought the train was really coming at them. That was exaggerated, of course, but modern 3D cinema successfully aims at exactly this effect.
In the 1960s, the cameraman and inventor Morton Heilig went one step further and developed the Sensorama, a virtual reality machine. A single spectator could sit in front of this machine and experience a 3D motorcycle ride through Brooklyn, with a vibrating seat, wind in his face and different smells.
The Sensorama failed because no market could be found. Heilig had already made a first attempt with the patenting of his Telesphere Mask a few years earlier. These 3D TV glasses are an early Head Mounted Display. The design is already similar to that of its successors.
Like the Sensorama, the Telesphere Mask never made the breakthrough.
Virtual Boy for Virtual Reality
Also worth mentioning is Nintendo’s 1995 attempt: the Japanese company tried to bring virtual reality and gaming together with the Virtual Boy. The console was incredibly unergonomic: The Virtual Boy was placed on the table with its thin, non-height-adjustable legs. The player had to sit in front of it while operating the controller with both hands. The picture was indeed three-dimensional, but monochrome red-black. Players got a headache from this already limited immersive experience. The Virtual Boy flopped.
Although the initial story of Virtual Reality is not a success story, the dream of a walk-in virtual space did not let go of people. This was not least due to the fact that in science fiction VR and what is feasible in the future were repeatedly asked about. In the early 1980s, author William Gibson watched teenagers in front of arcade machines.
In an interview with the literary magazine The Paris Review, he later said he had the impression that they wanted to be in the game world and in fictional space in the machine. This inspired him to work in his successful novel “Neuromancer” with a concept that he named “Cyberspace”. Unlike what we know today as cyberspace, it was explicitly conceived as virtual reality, as a walk-in digital space. In the text, Gibson also spoke of “Matrix” and thus gave the Wachowski siblings the decisive keyword for the film series of the same name.
In the Matrix films, a world was designed in which virtual reality can no longer be distinguished from reality. The holodeck on Star Trek is also a VR vision of the future. And in films such as “Der Rasenmähermann” or “Tron”, virtual reality plays a central role. Writers and filmmakers, therefore, agreed that virtual reality will be part of our lives in the future.
As processors became faster and graphics cards faster and more powerful, VR technologies were further developed to finally make the sci-fi dream come true. The virtual reality technologies that are now reaching private consumers are the result of years of development work.
Reality Check 2016: What does VR look like in implementation?
Currently, there are about a dozen different VR-glasses models available (for an overview with comprehensive comparison click here).
While the Google Cardboard and Samsung Gear are combined with a smartphone as a display, more expensive models such as the Oculus Rift, HTC Vive and PlayStation VR have integrated displays. Prices for VR glasses with integrated display range between 400 (PlayStation VR) and 900 Euro (HTC Vive). Models that do not run via the smartphone are combined with the computer or the game console, controllers and, depending on the manufacturer, headphones and special cameras.
The ultimate immersion experience is possible if the glasses cover a field of view of at least 100°, the resolution is as high as possible and the grid of pixels that can often be perceived at close range is concealed. It is also important that the frame rate is correct. While we settle for 24 frames per second on the cinema screen, VR glasses work with a frame rate of 60 frames upwards to display virtual reality without jerking.
The experience itself appeals to our two main senses: See and hear. The world does not have to be realistic to let the illusion of spatial depth and expanse appear convincing. Virtual Reality therefore directly addresses the emotions of the users – and causes physical reactions.
Players of horror games scream and shy away when something hurtles at them. With VR games in which the player rides a roller coaster or skydives, developers had an easy game. Or not – where, after a round of Virtual Boy the eyes hurt, players now get nauseous.
This may also be the case with VR content, where the user also has solid ground under his feet in virtual space. In sensitive people, the brain notices discrepancies between the physical perception of space and visual input. The result is seasickness or specific “VR disease”. We are still working on the technology.
What attracts companies to Virtual Reality
Why game manufacturers lick their fingers after VR, should be clear. It is not surprising that the porn industry has already discovered VR for itself. Virtual Reality is also interesting for the military, which uses the technology for training purposes, but also to transmit impressions of the fighting itself.
Here VR merges with AR, Augmented Reality because the world that is entered is not a digital, but an extended 360° image of Meatspace.
Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg has a similar and yet completely different idea of the Board of Directors of the future. For him, technology is the perfect extension of social media. In an address on Facebook in March 2014 on the occasion of the takeover of Oculus by Facebook, he spoke of the possibility of using virtual reality in education and healthcare in the future.
Visits to schools and doctors with VR and AR. Be there live, even though you are physically absent. This year’s Oculus Connect in San Jose, California, made it clear that Zuckerberg can also imagine this for social gatherings. Here the founder presented a demo version of social VR/AR.
The basic idea is simple: spend time together with friends in virtual space, watch photos or videos together or play small games, such as fencing with self-made swords. The bodies of those present are replaced by avatars, i.e. computer-generated deputies. The CEO then went home to his demonstration to look for the family dog by accessing a 360° camera shot of his living room and made a videophone call as an avatar. Zuckerberg also promised to further develop the technology behind the motion recording to make it easier for the user to interact in virtual space.
While watching, the quiet feeling really arises that there is still technical work to be done.
Avatars that are visually far behind what we are used to from games and computer-animated films only arouse limited enthusiasm. The question also arises as to whether it is really necessary to make a phone call via a VR interface and why 3D chess against a dummy with the voice of a friend should become the next big thing. On the other hand, it remains unspoken during the demonstration that the beautiful new virtual world is full of opportunities to place advertising.
However, the examples of the British Lloyd Banking Group, the German car manufacturer Audi and the Swedish furniture store IKEA prove that VR is – ready or not – on the advance. According to a report in the tech magazine Wired, Lloyd is currently testing VR in its application process. Applicants will prove themselves by solving tasks in virtual space. Audi, however, has developed an impressive virtual experience.
Screenshot of the IKEA Virtual Experience
The company had already experimented with the virtual showroom at the beginning of 2010. In front of an interactive screen wall, customers could get an idea of the product. This is where VR comes in and enables interested parties to examine the respective car as a lifelike, three-dimensional model, to look inside it and to test drive it. Realistic, lifelike driving noises are part of this experience.
IKEA provides another example of the use of VR. The company launched an app in April that allows HTC Vive users to view virtual IKEA kitchens. The Virtual Experience even includes virtual Köttbullar in two versions.
A target group with high purchasing power
Virtual Reality addresses the main senses of the user, is interactive and activates people emotionally. Impressions that would otherwise only be conveyed in direct contact with each other can theoretically be experienced with VR. This is of course very exciting for marketing purposes. Content marketing, social media marketing and experience marketing can be combined with VR. It is worth investing here because anyone who buys VR glasses and accessories has purchasing power.
And not only that: The market research institute YouGov found out that 16% of Germans already own a VR device or are considering purchasing one. In each case, 17% of those, which thought about the acquisition, flirted with the Samsung Gear or the PlayStation VR. 11% wanted to buy a Google Cardboard. More than a quarter of all interested parties would, therefore, prefer the low-budget VR glasses, whose possibilities are rather limited. The PlayStation VR, however, is primarily aimed at gamers. So most people seem to want to try VR first or they want to play primarily.
In the summer months of this year, YouGov surveyed 9,212 VR device users and users in space. The market researchers collected the demographic data of this group and also examined their relationship to advertising and their interests. The picture was quite clear:
- 61% of (potential) VR users are male.
- Most of those interested in VR are under 40 years old.
- Every second person in this group has the Abitur or the Fachhochschulreife.
- People interested in VR and users have an average 25% higher household income.
- Half of the respondents liked watching advertising on television and did not feel bothered by it in everyday life.
- 70% of respondents expected entertainment from advertising.
- 80% of those interested in VR and users attached importance to holding a product in their hands before purchasing or to informing themselves offline, for example at a promotion stand.
- Just as many attached importance to an expert opinion.
The recommendations derived from these findings are obvious:
Entertaining and informative content, testimonials and influencer marketing and content tailored to the interests of the target group are mentioned in the report as approaches to virtual reality content. The market research institute sees potential in virtual reality and commercial content for the medium. The future forecast until 2020 is correspondingly optimistic.
Should founders jump on the VR train?
Virtual reality has clear potential but is technically not yet fully developed and at the same time still relatively expensive. Big players are already getting involved, but VR still looks quite experimental and in parts like pure technical gimmickry. Our main senses may be seeing and hearing, but when it comes to the experience of holding a product in our hands and experiencing it as a three-dimensional body in space, it may be that looking without touching is not enough. In the gaming sector, manufacturers are already trying to counter this with gun controllers. Here the firearm is simulated with shooters, sometimes even with recoil. When it comes to marketing, working with such accessories is naturally more difficult.
Virtual reality is therefore not necessarily relevant for founders and SMEs. However, it is worth watching the developments on the market. Experience shows that technologies only take a few years to reach a mature level. It is therefore not unlikely that social media marketing will soon come in three dimensions and Facebook users will have to be addressed in virtual space. Webinars could also become a completely new experience with VR. This is all still a dream of the future, but the reality is actually making preparations to catch up with the science fiction visions of the 1980s.
How’s it going with you? Have you tried VR? Are you a regular user? Or are you a convinced sceptic? Tell us your opinion and thoughts about VR! As always, we welcome comments and remarks from our readers!