What is Virtual Reality?
Virtual Reality (VR) is a computer-generated environment that makes the user feel like they are in real life rather than a virtual world, with scenes and objects that look real. This environment is sensed through a device known as a Virtual Reality headset or goggles. VR allows us to immerse ourselves in video games as if we were one of the characters, learn to perform heart surgery, or improve the quality of sports training to maximize performance.
What is the difference between Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality?
Despite being a technology that emerged decades ago, many people are still not familiar with the concept of Virtual Reality. It is also quite common to confuse the term Virtual Reality with augmented reality.
The main difference between the two is that VR builds the world we immerse ourselves in through a particular goggle or headset. It's totally immersive and everything we see, images, sounds, etc. It is part of an artificially created environment. On the other hand, in augmented reality (AR), our own world becomes the frame into which objects, images or the like are placed. Everything we see is in a real environment and it may not be necessary to wear headphones at all. The clearest and best-known example of this concept is Pokémon Go.
(Augmented Reality)
(Virtual Reality)
Use of VR in Different Industries
Virtual reality technology is entering every industry. Finances Online conducted a study to determine which industries are using VR the most. With this technology, the way people have fun, travel, learn, communicate, buy products and work will never be the same in the future of virtual reality.
- Amount of VR users in the US $57.4 million (eMarketer, 2020)
- VR and AR investments estimated at $915 million in 2020 (Superdata, 2020)
- 91% of businesses already use or plan to adopt VR or AR technology. (TechRepublic, 2020)
From 2020 to 2027, the growth rate of the virtual reality industry was measured as 21.6%. In the future, virtual reality will occupy a much larger place in our lives. With its Metaverse attack, Facebook accelerated this growth rate even more. Many large companies have started to take steps to keep up with virtual reality.
Preparing for the Metaverse movement, Alibaba established its initiative called XR Lab. TikTok owner ByteDance bought VR glasses manufacturer Pico for $ 1.4 billion. Xiaomi invested in virtual reality company Sky Limit Entertainment.
These preparations do not only take place in China. In the West, Meta, Google, Microsoft and Apple continue to develop their own virtual and augmented reality technologies.
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