The current state of VR

- When we think about designing for virtual reality, it's important to consider what makes VR so unique. Let's walk through some of the key benefits of the virtual reality experience. First, it's heavily immersive. So I can enter into an environment that feels so immersive that I actually forget the fact that I'm standing in my own living room. I can have an experience that feels realistic, and I really think and feel that I'm somewhere else. Second, it's experiential. From learning sciences, we know interactive or experiential learning allows for stronger engagement and increased learning gains compared to just talking or reading about something. In virtual reality, where having a realistic experience, we get to interact with our learning environment, and that felt sense of our experience likely makes the learning more memorable. Third, it's also emotional. While using VR, we can have an emotional experience because we're immersed in a realistic setting. We're more likely to experience our own emotions related to that environment or context. For example, in a calm, ocean front setting, you might actually begin to feel more relaxed, whereas in a car racing setting, you might feel more tension or fear. When designed carefully, the ability for VR to elicit an emotional experience can also enhance learning and memory. Fourth, it's scalable. Especially now that we have untethered headsets, we have the ability to launch something that could be available to numerous users who are in all different locations. So that's a really important piece when we think about social VR and the ability to collaborate in virtual reality. So how is this VR technology currently being applied? Entertainment, gaming, tourism, even architecture, definitely have potential and interest, but probably aren't the most powerful applications for virtual reality. Remember how I mentioned the experiential nature of VR? There are two areas of application for virtual reality that I see as having the most promise. These are in education and training, as well as therapeutic simulation. In terms of education, we see VR applications successfully building empathy, such as using VR to allow users to experience someone else's life firsthand, or to help neurodivergent kids practice social cues. VR is also used to simulate and practice emergency training scenarios. Being immersed in a very realistic environment that feels emotional can provide a very safe and realistic simulation of what it would be like to be in an emergency setting. So this is an ideal way for someone to practice, to learn, to experience, and even acclimate to new environments. And remember how I said that because VR is so immersive, your mind forgets where you really are in the world? For this reason, VR for therapeutic immersion, for example, pain mitigation, is a very powerful tool. In fact, VR has been shown more effective to treat pain than opioids for burn victims. Even when strong pain signals are firing up a patient's nerves, VR can help trick the brain into ignoring them by focusing brain activity elsewhere. And finally, because of VRs ability to be immersive and emotional, it shows incredible potential as a tool for therapeutic simulation, specifically in relation to treating post-traumatic stress disorder in veterans and people with phobias, like fears of spiders. By allowing people to revisit scary or traumatic scenarios in a very controlled setting, they can slowly overcome their fears or trauma. Now that you understand some of the unique benefits that virtual reality has to offer, keep these in mind as we go into detail about how to create unique and successful VR applications.