How Virtual Reality transformed our life to good!!

Aman Kumar
12 min readMay 15, 2020

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Real Life gamification

Meditation

Mindfulness practices have shown to improve the quality of mental health of those who practice it Consistently but Mindfulness, as it is traditionally taught, has limited accessibility for persons interested in developing skills to mindfully meditate, searching for a teacher, a learning group and being present at weekly lessons is a strain on time and the limited mobility and energy individuals with or without chronic conditions have to spend. Gamification as a tool for improving the effectiveness of health-related games is already well established [11]. The virtual reality tool along with the gamification method can prove to be an excellent solution for which it can also aid mindfulness practices to be turned into engaging and rewarding fashion. Now, the question arises how mindfulness as a state of being would likely never be considered game-like from a practitioner’s point of view, for it requires a focus on the inner embodied self and current state of physical and conscious being, whereas games have an innate tendency to encourage outward attention (or mindlessness). How, then, can mindfulness teaching and learning benefit from the positive conditioning associated with gamified designs?

The application may consist of several common game mechanics to maintain user interest over time, without attempting to distract them during mindfulness meditation. To help prevent performance anxiety among users, who must feel free to focus on mindfulness learning at their own pace.

A still of the Angkor Wat scene, which guides the participant through sitting meditation. The white flowers open when the user is mindfully meditating.here, it can be perceived as an exemplary view of the virtual world for meditation.

The reward points should be a static amount for each mindful lesson completed, no matter how poorly or excellently the participant performed, as the meditation would probably improve with consistent practices. To do otherwise could inhibit participants from maintaining a state of mindfulness if they are too concerned about their performance at any given moment.

The player should be able to use the points earned in some useful manner like unlocking new mindfulness locations with different meditation lessons. The scene is realistically rendered and animated according to the location. Having new mindfulness lessons unlock over time ensures new users are not overwhelmed with too many options, in the beginning, easing them into new lessons over time as rewards. For tasks in the session which require some immense focus the game is also allowed to have minor motivating such as when the user focuses on their breathing, candles in the scene can begin to Light or flowers begin to bloom, the unobtrusive sound of chirping birds can also be peaceful to be around.

The Emotiv EEG headset would follow each user’s affective progress during each mindful session and provide abstracted visual feedback in real-time and would be able to track their meditation score as well.

Further, the virtual environment can be more lively by adding elements of real life in the house such as surrounding such as dishes being put away, video games or movies in the background, human speech, etc.

Fitness

The specific term coined for applications made for physical fitness and having the elements of both games as well as is “Gamercising”[6] or “exergaming”[7].Aerobic physical exercises, such as running or cycling, are often combined with entertainment activities when carried out indoors. Nowadays, consumer-level immersive Virtual Reality (IVR) devices (e.g., the Oculus-Rift) provide an affordable solution for creating IVR settings at home or at the gym, which can be used for entertaining people while training,but it gets more motivating as well as engaging when it is well combined to the virtual specially tailored environment.

http://vr-geeks.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/Best-VR-Fitness-Games-1000x500.jpg

The Challenge can be the most relevant gamification feature in the exergames: The challenges (or missions) represent particular tasks or quests that the user has to complete for gaining experience.

It can motivate the exercise and provide good feedback on the user’s performance.It both motivated users and for helping them in completing the workout correctly. Challenges are also important for the overall experience, since the main objective of the user is no longer a boring exercise, but a challenge inside a game, which provides a higher motivation for completing the activity. Building the challenges can itself become very challenging as one should be conscious of the sequence of difficulty as well as the agenda of the challenge.

Levels guides the user inside the physical training system and can help them in maintaining a consistent progress plan.In addition, they support the user in understanding how difficult will be the current task. Completing a level provides them a feeling of fulfilment, which facilitates their permanence in the fifitmersive game.

Collecting Points provides an immediate goal for the users and, even if they are virtual rewards, they positively affected the motivation and the fun during the exercise, distracting the users from the physical strain. According to the user’s comments, we suggest to select a point system able to maximize the exercise objective, such as the regularity of speed for the endurance, the precision of the movement for a particular muscle training and so on.

Badges provide an indication on the overall player status, we recognize that including a social network support could enhance the result exponentially as peer motivation and competition has always resulted in a successful engagement of the user to the product .

Including Prizes as intermediate rewards does not seem to have a particular influence on users with respect to the other gamification features. On the other hand, they do not degrade the user experience. Our suggestion is to include them only if needed, but to give priority to all the other features first. Besides the gamification features, the users could also enjoy the forte of virtual reality i.e dynamic graphics of the environment for the training.

Finance

Gamification isn’t just about making investing fun, or empowering investors. It’s about applying game principles and mechanics to engage and motivate customers to perform specified activities or change the behavior of a target group.

Gamification appeals to natural human impulses and desires, such as the need for simplicity, fun, entertainment, social interaction, reward and competition. Reaping all these benefits, customers become emotionally attached and, consequently, get engaged with gamified banking solutions.

It’s becoming a potential step toward transforming the financial sectors as wealth and asset managers of all sizes are developing their capabilities. And this is no alcove approach to it. Gamification can be applied to mass affluent, high-net-worth and institutional relationships. For example, insurers or pension funds could use gamification to help their own investors build a stronger connection between their finances and their real lives. By creating a more tangible future, gamification could be a huge savings motivator for investors. Imagine setting a savings goal for your dream home, and being able to build, design, and even tour (via virtual reality) a mock-up home based on your budget.

So how might the gamification of financial planning look? Clients would interact with their personal and financial goals through their firm’s game-based app and could even meet and present on there personal virtual environment. This approach could use retail bonuses like a free coffee to reward initial engagement and harness gaming techniques to encourage clients to work toward investment goals to meet their desired outcomes. It might even provide a virtual reality simulation of investment benefits for clients and their families. This would allow clients to visualize the benefits of their financial decisions, creating a stronger emotional desire to achieve their investment goals.

Special privilege possible with gamification and virtual reality:

  • Involve depositors in setting and reaching their savings goals.
  • To remove free checking accounts, an online gamified application can ease the user’s hasle. Applying game mechanics, the bank could explain the benefits of converting customer’s checking accounts to bonus banking.
  • Simulate buying and owning a property. User can experiment with applying for different types of mortgages, go through renovations and gain experience of paying property taxes. While playing, first-time buyers can see the consequences of their financial decisions and analyze potential pitfalls.

What gamification can do for a bank:

  • Boost deposits
  • Instill saving habits and foster a money-saving mindset
  • Broaden customers’ awareness of new products and services
  • Simplify the perception of complex banking products
  • Gather data insights about current customers
  • Increase financial literacy among customers and their kids

But with the help of Virtual reality all of these can be visualised and represented more convincing and engaging way.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0NogltmewmQ#action=share

“Emirates NBD fitness app

To increase the number of deposits, the bank with $122 billion in assets decided to reward customers’ active lifestyle with higher savings rates. To achieve these rates, customers had to open a special fitness account with the bank’s mobile app, sync the app to compatible fitness devices and achieve daily goals expressed in a number of steps. With 12,000 steps per day, customers could get a 2% interest rate.Thus, using a gamified fitness app, the bank helped customers to get both physically and financially fit as well as managed to bring $4.37 million in savings.”

Medical

Serious games are increasingly being used for medical education. However,

the design and development of serious games for the education of health professionals

is highly variable, and very few articles report the development process used for game

development. There are many established processes for software development that can improve and streamline development, and incorporating the best practices from educational

pedagogy and software development may enhance teamwork and communication, decrease development costs, and improve the quality of serious games.Further, we review and summarize the literature for serious game development for medical education,

and combining the best practices, we propose a structured three-phase iterative development framework for serious game development.Serious gaming is being increasingly considered for use in education, training and, possibly, certification for healthcare professionals. The use of a game-based environment has the potential to actively stimulate the learning of skills in a flexible and fun way at low cost. Serious games potentially allow for the creation of scenarios that cannot be easily released in the real world or through traditional simulation.The improvement of medical skill is an important goal of any training programme. It seems likely that serious gaming will become an important addition to simulation training for a range of clinical skills. The acceptance of serious gaming in medical education programmes will depend on the demonstration of effectiveness in terms of improved patient outcomes.

  1. Rehabilitation

Video games are well known as a means of providing excitement, stimulation, motivation, challenge and enjoyment to those who play them[12]. Such motivation and enjoyment could prove highly beneficial in a rehabilitation context, where tasks are often mundane and repetitive by nature. It has been suggested in the literature that the designers of rehabilitation tasks could benefit from examining the principles and formulas of video game design.Optimising engagement in games for stroke rehabilitation can actually provide results . We have identified three aspects of game design which are important for optimising the user experience in a rehabilitation context: meaningful play, challenge and conservative handling of failure:

  • Meaningful play emerges from a game through the relationship between a player’s actions and the system’s outcome A good game should provide clear, consistent and meaningful feedback in response to the player’s actions. Feedback can be communicated aurally,visually or haptic technology .
  • Due to a number of factors such as poor motor control and possible unfamiliarity with playing video games,the likelihood of people with stroke experiencing failure in a game, certainly initially, is high. Handling failure in a positive way by encouraging and rewarding all engagement with the game will make it more likely that players will not feel discouraged should they not perform as well as they had hoped.
  • Finally, games for rehabilitation can be designed to dynamically adapt the level of challenge depending on the performance of the player. This is important to ensure that the person with stroke is presented with a level of challenge suitable to their skills. If the game is too difficult, the player could become frustrated and give up; similarly, if the game is too easy, the player could quickly become bored
  1. Therapy for phobia

The modern gamified exposure application for the treatment of specific phobias,Conducting VR exposure therapy using modern, commercially available VR equipment may prove even more powerful. The software includes advancements such as multiple open-ended exposure scenarios relying on gamification to improve engagement and interest; multiple stimulus intensity variables such as appearance, behavior (more or less predictable, static, and aggressive), a variable number of introduction of the material to phobic, and changes in lighting and protective barriers.a virtual therapist that guides the participant in the use of the application and provides psychoeducation and expert advice about spiders; and inclusion of a gaze direction

trackpad to allow participants to interact with the stimuli.

Limitations of the present study include an exposure application that involves multiple unique design specifications, making disentangling of specific therapeutic factors difficult. Despite the complete automation of the VR application, psychologists will be in attendance to resolve technical difficulties and ensure treatment compliance and will be present to assist patients if needed.Future studies will benefit from having the patient administer VR treatment independently to ensure true isolation of treatment effects.

Education

The use of gamification in a classroom is expected to increase student engagement and motivation, as compared to traditional classroom methods. It is important to engage the students with collaborative work in the classroom and develop a storyline,similar to a multiplayer game in two ways: competing with one another in groups, or developing a team that solves one goal together in a collaborative way.

To gamify a classroom, an individual must follow certain rules [10], including the following:

1) Feedback!: Encourage student-generated content. Every week the professor should deliver a problem, quest, or mission. In so doing, it is vital to provide quick feedback on the student’s work.The teacher’s role is to offer constructive feedback and guide student learning.

2) Collaboration: It is important for the learning process to follow the game mechanics of multiplayer games. Challenging students with collaborative quests with real people to achieve a common goal speeds the learning process significantly. For instance, the students could be challenged with exercises that they must complete together,and missions with groups of several students that compete with one another. Working together is the goal of a challenge. It is a win-win strategy.

3) Scorekeeping, leaderboards, levels, and rewards!: Any effective implementation of gamification is clear on the rules of the game,as well as the rewards for participation. That means students need to learn how to achieve recognition and how to advance. Rewards are just like currency, however, instead of monetary value, it has social value: prestige and influence. The clearer method is using experience points (XP) as the class grading method. At the end of the semester, a teacher could make the grading scale coincide with his/her XP. For instance, if the teacher awards a student 2,000 XP by the end of the semester, that student would have had to earn 1800 XP to achieve an “A,” or to “level up.” Levels, for instance, could be gained in increments of 1000 XP each. This would provide students with instant feedback on their content mastery and clarify the progress they made in the class.

4) Quests/Problems: No game should be without quests or problems to resolve.

5) Storyline: Every video game has a storyline. In the Computer Animation class, the class could be transformed into a production firm of 3D effects that contracts different work

6) Knowledge Map: A knowledge map is simply a guide that illustrates the progression of the class content.

When a teacher meshes gamification with other teaching methodologies, and with technologies like virtual environments, they are creating the perfect environment for students to engage in a lesson. Not only does it increase their performance on exams, but it also encourages them to perform better if they are behind. Overall, it increases the effectiveness of the learning process for all students.

Engineering and architecture

The prime goal is to increase student motivation and engagement through various technologies and learning methodologies based on game mechanics, called gamification, and the use of virtual reality. Engagement is the main objective in applying gamification. The use of gamification and new technologies for enhancing the learning process will boost achievement in 3D architectural subjects for design, and convey and validate any architectural project. Although the gamification technique is not truly an academic methodology, it may improve student performance in the learning process Having defined the starting point for the analysis of the data obtained, and turning back to the initial test or profile test, we can affirm that students who currently take building engineering classes in our faculty mostly like the use of technology with game elements. The results show growing use of technology and devices such as Oculus Rift and augmented reality as well. This engaging for using high technology positively predisposes students to use these devices in an educational way, increasing their motivation to understand course content, thereby improving their academic performance.

The refinement and quality output and detail provides a positive experience. Furthermore, the use of virtual reality connects the building engineer to another level of freedom and interaction, making the experience a starting point for improved student creativity. It also helps students to understand the use of 3D and why they must use it to achieve good skills with 3D subjects. The use of this technology has been fairly easy for the students, but the most important factor is the fact that this technology expands the communication of students’ designs in a manner never before achieved.

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