What is happening behind the door of VR/AR laboratories around the world?
VR/AR technology is gradually starting to dominate many aspects of our modern life and a variety of professional industrial sectors; thanks to its advanced benefits and breakthrough innovations in terms of visually immersive experiences.
VR and AR at a glance
Virtual Reality (VR) and Augmented Reality (AR) usually come up in the same hi-tech conversations. They are both in the same immersive-experience family, but different siblings. AR is a supplemental advanced digital element used for live-view features, usually by using the camera on users’ smartphones. Pokémon GO and Snapchat lenses are the two most well-known examples of AR experiences. On the other hand, VR accelerates a complete immersive experience which blocks out the physical world. Through using VR eyewear devices, for instance Oculus Rift, HTC Vive or Google Cardboard, users can enter plenty of artificially imagined environments such as standing right in the center of a medieval battlefield or touching the floating icebergs while swimming with a humpback whale.
Generally, VR works better in terms of immersive experiences and AR benefits in terms of advanced visual freedom for the users.
VR Laboratories — the places full of immersive ideas
VR Labs are the laboratories established by individuals or academic institutions with specialized equipment for researchers to explore the world of virtual reality or to practice and create their own projects or productions. The VR-based projects are very diverse and cover most academic fields nowadays such as Computer sciences, Design, Game developments, Psychology, Media arts, Health-care, Architecture, Astronomy, etc.
With the rapid developments in VR/AR technology, there is a rise in intermediary partners which serve as educational initiatives to support and provide state-of-the-art facilities to academic institutions interested in exploring new VR/AR innovations. One of these intermediary partners is VR First. Its specific VR First’s Lab Seed Support Program is designed to enable and incentivize creators or educators interested in exploring the power and potential of virtual reality development. VR First has been successful in cooperatively establishing more than 50 VR Labs at key academic institutions all around the world by helping to provide the necessary equipment.
Which VR-based projects fascinate you?
According to survey data from VR First on its 52 current worldwide VR Labs, spread across 5 continents, the most popular category of research projects are Gaming (53.85%), followed by Psychology/Neuroscience (21.15%) and Tourism (9.62%). Other fields of interest include Architecture/Real Estate, Aerospace/Aviation and Design. Through the variety of projects, there have been successful breakouts such as Medical VR/AR for Anatomy Training, Comfortable 3D Interactions, Flora Robotica Plant Simulation, Virtual Reality Video Game & Interactive Animation, and many more.
Expert voices on current VR-based projects
“Every year, Istanbul invests millions of dollars in a month-long celebration of tulips, which are native to Turkey and are historically a symbol of the region. What makes tulips special is how temporary they are, only lasting for a few weeks. Tulip festivals require a lot of time and effort for a very short period of enjoyment. VR seemed to be a great way to encapsulate some of the tulip festival’s beauty while also making it available year round. It is also much easier to transport a virtual tulip festival to small rural towns in Turkey than it would be to stage a new festival. And VR, like other forms of digital, is a way to enhance the permanence and accessibility of cultural heritage.” said Michael Barngrover, Bahçeşehir University in Turkey, on project ‘Tulip Festival VR’.
Furthermore, Vlasios Kasapakis from the University of the Aegean in Greece also explains why a VR-based model is the ideal solution for his project by saying “We chose the topic SEaMlESS (SharEd Mixed rEality Social Space), which implements a room-scale MR space, which enables remote, multi-user, synchronous, social interaction. SEaMlESS supports free full-body user movement, accurate real-object virtual representation (also with motion support), as well as interaction with both real and virtual objects. Because of the potential of VR, which could be a communication medium in the future, we indeed aim to perform research towards communications and social context into Virtual Reality, and this is the reason why VR/AR model is ideal for our project”.
Put your VR Glasses on!
Several mentioned statistics and expert voices on their projects reveal an overall picture of popular VR/AR-based projects that have been researched behind the door of VR Labs all around the world. How about you? Which idea would you like to realize in Virtual Reality? Put your VR Glasses on and look towards an immersive future blooming ahead.
Visit the VR First website and its media channels for more information on how to establish a VR First lab and check out the latest global updates on VR/AR industry!
