Virtual Reality (VR) in serious games

Virtual reality, what is it and how can you use it to add value to your team and customer interactions?
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We know that Virtual Reality (VR) is an incredibly fun and exciting technology. VR is mainly interesting if you want to show different dimensions of an environment that cannot be seen with your own eyes, such as the inside of the human body. Virtual Reality is also a good technology for learning skills that require high perceptual abilities.

What is Virtual Reality (VR)?

Virtual Reality or VR is a simulated experience or environment in which you can be immersed in a 3D visual environment that can mimic the real world, or create an abstract or realistic alternative reality. VR environments also focus on sound design, to help create that sense of immersion.

A realistic virtual reality environment might allow you to wander around a store without ever leaving your home, enabling you to experience products or spaces in a close to life-like way.

Or it might transport you to a different universe, on the macroscopic scale, or into our own universe on the microscopic scale.

Within VR environments, you aren’t just a passive observer, you can interact with objects in conventional and expected ways that are bounded by physical realism, or you can jump into the air and soar away on a magic carpet limited only by your own imagination. At a level of general understanding, Virtual Reality is usually within a computer generated environment.

In the VR world , you needn’t be alone, you can meet with friends, strangers or computer generated personae that have interactions driven by linear, non-linear or AI driven story line constructs.

And with this combination of visual and sound environment, and object interactions, you can learn, play and explore, socialise and share experiences in a new way.

Advantages of Virtual Reality

The most important advantages of using VR for serious games are:

  1. VR is ‘immersive’: it places the user in a completely new environment. This immersive effect improves learning and training effectiveness.
  2. VR gives a better perception of depth than 2D or even 3D games.
  3. VR is more realistic, it’s closer to the real world in terms of movement and spaciousness, even if the game world is not necessarily realistic.
  4. VR feels more natural and intuitive, because of the better perception of depth and closeness to the real world interactions.

 

Although VR is an incredibly fun technology, it is not always necessary as part of a serious game solution. There are a number of situations in which VR can be of great added value. We will highlight and explain two of these situations.

Acquiring Skills with Virtual Reality

A serious game without VR can often suffice to teach skills. However, there may be particular challenges where it is important to see enough depth. Think of surgeons who have to learn how to operate, in which depth plays a crucial role. By using VR, it is possible to make practice sessions so realistic that the exercise of a surgical procedure can be accurately imitated.

Knowledge transfer in specific environments

Sometimes we understand things better only when we have personally see them.. However, it is not always possible to see everything with our bare eyes. For instance, when we experience pain it is difficult to take a look inside our body to understand why there is pain. For VR, you can experience unique environments that you normally can’t see. An example is the serious game ‘Reducept‘.

Learn more about VR for serious games

VR for sales team training

VR for sales team training

As we all struggle to redesign the way we work together remotely, VR and XR offer amazing ways to create team moments, and to revolutionize some quite dull training. Imagine a new sort of water cooler moment, or a great way to engage the team in a brainstorming or creative ideas session.

We do it together

Not two questions or problems are the same. We have adapted our process for this through 15 years of continuous improvement of our methods. The dialogue between stakeholders in a project is very important here. That is why we strive to build good relationships. This way we create a cooperation where we appreciate each other’s input and creativity. According to your feedback and that of the development team, we implement changes to the product. All this to make sure that the development of the game is aimed towards your wishes and those of the target audience.

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Contact Glyn Burtt

Do you want to know more about the possibilities of serious games for medical and healthcare applications? Let's discuss what serious games can do for you!

Call: +31657574701
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