Have you ever tried on a pair of virtual reality glasses? I’m sure that if I would have asked this question 5 or 6 years back, much less would have replied “yes”. With the top-selling gaming consoles such as the Nintendo Switch and the SONY PlayStation releasing games that support VR, it is becoming easier for the average citizen to get the chance to experience VR. When I tried on the VR glasses for the first time about a year ago, I remember it costing me 9 dollars for only a single game of Mario Kart™. This gets to show how VR has started to enter the commercial market, though it seems that we will have to wait a few more years until this would become cheaper. As you may have noticed from my examples, we yet have not seen the VR technology in use outside the gaming industry. It is now time that we allow this technology to step out and find use in other industries.
The article by David Winter showcases how people succeeded in using VR to help solve crimes and accidents. A highway patrol Sgt Fred Cook was made responsible for gathering and analyzing the evidence in a car crash which resulted in the death of the driver. Where we would imagine him to take photographs of the car, examine the skid marks and level of destruction, he instead took a 3D laser scanner and started creating a 3D model of the scene. This data along with security camera footages are used to recreate the scene. This technology is still new and in the process of further improvement, but will make crime scene perseverance unnecessary since we can relive the scene as it originally was, through virtual reality.
I feel that we should use this example as a stepping stone to further widen the use of this new technology to other fields. As a student who never got the chance to visit Penn state before coming due to geographical reasons, I would like this technology to be used to allow future Penn State students to tour the Penn State campus via VR. Other potential uses are in the entertainment industry, by creating an online version of museums, and art galleries to motivate people to experience these institutions much easier. This would even come to use in education because we would be able to allow students to virtually travel to historical sites, outer space and other places which would cost much more time, money and effort to do so in real life. I feel like I could go on forever with the close to infinite possibilities that VR technology holds. For this to happen, VR technology needs much more improvement, and our society needs to start to get used to VR.
VR is a very dynamic tool that can be used to benefit our society in many ways. Education is one large and significant way VR can be used, but I believe that it can be used for safety training, as well. It can be beneficial because you are not doing safety classes on a computer, you would be using your natural motions which would help you learn significantly better. According to a study done on University of Maryland students, the people who used VR were 10% more likely to remember details about their surroundings when using VR instead of the computer model. VR could help employees learn how to use equipment, learn about their surroundings at work, and other potential challenges they may face. Also, VR is a great and practical option for safety purposes because it is cheap. VR headsets have been out for a few years now and prices continue to lower and lower each year. There are some downsides to using VR because you still would have it in the back of your head that it isn’t real life, but for the most part it is considered much more effective than computer training services that many companies use today.
https://www.safetyandhealthmagazine.com/articles/19440-virtual-reality-and-safety-training