Virtual ‘Answering Machine’ Records the Real World While You’re in VR

Published on May 10, 2022
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Like a machine that records voicemails for later, new technology can reconstruct the past so you don’t miss anything. For example, people utilizing digital actuality at work may use a brand new system to seize what occurs around them and play a 3D reconstruction later.

A digital actuality (VR) “answering machine” can report adjustments in an individual’s immediate surroundings, but they’re immersed in digital worlds and later play them.

In futuristic workplaces, employees may have to focus on tasks in virtual environments, making them unavailable for real-time communication with colleagues. 

In a paper by Andreas Denver on Causality-preserving Asynchronous Reality, he states that ‘Mixed Reality is gaining interest as a platform for collaboration and focused work to a point where it may supersede current office settings in future workplaces.’

Despite this, and with reality slowly returning to normal with people going back to office environments, we expect interaction with physical objects and face-to-face communication will remain crucial for future work environments. This is a challenge with fully immersive Virtual Reality. People will always need people. 

These elements are reconciled through a user’s Asynchronous Reality, enabling seamless physical interaction across time. When a user is unavailable, e.g., focused on a task or in a call, the approach captures co-located or remote physical events in real-time, constructs a causality graph of co-dependent events, and lets immersed users revisit them at a suitable time, a causally accurate way. 

This is an introduction to Virtual Reality in the workplace which can come with a few pros and cons.

A significant benefit of VR training is that learners can interact with virtual scenes and hazards in a safe space. VR is an excellent tool for experiential learning in complex topics that are otherwise too risky, expensive, or dangerous. Learners can make decisions that don’t affect the organization’s equipment, employees, or customers. 

VR, when appropriately implemented, can be an incredibly engaging sensory ride. Using computer-generated imagery (CGI), there are no limits aside from money and imagination when creating other worlds, product demos, or spaces in novel and exciting ways.

When applied to education, VR makes learning more accessible and more comfortable.

However, there are limitations. For example, one of the many disadvantages of virtual reality training may require occasional updates to hardware, software, and accessories. 

VR solutions can have higher costs than other solutions, making scalability difficult. Between the hardware and software that VR training requires, programs can cost from $20,000 to $150,000 or more. The good news is that as VR becomes more popular, development costs and headset prices are going down considerably. 

Some people can experience physical side effects when using VR, including headaches, nausea, and eyestrain. Therefore, it is important to ensure your the VR training is safe through content design and preparing alternative formats. The solution to motion sickness is in the way content is designed. 
With VR entering our social media and with virtual working, it was about time that VR entered the workplace. First, however, we shall have to see if it is for better or worse.

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