Use Cases of VR Apart From Gaming

Doesn't it sound really interesting to feel the experience and the surroundings even without physically present there? Well, for me, this is super interesting and I have even gone through this experience with the blessing of none other than the most famous and trending technology that is Virtual Reality. 

If we talk about virtual reality, we can say that it is something that does not exist at all, but with the help of technology and design, it makes us experience that we are actually in a simulated environment. It hides the real world, and whatever we see, is all virtual. 

Well, the beginning of virtual reality was seen in the gaming industry with the arrival of “Pokemon Go”. But with the passage of time, almost all industries started adopting it due to its exciting feature and nature. 

According to a survey, In 2026, the augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) market in Europe is forecast to reach 50.55 billion U.S. dollars, an increase from the 4.57 billion U.S. dollars the market was worth in 2018.

Now, in this blog, I would like to take you on a tour where Virtual Reality is contributing apart from the gaming industry. So let’s have a look 

Influence of Virtual Reality on the Travel industry

#1. Planning and management

VR has the potential to serve as an invaluable tool in the formulation of tourism policy and in the planning process as well. Most obviously, VR permits the creation of realistic, navigable VEs that tourism planners can analyze when considering possible developments. When compared with rudimentary, two-dimensional blueprints or fixed, 3D models, VR models offer numerous advantages. 

For instance, VR models allow planners to observe an environment from an unlimited number of perspectives instead of just a bird’s-eye view, and they permit the rapid visualization of potential changes that subsequently can be assessed  VR also can serve as a useful tool for communicating tourism plans to members of an appropriate group or community and possibly receiving input from such individuals. This capability is significant, as it has long been recognized that the involvement of local communities in the tourism planning process can be integral to the success of a destination 

One advantage of using VR for participatory planning is that it ‘‘offers a way for individuals from diverse backgrounds to communicate through a visual language that mimics the way people interact with the environment in the real world’’

Using VR to communicate tourism plans can be done in a variety of ways. For instance, tourism plans can be presented at community meetings in which relevant authorities, professionals, or experts are on hand to discuss the plans, answer questions, and obtain input from the community. In fact, such an approach was used successfully in Sweden during the planning of two roads that passed through cultural heritage areas.

Another possible strategy is to create a VE illustrating certain tourism plans and make it freely available to the public via the Internet. This approach was used successfully in Italy where plans for a transportation hub were communicated to the public online with an SL-type VE of the planned hub that users could explore as avatars while interacting with other users and accessing information about the project.

An additional potential strategy would be for tourism planners to use AR systems to superimpose planned developments onto the existing landscape, thereby permitting community members to observe the planned changes almost exactly how they would really appear.

#2. Marketing

Just as VR can be used to plan and manage a destination, it also can be used to market a destination. Various authors have acknowledged VR’s possible contributions to tourism marketing.‘‘From a marketing perspective, VR has the potential to revolutionize the promotion and selling of tourism’’. VR’s tourism marketing potential lies primarily in its ability to provide extensive sensory information to prospective tourists.

Such a capability is especially suitable for the tourism sector because many tourism products are ‘confidence goods’ that consumers are unable to test in advance and must decide whether or not to purchase based simply on available descriptive information.

Internet marketing is, therefore, very important for the tourism sector and the experiential nature of VR makes it an optimal tool for providing rich data to potential tourists seeking destination information. ‘‘A person interested in exploring an island destination would be able to enter virtual island destinations such as Hawaii, the Virgin Islands, Seychelles, the Maldives, Jamaica, and others’’. Using such a device, a tourist could make better-informed decisions and have more realistic expectations, which may lead to a more satisfactory vacation.

Many tourism products do, in fact, already use VR or VR-type technologies to attract tourists. For instance, on the Internet one can find many hotels (e.g. www.showhotel.com) and destinations (e.g. www.virtualgettysburg.com) offering ‘virtual tours’ (Cho, Wang, & Fesenmaier, 2002; Gilbert & Powell-Perry, 2002; Wan, Tsaur, Chiu, & Chiou, 2007). These ‘virtual tours’ often are simply panoramic photographs that do not permit any free navigation, meaning they are not genuine VR, but they importantly still reveal an interest in VR-type technologies.

#3. Entertainment

In addition to serving as a tourism marketing tool, VR systems also can function directly as marketable, entertaining tourist attractions. In fact, the history of VR began with the 1962 patent of a device called the ‘Sensorama Simulator’ that offered entertaining, simulated motorcycle rides through New York City, providing 3D images, sound, wind, aromas, and seat vibrations.

As VR technology has subsequently evolved, the entertainment industry – and the video game industry in particular – has continued to play a large role in this evolution. Although many VR entertainment applications are designed for home use, others, like the Rewind Rome 3D ‘edutainment’ show, have already been established or will be established as attractions in tourism destinations.

Another example of such an attraction is the Cyber Speedway in Las Vegas, in which the user maneuvers around a virtual speedway or roadway while sitting in a replica race car with a 20-foot wraparound screen.

Theme parks are especially logical places to offer VR entertainment, and one already can find VR entertainment in various theme parks around the world. For example, the Dreamworld theme park in Australia offers a ‘V8 Supercars RedLine’ attraction that is similar to the Cyber Speedway in Las Vegas.

Also, the Futuroscope theme park in France offers an attraction named ‘The Future Is Wild’ in which AR technology projects futuristic animals onto a real environment.

Furthermore, Disney established a VR development studio in 1992 that has produced a variety of attractions featured at the DisneyQuest Indoor Interactive Theme Park in Orlando. For example, on ‘Aladdin’s Magic Carpet Ride’ users wearing an HMD use a motorcycle-type apparatus to race through a VE on a virtual magic carpet.

In ‘Pirates of the Caribbean: Battle for Buccaneer Gold’, a four-person crew wearing special glasses stands on a ship-themed platform surrounded by four screens projecting 3D images. One of the players guides the ship through the VE while the other three players fire imitation cannons at virtual enemy pirates. One obvious advantage of such VR attractions over typical theme park attractions is that VR attractions are quite small, thereby potentially permitting VR theme parks to be located in urban areas.

Role of Virtual Reality during Project Management

Planning and Designing

• VR can be immensely useful at the earliest stage of a project to help teams perform an end-user study and gain insight from those who will be using the space. The team is then able to incorporate end-users ideas and feedback into the design/ drawings.

• Users can provide valuable insights into the moods of various spaces, furniture layouts for offices and lobbies, medical equipment layout for hospitals, the workflow of staff, check visual line of sights for nurses and security guards, safe access for facility managers, etc.

• VR also extracts the metadata from users, tracking where users focus their gaze in the virtual space, and foot traffic through heat maps. This helps reveal patterns in which users are interacting with the building, which can help influence space utilization and provide data for the development and validation of architectural features.

Facilities Management And Operation

• The hand-over of a VR model can enable building owners and facility managers to better understand how building systems work. Consequently, it helps them to provide training to building staff and personnel; to provide better maintenance through a clear understanding of access requirements, location of equipment, etc.; to create safety plans for areas that cannot be easily accessed (ex: lab spaces, clean rooms, fabrication rooms, operating rooms, nurseries, etc. and much more.

• The final hand-off of the VR model to facility managers also can include metadata that contains the names and properties of equipment as well as operations and maintenance documentation. This further enables facility managers to better inform and train their staff as well as provide valuable building information in the context of where equipment is actually installed.

Final Words

So this is how Virtua; reality is playing an important role in different fields and industries apart from gaming. Well, it could be said that there is no field left which is making use of Virtual reality. This is basically the best concept to make our customers feel the experience that does not exist at the moment. 

So, being a business, I mean if you are handling any kind of business which really needs the blessing of Virtual Reality then do contact the best Virtual Reality development company in India which can understand your company’s needs according to the budget. 

Good luck with your search!