The metaverse is coming. At least, this is what Facebook firmly believes, even going so far as to rename its business Meta to formalise its vision.
For business, however, three questions predominate: what is the metaverse, what business value does it deliver, and how is that value realised – and it’s here that virtual reality (VR) is set to become indispensable.
Let’s take a look at how this works.
Defining a new universe
Firstly, it’s important to understand exactly what the metaverse is. It has been defined by one source as “a virtual-reality space in which users can interact with a computer-generated environment and with other users.”
This highlights the genre’s inherent visuality. Whereas a platform like (traditional) Facebook is fundamentally about sharing conversations and content – some of which may come with visual trappings – the metaverse turns this on its head, creating interactions that are primarily about visual, spatial, and indeed multi-sensory immersion, with all other communication and context flowing secondarily from that perspective.
It’s the difference between sharing in a scenario and actually being in it, and by its very nature it implies a combination of technology elements, including virtual reality, augmented reality, and video.
But where the definition above falls down is that it doesn’t hint at the potential scale of the phenomenon. For whilst platforms like VR Chat and Second Life already make use of these technologies in limited ways, what the metaverse implies is that the entire internet will become, by default and by definition, an immersive experience. Users won’t so much “go on” the internet, as exist within it.
And naturally, they will expect the services they interact with there – including the suppliers they buy from – to have the tools to deliver value in that world.
The VR opportunity in the metaverse
Clearly, then, this represents an opportunity for businesses to invest in their use of VR in their internet presence in order to capture and retain future audiences.
Consider this: the younger generation is already likely (and will become more so) to expect the use of games-style VR technology to achieve business objectives.
This is as true of, for example, the way your own staff will consume training, as for the methods you will use to promote and demonstrate your products and services, and indeed for the way those products and services will themselves function and be delivered.
The statistics here are legion. According to research from Techjury, the number of VR/AR devices shipped worldwide is expected to increase to 68.6 million units in 2023, with the worldwide AR and VR market size projected to grow by 770% by 2022, compared to 2018.
And whilst pure-play gaming will continue to dominate this space, what’s particularly interesting is that this dominance is waning compared to previous years. Instead, what we’re seeing is an increase in VR investment in major sectors including education, health care, and property, with the largest growth expected in marketing and advertising, retail, manufacturing, and automotive.
There is no ambiguity here: VR is set to become an ever-bigger part of buyers’ and businesses’ daily experiences and expectations, across sectors, industries, and verticals.
Plug that into the coming metaverse and early investment in VR seems like a distinctly urgent proposition.
How does VR help you do business better?
Agility3’s heritage is in 3D visualisation and VR technologies for research, training, and communication across a range of markets including automotive, rail, construction and defence.
Studies have shown that VR used in a construction environment can reduce design time by 10% and construction time by 7%. This is a major benefit in a cost-sensitive industry with small margins.
Similarly, VR as a training tool has been shown to offer significant advantages. A recent study by technology giant Intel suggests that the return on investment from VR training could be as much as 300% over 5 years.
In the automotive industry, VR has been adding value for several years and its adoption is rapidly growing. Whether it is to provide state-of-the-art showrooms where potential buyers can visualise and customise vehicles to their exact specification, or at the design stage – for example to support human factors research or to put the complex algorithms behind self-driving cars to the test – virtual reality and virtual environments are enabling car manufacturers to reduce development times and make products safer.
The rail industry has been using VR to validate the design of new infrastructure through the use of collaborative VR walkthroughs, improving the safety of workers on the track through VR training, and raising the bar on customer experience through the use of virtual reality-based experiences.
In aerospace, VR is being used in design processes to maximise both the comfort and ergonomics of seat design, and the reachability of safety assets like oxygen masks and life jackets, without the need for expensive, full-scale design prototypes. It is used to help engineers collaborate, share, test and prove designs virtually and rapidly – for example, for comparing multiple cockpit layouts – and reduces the time taken from design to build, whilst improving safety.
It is already playing a major role in training aircraft maintenance technicians to familiarise themselves with complex systems and processes in a safe way, with training potentially accessible from anywhere in the world.
Perhaps more importantly, anyone trying to recruit in engineering knows that we are experiencing a global shortage of engineering talent. In order to attract students of today, engineering organisations need to move away from the traditional ways of doing things and adopt the technology that millennials expect and are familiar with.
Students studying for their degrees today have grown up in a world where technology, simulation, gaming and for many, virtual reality are second nature. Technology such as VR isn’t going to be seen as a way of adding value – it is simply becoming the norm.
Metaverse tomorrow – VR today
In short, whilst the metaverse promises to accelerate the proliferation of VR both in terms of those who develop the VR technology and those who adopt it, VR is in fact already thriving without it – and its potential applications across sectors are an opportunity to be grasped today, not simply whenever the metaverse comes.
But developing virtual reality requires very real expertise, and some good, old-fashioned, human-to-human conversations.
And that’s why we’re here.