Virtual Reality Isn’t Just About Games
The thing that’s especially difficult to convey about “room-scale” VR—the kind enabled by the HTC Vive, where you can actually walk around with a headset on, exploring a virtual environment in exactly the same way you would experience a real one—is just how compelling it is. “Any VR experience is so much more engrossing than any you’d have on a flat screen,” says Patrick Hackett, senior user interface designer at Google for the Google Cardboard VR headset.
That has potentially huge implications for education.
“Any application that has high liability, where teaching students has a high cost of insurance, and is high risk, we’re seeing people ask for VR training,” says Mr. Rubin.
But the ultimate goal is much bigger than that, says CEO Bill Brown. “Two-dimensional photography and video is going to cease to exist,” says Mr. Brown, adding that they will be replaced by immersive captures of entire spaces and events, gathered by conventional and 3-D cameras.
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