What about military activities and programs? How is it useful for that?

In our experience, military sector also uses VR for training and design. Indeed, defense enterprises were the first ones to test VR technology for training purposes and become convinced in its efficiency.

One of NGN International's partners is a company that delivers 3D engines optimized for huge virtual worlds, ideal for designing and testing strategic and tactical solutions for any military operations and simulating joint operations by various branches of the armed forces, while maintaining a high-quality graphics.

Tell us about the benefits that VR can provide for educational process at schools and universities.

Virtual reality can contribute to more interactive, exciting and immersive educational process. An obvious value of VR is a capability to create a unique personal experience for every participant, while ensuring the collaboration between an instructor and students, even if they are far away from each other.

We also cooperate with engineering companies and universities, striving to create the synergy of businesses, educational institutions and manufacturing companies. This triangle works everywhere in the world, including a variety of manufacturing sectors. Although Bahrain still needs some development in this area, I am happy to see more young specialists who are really excited about it.

What do you think are the biggest barriers for AR/VR right now?

One of the key factors that hamper the VR market growth is a limited number of VR content developers and, hence, lack of qualified content. High-quality VR content requires powerful computing capacity and expertise. For example, game developers produce content of acceptable quality, which is however insufficient for using in manufacturing and business. VR content developer is still very young profession and needs time to mature. The more professional VR developers we have the more business-focused VR content reaches the market.

Still seldom use of VR devices also slows down VR application in business. Many people expect too much of VR technology and think it can do anything. HMD devices that can truly immerse users in virtual reality are very expensive and rarely used by businesses. We think this is ing to change. The devices will become cheaper and more cost-effective. Failure-free VR technology operation requires a VR-Ready infrastructure and sufficient number of users and devices that support VR. Just like computers decades a, virtual reality will move beyond military and industrial use and finally reach every household and become very attractive for businesses.

How mainstream is it really ing to be?

I am sure that eventually VR technology will drastically change a variety of sectors, including healthcare, oil production, and automobile manufacturing, and will help reduce costs and accelerate decision-making.

I believe the major growth will happen in the industries where the process reproduction in real life is much more expensive than in virtual reality or impossible at all. Retailers, telcos, oil and gas, and manufacturing enterprises will drive VR development to address their own business needs. Promising targets for VR and AR could be blue collar training, technical visualization for industrial design, and support of real estate sales.

The key factor here is budget and cost effectiveness. For example, an emergency drill for oil and gas site personnel in real life can cost tens of millions of dollars, while VR content production and VR simulator training will be much less expensive. Another case is astronaut training. Even though it is almost impossible to simulate space conditions on Earth, virtual reality allows astronauts to practice docking and other on-board operations step-by-step.

What are some of the general VR trends in the market today?

Nuclear energy, shipbuilding, aircraft engineering, and defense industry became the first manufacturing sectors to implement VR and AR technologies, mainly for design and training tasks, and acquired relevant hardware and are now looking for hardware and software updates, thus adopting VR Ready infrastructure approach.

In addition, it is now evident that companies are eager to use HMD devices and CAVE systems at the same time. For example, HMD is a tool for employee workstations, while CAVE systems are installed in special labs (R&D centers) to enable collaboration, demonstrate research deliverables, and visualize both calculations and certain processes.

Companies are now adopting digital information materials and computer simulators, including Learning Management System (LMS). The next step of this evolution will include so-called Serious Games and VR apps focused on trainings with high granularity. Moreover, standard booklets, computer apps, 3D and VR apps already define operating procedures and alrithms that should be in place at the enterprise.

A lot of people think that technology distracts us from the real world; that it pulls us away from reality. What would you say to them?

People are always skeptical about innovations. However, I am convinced that virtual reality technologies give us much more than take. For instance, with VR, you can simulate how a natural disaster will affect a nuclear power plant to be located in a coastal area, and thus identify challenging points, even before starting the construction. VR technology helps deal with mental disorder and phobias, while surgery simulation in virtual reality is a big aid to physicians preparing for operations. VR is a real dsend for emergency drills at manufacturing facilities, which prevents injury and even death. And it is just the top of the iceberg.

Source: BizBahrain, January-February 2018