UK-based virtual worlds research firm KZero projects that 83 million head-mounted virtual reality display headsets will have been sold by 2018, with a consumer market penetration of around 9 percent.
But that doesn’t mean that companies are going to be replacing computers with virtual reality headsets, says KZero CEO Nic Mitham.
Here are four reasons why virtual reality will take a while to gain a foothold in the enterprise.
1. Limited use cases
“The wider adoption of virtual reality on the enterprise side will be slower than on the consumer side,” he says. Aside from specific use cases, such as prototyping or training, adoption will happen slowly.
“I don’t see companies rushing and buying all their employees headsets any time soon,” he says.
2. Lack of available technology
Companies in general are slow to adopt new technologies, and it takes time for the business benefits to prove themselves. In fact, except for the developer kits, the Oculus Rift vitual reality system isn’t even on the market yet.
3. Devices aren’t ready for prime time
The devices aren’t fully ready for widespread use, according to Douglas Maxwell, science and technology manager at the US Army Simulation and Training Technology Center.
“In our testing of the Oculus Rift, we found that the field of view is too limiting and the reaction time of the accelerometer to be unacceptable, which is why you have such high incidents of vertigo with the users,” he says. “You have a mismatch between what the eyes are seeing and what the ears are feeling. We’re not going to introduce gear to the military that might make them sick.”
However, the price of the high-end headsets has been coming down, he says, to around $8,000 to $12,000 and the military is starting to see some newer, high-resolution headsets that benefit from the same “mobile peace dividend” as the Oculus Rift.
“You may end up with something that’s 75 to 80 percent of the high-end headsets but at a hundredth or a tenth of the cost, and that makes me happy,” he says.
4. No consensus on input devices
There seems to be no industry consensus yet about input devices. Head-mounted displays work by completely immersing the user in the virtual environment – but this same immersion makes it difficult to use a keyboard and mouse. Hardware makers and developers are busy coming out with a variety of different input mechanisms, such as motion-capture gloves and omni-directional treadmills but it could take years for a business-friendly solution to appear.
“We’ve solved the display problem, now we need to solve the interaction problem,” says Maxwell. “Something better than a mouse and keyboard has to be put in front of the user.”
One possibility is gesture control systems like Microsoft’s Kinect. “We’ve been experimenting with the Kinect and other consumer platforms,” says Paul Handly, CTO of Three Wire Systems, a company that uses 3DICC’s Terf platform to provide wellness, behavioral health, finance and career coaching to active and former military personnel and their families. “It frees folks from the bounds of the mouse and keyboard.”
Handly’s end users are not technology experts, and the biggest hurdle of virtual environments today is that the technology is still in the way, he says. “The sooner we get to the point where the technology starts to slip into the background and the experience dominates, the greater the adoption.”
Korolov is a freelance writer. She can be reached at maria@tromblyinternational.com.
