A recently published Slate article broke down the best ways to use virtual reality. The currently reinvigorated interest in the technology has brought a wide variety of interesting and less-than-useful applications, as well as both intriguing games and plenty that just don’t work.
The Slate article, however, quotes a skeptical advocate of the tech, Stanford’s top VR guy Jeremy Bailenson, who breaks down what VR should be used for and the best ways to make it work in those situations. According to Bailenson, using the tech in short bursts and with frequent breaks is the best practice, and since the tech is so expensive now, experiences must be entirely unattainable through other means.
He highlights four adjectives that describe experiences worth creating through VR: expensive, dangerous, impossible and rare. Examples might be virtually visiting the statue of David in Italy, climbing Mt. Everest, experiencing life through the eyes of someone of a different race or gender, time traveling or seeing a humpback whale breach mere feet away from your virtual boat. VR reality lets all of these things come to life, at a fraction of the cost, sacrifice and time commitment.
Read the entire article here, it’s a great look at what the future may bring for this burgeoning technology.