Introducing our new Tech Tuesday series. An educational series in which we will be highlighting the impact of various forms of technology within the virtual and augmented reality spaces. In this weeks episode, our very own data visualization intern Tyler Ackerman discusses how virtual and augmented reality themselves are changing the working world.
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I’m Tyler from get real and here I’m going to talk about just how vr is changing our workplace and how it really just represents a changing business environment in general um so first off vr it’s insanely cool but it didn’t really take off exactly as some people expected and you know you don’t see it everywhere but actually the two biggest reasons the two biggest barriers of entry are one the bulky equipment you know there’s just a lot of wires um these headsets are big and heavy um you know you have your sensors that you have to set up around your room and there’s a whole process you know people just want to put it on and go and um for a lot of these vr headsets is a whole process of getting it set up number two is poor content offering on vr so you know there’s not a lot of incentives because there’s not a lot of stuff you can do with it um you know why would i buy a thousand dollar headset if I can’t really do much with it so two things that we’ve seen recently just specific examples one the Facebook oculus quest 2 um the highest selling headset in 2020 and as you notice you know no wires no other sensors it’s just the headsets and the controllers you put it on and you’re pretty much ready to go secondly is the video game half-life Alyx which was uh the first big aaa game to be released on vr and that had the valve the the publisher um sold more headsets in in that quarter than they had in the past two so that’s pretty amazing and represents basically how people are how these barriers of entries are starting to be taken down now in terms of the business culture we’re starting to see more traditional business practices you know kind of going out the window especially as millennials enter the workplace so you know we have people wearing more casual attire um people are more tech savvy there’s the American dream 2.0 that’s which basically is um not more focused on money but rather focusing on a sense of purpose and a sense of of direction and having a goal and a mission in life that’s what i want to say you also see you know like people showing up to work in flip-flops or bringing their pets into work and while this is like mostly in silicon valley I think it’s gonna represent a more shift in our whole business culture and when gen z enters the workplace I think that’s gonna it’s gonna happen in spades and so what it represents really is two things a more personal and a more casual environment and that is vr you have a 3d avatar versus in zoom where I’m just in this little box you know you can see me emoting and see my character and you know it’s it feels much more personal there’s a 3d person there with you that you can interact with so the workplace is changing and that change is vr.