Environment ⯀  

In the eyes of many, the only way to accumulate wealth and have personal satisfaction is to start your own business and see it through to prosperity despite the many challenges. From the grand stages of Silicon Valley in the greatest nation on earth to the third world citizens who start a kiosk to survive in the forgotten corners of the world, the number of startups that are coming up every year is hard to keep count. 

Virtual Reality ⯀  

Hiring high-quality virtual reality (VR) developers is critical to the success of your project. Despite the variety of websites offering freelance VR services, there are still challenges that come with getting the right person to fill this role on your team.

Business Technology ⯀  

As the internet of things or IoT continues to permeate into work and life, there is a rapid movement across industries toward adopting new technologies and systems that facilitate its integration. IoT introduced new concepts of doing business, from virtual workplaces, connected apps, to cloud computing technology. In turn, tech advancements facilitated connectivity and data transmission between applications, smart devices, and gadgets through the internet.

Virtual Reality ⯀  

While once thought of as little more than an entertainment novelty, virtual reality (VR) has risen to the point of distinguishing itself as the next “big thing” in computer technology. VR systems as far back as the 1980’s were seen as the pinnacle in video game and visual entertainment, but as the technology has developed over the past five years, its potential uses in commercial markets have significantly expanded.

Just as augmented reality glasses found their staying power in customer service, manufacturing, and other industrial and business settings, so too is virtual reality changing the business world.

Virtual Training

Because of its ability to simulate complex environments, VR is an invaluable tool for training employees. One of the clearest examples of this is within the world of medicine. It’s difficult for surgeons and other medical professionals to get hands-on training, since it requires working directly with patients in need of skilled care that untrained doctors and nurses simply can’t provide. VR provides a viable workaround to this catch-22. The U.K has already adopted VR training for combat medics who must perform their jobs in difficult situations that can’t be effectively simulated in the classroom.

Likewise, since using live subjects isn’t ethically possible, VR allows surgeons to test experimental or high-risk procedures in a completely safe environment. As VR simulations of human anatomy continue to improve, this test data will become increasingly accurate, allowing the medical community to depend less on real-world trials and animal testing.

Healthcare isn’t the only field to adopt VR training. Trade jobs like welding, plumbing, and so on once presented a problem as training required apprentices to work with expensive materials to learn proper techniques over time. Thanks to VR, trade workers can hone their skills and, after finishing a session, simply reset the simulation with no material cost.

Try Before You Buy

While e-commerce sites like Amazon leave ample room for customer reviews, these sources lack the immersive quality customers desire before making a purchase. As more and more of our transactions move to online shopping, it may seem no longer practical, or even feasible for that matter, for customers to have the same hands-on experience shopping from a brick-and-mortar location. However, VR is rapidly being adopted by companies that wish to provide the immersive, try-before-you-buy experience customers crave when shopping.

Related articles

• Digital Exploration: 5 Industries Being Affected by Virtual Reality 
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• This Startup Wants to Make Your VR Experience Even More Realistic 

Nowhere is this truer than in the world of home improvement. Whether remodeling your kitchen or adding a hot tub to your property, it can be difficult for homeowners to visualize the end result of their project, even when seeing these fixtures in person. VR offers a unique opportunity to experience their potential purchase in 3-D before investing—there’s even virtual reality in retail. Virtual reality spas allow potential customers to explore and customize a fully realized simulation of their home hydrotherapy and relaxation setup. Similarly, Lowe’s Holoroom experience allows customers to visualize DYI projects, even allowing them to practice skills like tiling a bathroom.

The tourism industry is also finding ways to utilize VR. Customers can get a 360 degree view of a prospective hotel room or take virtual tours of museums and other sites they may be interested in visiting. Many travel agencies have adopted this technology as a way of pulling customers from self-booking websites popular with the current generation of travelers.

Future Applications

While there’s no predicting what role VR will play in the world of business five years from now, but there are some tantalizing speculations. Researching are actively working towards mixing smell and VR , thus rolling another one of the senses into the experience. As simulations become more realistic, the training and education potential of VR will mean businesses have quicker and better access to qualified staff. Whatever form it takes, it’s clear that VR will continue to the change the business world for the better, whether for customers, retailers, or manufacturers.

By  Dixie Somers	Embed
Author Bio - Dixie is a freelance writer who loves to write about business, finance and self improvement. She lives in Arizona with her husband and three beautiful daughters.

Virtual Reality ⯀  

Running a business entirely online can be simply liberating. You don't have to go to an office every day and you can instantaneously interact with customers. On the other hand, it's also sometimes easy to distance yourself from the traditional business world, when that world has a lot to offer. But how do you interact with the regular business world when your enterprise is entirely online?

Consider these four ways online companies can do real world business.

Meet With Clients In Person Semi-Formally

This is something many freelancers do when they primarily work online but occasionally are asked to meet with clients in person. It's a good way to develop a rapport with clients and offering the option of meeting with them in person might make them more inclined to trust you. Meeting with clients is typically done at restaurants over lunch or coffee, but it could really be anywhere both parties are comfortable, such as a library. This can help develop your company's reputation as more laid back if that is the image you wish to foster, especially for the purposes of recruiting.

Related articles

• Virtual Reality: Past and Present 
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• Real World Experience Now Can Be Captured in Virtual Reality 

Attend Conferences, Seminars, and Job Fairs

Even businesses that operate wholly online have need to attend relevant industry conferences and seminars. These events connect you and your employees with other professionals in the industry and are instrumental in the continuing education of your field and profession. Online businesses should know these events have the potential to expose them to new technology, procedures and information that might be beneficial.

Attending these events also helps get an online business's name out there and allows for networking with other, traditional businesses for mutually beneficial purposes. Attending job fairs can be extremely helpful for recruitment where potential candidates can be met face to face rather than simply being processed online.

Rent Temporary Office Space For Formal Meetings

If you are going to be doing heavy work for a particular local client for the foreseeable future, it may be worth it to rent temporary office space in which to do business. It also might be a good option if you need a professional place to meet with a major new client before taking your interaction entirely online.

There are companies that offer month-to-month leases and other flexible office rental arrangements that might suit your needs, such as co-working spaces, as-needed office space, and more. Just search something as simple as “office space Salt Lake City” and you’re bound to get plenty of relevant results. You might also be able to partner with a local business that has excess space and utilize it as office space on an as-needed basis rather than going through an independent commercial office space leasing company.

Make Non-Digital Products

If the products you produce are entirely digital, the best way to reach an offline audience is to start producing physical products. For example, if you publish books or music, make physical CDs and print books available. Having physical items is helpful if you ever go to a trade show or have a booth at an event. This is easier and cheaper for some products than others, obviously, and so you will have to weigh the costs and benefits of producing physical products wisely before making any significant changes. However, it's worth considering expanding due to the benefits physical products can have in the promotion of your business and what it has to offer.

Just because a business is online-only doesn't mean it isn't connected to the larger physical business world. Online businesses reap a lot of benefits by remaining connected to the traditional business world, and a business stands to gain significant potential customers by accommodating offline companies and clients. The methods mentioned in this article are all excellent ways for online-only companies to do real world business.

By  Brooke Chaplan	Embed
Author Bio - 33rd Square contributor Brooke Chaplan is recent graduate of New Mexico University where she studied journalism. She loves to hike, bike, run and explore around her home in Los Lunas, New Mexico. She also enjoys blogging about health, fitness, fashion and many other topics.

Imagine: You look around and see dragons flying all around you. You’re in the middle of a war and there are knights everywhere. Fireballs blaze past your head and magic spells zip by you. You stop, for just a second, and look at the glorious world that envelopes you. You realize it looks a bit blurry. That’s when you pause the game and take off the virtual reality headset you were wearing.

Virtual Reality  

The world of virtual reality has made staggering advancements over the last decade. In the past 10 years, people have gone from thinking of virtual reality as another pipe dream to thinking of it as a legitimate future of gaming and other applications. It’s an exciting and intriguing world that has many companies vying for your dollar and attention.

While VR is just beginning to find its footing and understand what it’s supposed to be, it still has some hurdles to overcome. One of these is the graphical quality of the virtual world you step into when you put on the headset. While many companies are trying to solve this problem, one company stands out and has made an improvement that could be game changing.

Looking to Change the Game

Varjo is a company based in Helsinki, Finland — and graphical fidelity has been its main area of concern for virtual headsets. After all, besides motion sickness, graphical quality is one of those problems that may be keeping the average consumer from adopting the technology. As a matter of fact, graphical quality and motion sickness go hand in hand. Better graphical fidelity may lead to less motion sickness.

The image above is a comparison of details of a 3D model used in a Varjo example VR scene.

The amazing technology that Varjo is working with helps bring graphical clarity to the images you see all around you when you put on the VR headset. What they’ve been working toward is making the resolution not only clearer, but also to function as the human eye does. It sounds awesome in theory, but how does it work when people strap on a headset and try it for themselves?

Related articles

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How It Works

One such demo was done, and the results were quite impressive. Varjo’s technology allows for clarity and resolution up to 70 times the amount that is currently being seen in the VR market. In the demo, the participant can read individual file names when sifting through a folder in the virtual world. Varjo makes this possible by creating a sharp visual cue that makes everything directly in front of you clear. Everything to your left and right becomes slightly blurrier — much like the human eye.

Is This the Next Step?

While Varjo has made this stride in VR and AR technology, what does this mean for the future of the newly born tech? First and foremost, it should be noted that this technology could be hugely important. The key word here is could. While VR and AR may be the future, the technology is still in its infant stage. This could be a major step forward for graphical fidelity. However, if no one ends up adopting this micro-display technology, then it may all be for naught.

If this is a piece of the VR puzzle developers have been looking for, this will be a crucial step in the right direction for VR. All companies have been striving for a way to figure out how to achieve crisp and clear visuals without making people sick, and it looks as if Varjo has figured it out. Only time will tell if this new discovery by Varjo will change the game. Regardless, the VR experience is still fun, and it’s almost more fun to witness these companies battle each other for the newest discovery in the tech field of VR.

By  Kayla Matthews	Embed
Kayla Matthews writes about marketing innovation and business solutions for Inc.com, Convince & Convert and WeWork. You can read more posts by Kayla on her blog, Productivity Theory.

Technology  

Every day it seems that yet another technological innovation is developed. The past five years have brought an incredible advancement in technology, but when it is all said and done, which innovations will be the most revolutionary?

There have been many great technological advancements in recent years. Some say that we are currently experiencing a third industrial revolution due to recent successes with innovations in AI technologies. It may very well be true; today we are seeing technologies come to life, ones that we never even thought possible. In this article we will be taking a look at some of the five greatest tech innovations of the past five years years.

1.Home automation

First on our list are home automation systems, which have recently seen a surge in popularity. As with other great technological feats, these AI systems make life a bit more convenient. Amazon’s Alexa has the capabilities to assist you at home via voice command; allowing one to perform a myriad of automated tasks such as: Making phone calls, sending messages, playing music, forecasting the weather and even ordering things off of the Amazon website itself. These home automation devices are even able to control the temperature of the room and perform tasks when you aren’t at home. Being able to control your home from a single home automation system interface is simply amazing.

2. Drones

Arguably one of the most fun new toys out there for many; we have drones. Drones are an innovation that is rapidly taking over airspace, capturing high definition video footage and even making deliveries now. Users of drones are able to record videos from places they never would have been able to before now, thanks to this technology. There are even plans to make drones capable of carrying WiFi over wherever they are flying; truly bringing internet to the entire world.

Related articles

• Virtual Reality Continues To Develop 
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3. Self driving cars

Third on our list and surely a controversial, rising star in the technology world are self driving cars. Many were in disbelief back when big companies such as Google and Uber announced their plans to put self driving cars on the road, but they’re finally out there now and making headlines. This innovation is sure to revolutionize motoring by making roads safer. While this technology is not yet perfected, the automated vehicles are predicted to become a common sight by the year 2020.

4. 3D Printing

From figures to food, 3D printing is an amazing new innovation that is revolutionizing the tech world today. Using laser technology, these machines are able to build things out of basic materials. Scientists have even managed to recreate food that is edible and artificial organs that work perfectly fine, using this innovation. 3D printing has truly revolutionized the tech world with these feats. This innovation may one day be the answer to solving world hunger.

5. Virtual Reality

Finally we have something that was dreamed about for years by many sci-fi fans: Virtual reality. Last year the famed virtual reality headset called the Oculus Rift was finally released after years of development. The headset allows for full immersion into virtual worlds; allowing users to feel as if they are actually a part of the world. This was an innovation not only to the gaming world, but also to the medical world. Virtual reality can assist patients in rehab, train doctors in performing surgery, and even aid in counseling. This technology is expected to be improved even further and branch out to many other fields where it can be useful.

And there we have it; five of the greatest tech innovations of the past five years. Be sure to look out for new technologies are rapidly coming along. These are just the beginning of what’s in store for the future of the technical world. What are your recent favorite tech innovations? Please feel free to comment about them below.

By  Jamison Hutton	Embed
Jamison Hutton is a business and real estate enthusiast. He's a freelance journalist and loves writing about trends in the tech industry. He lives in Houston, Texas with his wife and son.

Virtual Reality  

Newly launched Kickstarter project, VRLD is a solid online 3D world, that hopes to help you live better. Using upcoming virtual reality devices, VRLD aims to expand your game experiences and more.

According to a soon-to-be featured Kickstarter project's creators, the world may finally get to experience a true virtual reality — a seamless online 3D world. The start-up project VRLD has just been launched on the crowd funding platform with the audacious goal of no less than the plans to create "a virtual universe, based on a new philosophy."

VR Link Domain (VRLD) is software, based on a long-term history and fantasies of millions of people all over the globe. It’s a full-fledged virtual world, existing alongside with a custom-built universe. Each person who has a powerful PC can visit and experience the fully realized worldspace.

Related articles

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The team aims to create an immersive fully photorealistic virtual world. "Modern 3D graphics allow us to create landscapes of unbelievable beauty, which one cannot see in real life. So, why not to use that? The users will be able to travel and to search for unique corners of this new world," they describe on the VRLD blog.

"In our project we researched how people can benefit from the widespread use of IT technologies, automation and statistics," claims VRLD co-founder Alex Kulev.

"In our opinion, it’s high time to launch a global project of a virtual universe, which will turn into a platform for all VR and game industry groundworks as a whole, Any PC user can become a participant of the greatest social experiment of the twenty-first century, but the owners of headsets will obtain a truly amazing experience. You will face unlimited opportunities in creating, setting up events, exploring the most unbelievable worlds. Any intellectual activity becomes easier in an imaginary virtual universe, which operates on its own rules and has a total automation of routine processes. At the same time, you still have access to all files, apps, and social media."

VRLD is being created using the Unreal Engine 4 game development tools, Based on MMO principles and Unreal Engine 4, this metaverse includes universal ownership system, self-tuning economic model, unique security and database system.Users will be able to carry out any everyday stuff, work, play and more. Users will also be able to create any content in VRLD and fill it up with basic, shared, and personal objects. At the same time, a user still has access to all local files, apps, and social media contacts.

The VRLD team of software engineers has defined the purpose to check the necessity of putting this theory into practice via crowdfunding on Kickstarter in order to carry out their experiment. The campaign starts today.

SOURCE  VRLD

By  33rd Square

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Virtual Reality  

Virtual reality in healthcare will become the norm. VR can help detect, treat and cure patients in all sorts of different sectors, such as surgery and dentistry, as well as teaching the nurses of the future.

Related articles

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In the not too distant future, virtual reality in healthcare will become the norm. VR can help detect, treat and cure patients in all sorts of different sectors, such as surgery and dentistry, as well as teaching the nurses of the future.

VR will also be used to help the development of people suffering from mental disabilities such as Autism and help cure phobias and tend to soldiers dealing with post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

Explore more about the way VR will have an impact in healthcare with this infographic from the team at Luminous below:

SOURCE  Luminous

By  33rd Square

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Robotics  

Go face-to-face with the world’s most advanced robots and get a rare look inside Boston Dynamics’ top secret lab, never before open to the public...until now. 

For years now, the robot creations of Boston Dynamics have been seen by huge numbers of people on YouTube. Now, thanks to virtual reality and the team at Within, you can get close to being beside ATLAS, Alpha Dog and Spot Mini without buying a plane ticket.

"The dream is building machines that can go anywhere a person or animal can go."

In "Hello, Robot," director David Gelb presents, the premiere episode of the new  VR series, "The Possible," taking you inside the never before seen labs of Boston Dynamics. The Possible, is a new virtual reality series that explores groundbreaking technology.

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Along with excellent 360 video footage of the robots, "Hello, Robot," also features Boston Dynamics founder Marc Raibert discussing his journey in creating the company. "The dream is building machines that can go anywhere a person or animal can go," explains Raibert. "That's how I see the future."

"We like to think that we can change people's ideas of what robots can do," he says. Viewing the biologically inspired Boston Dynamics robots in VR may open your eyes too.

Download the Within app here to watch Hello, Robot for yourself. Within supports all major headsets, including Oculus Rift, Samsung Gear VR, HTC Vive, Sony Playstation VR, and Google Daydream. To get started experiencing our ever-growing roster of content, just download the app for iPhone or Android today.

SOURCE  With.in

By  33rd Square

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Direct Brain Stimulation  

Scientists have published the first demonstration of humans playing a simple, two-dimensional computer game using only input from direct brain stimulation—without relying on any usual sensory cues from sight, hearing or touch.

University of Washington researchers have taken a first step in showing how humans can interact with virtual realities via direct brain stimulation.

In a paper published online in Frontiers in Robotics and AI, they describe their demonstration of humans playing a simple, two-dimensional computer game using only input from direct brain stimulation — without relying on any usual sensory cues from sight, hearing or touch.

In the game, the subjects had to navigate 21 different mazes, with two choices to move forward or down based on whether they sensed a visual stimulation artifact called a phosphene, which are perceived as blobs or bars of light. To signal which direction to move, the researchers generated a phosphene through transcranial magnetic stimulation, a well-known technique that uses a magnetic coil placed near the skull to directly and noninvasively stimulate a specific area of the brain.

“The way virtual reality is done these days is through displays, headsets and goggles, but ultimately your brain is what creates your reality,” said senior author Rajesh Rao, UW professor of Computer Science & Engineering and director of the Center for Sensorimotor Neural Engineering.

“The fundamental question we wanted to answer was: Can the brain make use of artificial information that it’s never seen before that is delivered directly to the brain to navigate a virtual world or do useful tasks without other sensory input? And the answer is yes.”

The five test subjects made the right moves in the mazes 92 percent of the time when they received the input via direct brain stimulation, compared to 15 percent of the time when they lacked that guidance.

The absence or presence of phosphenes – visual artifacts that can be created through direct brain stimulation – told the test subjects whether to move forward or down.University of Washington

"The way virtual reality is done these days is through displays, headsets and goggles, but ultimately your brain is what creates your reality."

The simple game demonstrates one way that novel information from artificial sensors or computer-generated virtual worlds can be successfully encoded and delivered noninvasively to the human brain to solve useful tasks. It employs a technology commonly used in neuroscience to study how the brain works — transcranial magnetic stimulation — to instead convey actionable information to the brain.

The test subjects also got better at the navigation task over time, suggesting that they were able to learn to better detect the artificial stimuli.

“We’re essentially trying to give humans a sixth sense,” said lead author Darby Losey, a graduate in computer science and neurobiology who now works as a staff researcher for the Institute for Learning & Brain Sciences (I-LABS).  “So much effort in this field of neural engineering has focused on decoding information from the brain. We’re interested in how you can encode information into the brain.”

"These results suggest that humans can learn to utilize information delivered non-invasively to their brains to solve tasks that cannot be solved using their natural senses. Exploring this emerging field of human sensory augmentation, with its technological as well as ethical and social implications, remains an active area of research," conclude the researchers.

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The initial experiment used binary information — whether a phosphene was present or not — to let the game players know whether there was an obstacle in front of them in the maze. In the real world, even that type of simple input could help blind or visually impaired individuals navigate.

“The technology is not there yet — the tool we use to stimulate the brain is a bulky piece of equipment that you wouldn’t carry around with you,” said co-author Andrea Stocco, a UW assistant professor of psychology and I-LABS research scientist. “But eventually we might be able to replace the hardware with something that’s amenable to real world applications.”

The testers successfully navigated an average of 92 percent of the moves when they received input via direct brain stimulation to guide them through the experimental mazes (blue) versus only 15 percent of the steps in the control mazes when they received no such input (red mazes).University of Washington

Together with other partners from outside UW, members of the research team have co-founded Neubay, a startup company aimed at commercializing their ideas and introducing neuroscience and artificial intelligence (AI) techniques that could make virtual-reality, gaming and other applications better and more engaging.

The team is currently investigating how altering the intensity and location of direct brain stimulation can create more complex visual and other sensory perceptions which are currently difficult to replicate in augmented or virtual reality.

“We look at this as a very small step toward the grander vision of providing rich sensory input to the brain directly and noninvasively,” said Rao. “Over the long term, this could have profound implications for assisting people with sensory deficits while also paving the way for more realistic virtual reality experiences.”

SOURCE  University of Washington

By  33rd Square

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Wearables  

Wearable gadgets have become one of the hottest trends, and with new developments coming out every month, it's easy to find an example that promises to change your life. Wearables mean a lot more than just smart watches though—here are a few examples.

The Apple Watch has been one of Apple Inc.'s most popular items, with upwards of 12 million watches sold the first year it was available. Wearable technology has become one of the hottest trends, and with new developments coming out every month, it's easy to find the wearable tech that will enhance your life. And you don't even have to give up your wrist for it.

The Wearable Explosion

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As wearable tech becomes more accessible and new markets are discovered, more companies are investing in developing technology and bringing new products to the public. If you're in the market for health-related technology, improving your athletic performance or organizing your calendar while keeping your hands free, wearable tech is just what you need.

One in six Americans owns and utilizes wearable tech and the market for them went over $2 billion in 2015. As 2016 continues, wearable tech is being seen in every city and every state, with the market reaching nearly $3 billion.

Moving Beyond Physical Health 

Health concerns can be addressed with wearable tech. A skin sensor that monitors UV light exposure will alert you to when it's time to come in out of the sun. A belt that encourages movement and increases daily activity will pair well with a pair of running shoes that tracks your distance, time and speed. Counting daily steps is a snap when your wearable tech not only reminds you it's time to move, but keeps track of your statistics.

Going beyond physical to mental health, wearable tech can address situations that cause some individuals to suffer panic attacks. In-ear audio systems that can be adjusted to filter out loud or sharp noises in public will allow people who suffer from anxiety disorders to go about their day freely. Muting background noises and making it easier to hear a conversation reduces social anxiety, letting you participate in a social activity without fear.

Consumers want wearable tech to fulfill their needs, such as exercise assistance, tracking medical information and providing dietary guidance. Form-enhancing yoga bottoms that provide vibrations to guide you into the right form and posture. Combining wearable tech with apps that track and translate the data for consumers makes wearable tech part of daily life.

Wearable’s Enter the VR Market 

For business productivity, wearable tech is invaluable. Google Glass was the first, but virtual reality (VR) and accessible heads up display (HUD) are combining to give people access to information wherever they need it. Accessing client information in the middle of a meeting, checking email while walking to a business lunch and updating records on the go are all possible thanks to wearable tech.

Just as smartphones reduced the distance between people, allowing rapid communication despite thousands of miles that may lie between two separate businesses, so wearable tech will improve that capability. Instead of leaving a meeting to confer with a colleague, a set of smart glasses can immediately contact someone across the globe and allow them to participate in business matters.

Wearable tech will do more than we can currently imagine, much as telephones, television and automobiles have done throughout the years. Changes in technology create new opportunities for people to find ways to improve the quality of life, and the possibilities that wearable tech offer are endless. Smartphones and mobile access outranks desktop usage now; wearable tech will outpace smartphones as technology improves, bringing new ways to stay connected. Fashionable USB drives, smart watches, VR glasses, in-ear audio systems and athletic clothing that monitors your vital signs are all available now. Just as cellular phones shrank in size and improved in performance, so will wearable tech move from your wrist to your entire body.

By  Lindsey Patterson	Embed
Author Bio - Lindsey is a freelance writer specializing in business and consumer technology.

Virtual Reality  

Technology experts predict that - within the next few years - virtual reality will become one of the fastest growing industries of all time. Part of the reason for this is its remarkable versatility…. Virtual reality can be used in loads of different ways, from training surgeons to creating a new adult experience.

Related articles

• Virtual Therapy 
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Virtual reality (VR) has been an idea waiting for technology to catch up for decades. We are now decidedly at the knee of the curve, as hardware, software displays and sensors are actually delivering on the promise.

While still on the bleeding edge, VR is starting to also deliver on actual applications. Here we explore a few of the most obvious ways VR will impact our lives.

10. Space Exploration

In the realm of space exploration, there is probably nothing that could equal the real thing when it comes to travelling and exploring beyond our world. That said, probably no other activity requires as much training as becoming an astronaut.

“Simulated environments have always been important in astronaut training,” said Jason Crusan, Director of NASA’s Advanced Exploration Systems Division.

Now, programs like the Mars 2030 Experience are available for VR platforms including the Oculus Rift, Google Cardboard, and Samsung VR Gear. Such work is allowing the exploration of such environments to be experienced by anyone with access to VR hardware, not just those at NASA.

“Beyond practical uses for training, virtual reality offers us a compelling method to share the work we’ve been doing to design sustainable human missions and to inspire the next generation of pioneers in space,” said Crusan.

In the future explorers in their own living room may be able to help catalog and find important scientific discoveries, exploring moons, planets and other galaxies through VR.

9. Surgery

For doctors, and those training to be doctors, virtual reality technology offers the promise of being able to experience and learn complex medical procedures in a risk free digital environment. Surgical procedures can be practiced ahead of the real thing, and the experience can be shared.

For example, Dr. Shafi Ahmed – a surgeon, cancer specialist, and co-founder of virtual and augmented reality firm Medical Realities – surgically removed a tumour from the colon of a man in his 70s. That's a routine operation but unlike any other operation, when Ahmed and his team removed the cancer, a 360-degree camera rig mounted over the operating table captured the doctors' every movement in 4K and livestreamed it globally in VR.

8. Military

Soldiers are already using VR technology to guide precision munitions from drones piloted remotely half a world away.

Military training using VR is a hot topic in defence circles. DARPA has contracted traditional video game makers to develop warfare training systems. The US Marine Corp famously used a modified version of Doom II to teach new recruits. Although they are training for deadly situations, VR allows soldiers to practice and refine their skills in a safe, controlled and less expensive environment.

While the utility of virtual reality as a means to train troops is clear, there are critics, as increasingly war-like simulations are used as pure entertainment. Such realistic war game gives us only a partial, and perceptually molded view of life on today's battlefield.

7. Tourism

Imagine being able to visit Rome, Machu Picchu and Kyoto, all in the same day. With VR, this will be possible. Already, museums are sharing their collections digitally (willingly or not), and lower fidelity methods of travelling around the world already are here by using Google Maps.

Interactive exhibits are also picking up VR technology, so users can experience what it is like to visit the past, examine art in detail and look into the future of a proposed development.

6. Film

For movie makers VR is a new frontier. Already the Sundance Film Festival has a special category, New Frontier,  where virtual reality submissions can enter.  "New Frontier is obviously just one part of the festival," Adi Robertson writes in Wired, "but since last year, virtual reality has been big enough to merit a collection of the weirdest, darkest, and most sublime excursions that we’ve taken into other worlds."

Sequenced - Image Source - Sundance VR

Virtual reality allows viewers to become immersed in the film, seeing through the eyes of the characters, and looking at the scenes as if they were actually there. In conventional movies, the director dictates your focus of attention. An aerial view cuts to a medium shot cuts to a close up—giving you no say in what you see. But virtual reality puts you in charge. A headset allows you to observe any aspect of a setting and, in some cases, even affect the way the story unfolds depending on where you look. And depending on the technology, you may even be able to interact with the scene, picking up objects for inspection and more.

According to the Wall Street Journal, "VR is rewriting the script for Hollywood."

Companies like HBO, Disney, Electronic Arts, LucasFilm, Pixar and Industrial Light and Magic, are all actively researching and developing VR film titles.

Whether or not VR is just the next generation of 3D movies or something more remains to be seen, but the possibilities are very interesting to say the least.

5. Sports

At this year's Rio Olympics, Canada's CBC network experimented with VR broadcasting a number of events. The app promised to app gives you the best seats in the stadium without having to leave the house.

The NBA and the NFL are also bringing this technology to their teams and fans. Their executives are doing everything they can to enhance the audience experience, and this is one of their alternatives. The Dallas Cowboys are even using Virtual Reality as a training module.

With VR headsets, players are immersed in a 360-degree virtual environment, allowing them to read and react to plays like they do in practice, except this kind of practice doesn’t involve pads or real contact — something ideal for players working their way back from injuries.

4. Crime Scene Investigation

Police crime scene investigators (CSIs) traditionally gather and use evidence to recreate the precise sequence of events that occurred during a crime. Part of this reconstruction process is photography and hand sketching.

But photos and video give only a limited picture of the crime scene, restricted by the photographer's field of view and subject to their interpretation of the scene and the importance they place on different pieces of evidence.

VR technology is now emerging that could enable the CSI investigators to capture and relay a much more immersive and representative picture of crime scenes, using 3D imaging, panoramic videography, artificial intelligence and virtual reality. In the courtroom, VR could be used to teleport whole juries to reconstructed crime scenes, and live the experience they are deciding on.

3. Therapy

Medical and psychological therapeutic applications for VR are vast. Recently, Duke University researchers found benefits of virtual reality technology for paraplegics.

Patients using VR headsets tasked to move through a stadium as a soccer player were able to regain some brain functions associated with moving their legs. Incredibly, of eight patients tested, each regained some control and four were upgraded from full paraplegics to partial paraplegics using such immersive virtual reality therapies.

Applications have also been created for using VR to treat anxiety, PTSD and other neurological conditions. Autism is another key area where practicioners are looking to the technology to help with therapy. In one study, virtual reality was used to successfully train high functioning autism patients how to respond to social cues and conditions.

2. Shopping

Buying things online will take on a new level once VR is applied to the task. From trying on clothes with a virtual avatar, to looking through your next house, VR is becoming very prevalent in the world of shopping.

eBay launched what it called the world's first virtual reality department store in Australia. Shoppers can now look through thousands of products without leaving home.

"We believe that virtual reality can have the same massive impact as mobile," says the CEO of an online shopping startup company. Retale VR's Christian Gaiser says, "Our team thinks that VR has changed the game for shopping by providing consumers with a really immersive environemnt."

The jury is still out, but virtual reality could be the next big thing in e-commerce after the mobile shopping boom.

1. Gaming

In the video below, the main source for this post, gaming is not the number one mind blowing use for virtual reality, but we think this is a glaring omission. (Based on the comments on the video's page on YouTube, we are not alone in pointing out the oversight.)

With Oculus Rift, the HTC Vive and Sony Playstation leading the way, gamers are already getting to experience some of the most cutting edge virtual realty experiences. Game titles like Elite Dangerous, Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes, and Minecraft VR are causing a lot of excitement, despite the fact that they are not quite as fully developed games as others available for consoles today.

In the future, expect to see many of your favorite gaming titles remade in virtual reality too.

As we have previously written, VR is about more than gaming though.

The real - 1. Porn

There have been two computer uses that have continued to push the boundaries of technology. One is games, discussed above, and the other is undeniably, porn. In fact, right or wrong, without pornography, the internet as we know it today, would not exist.

Online pornography is huge in terms of the money it spends and makes.  According to Forbes, in 2010, out of the million most popular (most trafficked) websites in the world, 42,337 were sex-related sites. That’s about 4% of sites. From July 2009 to July 2010, about 13% of Web searches were for erotic content.

More and more these companies are looking to VR for their next big push.

This year, sites like Pornhub have provided viewers with 360-degree content, creating a more immersive experience, and certainly it is only the beginning.

SOURCE  Alltime 10s

By  33rd Square

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