Welding is quite difficult to learn. And if you’re apprehensive about handling high voltage electricity, you’re all the more jittery. I dreaded the weekly welding class when pursuing engineering, and that apprehension, coupled with the archaic protective eyewear that didn’t let me see till the welding arc blast began, ensured I didn’t get good at it.

Nine years later, and I found myself at a welding lesson again; albeit a different kind. There was eyewear and a handpiece, but no metal to melt and fuse. That’s where Virtual Reality (VR) kicked in. HTC Vive, at this year’s Mobile World Congress in Shanghai, was displaying its range of VR services for enterprise and learning.

Immersive learning

Not just welding, a lot of learning experiences through VR were on display — spray painting a car, learning biology, and experiencing art. Art in particular was a fascinatingly immersive experience, where users can find themselves inside a painting and explore it. I found myself inside Van Gogh’s iconic ‘The Night Café’, and everything — from the pool table to the people — came alive around me in a burst of colour, as I forgot I was in a pavilion surrounded by people.

Google Expedition has already demonstrated how VR can be used in a classroom to take students on tour anywhere in the world as well as outer space. I experienced this too, at the MWC. Armed with the humble Google Cardboard, the Brazilian cities of Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo stretched out below me. The experience was quite realistic and those with a fear of heights might be sent into a tizzy for a moment, especially when they find themselves on the same elevation as that of the Christ The Redeemer statue in Rio! While learning with VR has endless possibilities and potential advantages — such as cost reduction (eliminating the need for prototypes) and safety (as in the case of welding), VR can be used for creative immersive advertising experiences as well. This was another area of focus that HTC displayed. Visitors at the exhibition got to experience an advertisement for a movie and a car, and the VR elevated the experience to another level. Not just that, the technology can be put to use for booking a hotel — experiencing rooms and services — and other such commercial applications. In fact, some experts say that VR companies currently stand to make a lot of profit from the B2B applications alone.

Feel the experience

Companies are also taking VR beyond just the visual and the audio experience; and the next logical experience is touch and feel. Korean firm Haptics, at the MWC, showcased its VR vests and arm wearables that simulate feeling. The wearables gave me quite a vibrating jolt when I was shot at when playing a game at Haptics’ booth. Although such innovations aren’t commercially available yet, the company said, and will slowly find their way to the general consumers.

Ericsson, along with US-based VR firm Tactai, showcased a prototype of a device worn on one’s finger, which enables the user to touch and feel what they’re experiencing. The glove-like device lets you pick up and hold objects, when viewing them in VR and also sends feedback to your finger, simulating how it would feel to touch something. It’s still in a nascent stage, though, and the feeling I got when touching objects of different textures was very similar. But as the company noted, there’s some time to go in perfecting this experience.

The way technology behemoths such as Facebook and Google are betting on VR, there’s certainly a lot more to watch out for, in this space. However currently, there are limited options and experiences to choose from. But the future does look exciting.

The writer was in Shanghai at the invitation of GSMA

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