Vr is it a fad?

[Slam62]

I'm afraid that VR conferencing is a horrendous idea.

Video conferencing lets you see people's faces and physical gestures. VR conferencing would require that attendants wear full-body motion capture suits, or that some kind of camera scans their movements and translates them into an "avatar" in the VR world.

It's absurd. Why would you need VR conferencing? Why would you need VR for most business functions?

What does VR give you in the business space that existing non-VR collaboration tools don't?

Tbh I think most businesses would prefer to get work done than faff around in virtual worlds for no discernible business benefit.

All the things you listed as benefits for VR are in fact available already for home workers. Home working does not need VR, and in fact VR doesn't really have a compelling business case when we are already able to collaborate away from the office with ease.

e: Just thinking about it, it's going to be pretty hard to scan people's facial expressions when most of their face is covered with a VR headset. Which means that your VR "avatar" is going to be pretty expressionless.

Meaning that moving to VR actually makes communication more difficult. Since you know a lot of human communication is non-verbal.

oh right o then

 

[FoxEye]

@Slam62

Well what's your counter-argument?

Why would anyone have a meeting/conference in VR? What does it offer businesses that videolinks don't? We use Skype for business all the time in our organisation. It's useful.

Please explain how VR would be more useful? The ability to what, exactly? And again, given that your eyes and face are going to be obscured by a VR headset, how does that allow for facial expressions/ body language to conveyed?

I'd love to hear what you think VR will bring to business conferencing. Because I can't see it at all.

 

[Suicidal Ferret]

I think thats where AR would shine, a la Deus Ex, table, people sat around, but no one is physically present

 

[antijoke]

VR call centres, hahahahahahaha, what a hilarious idea.

 

[ttaskmaster]

What does VR give you in the business space that existing non-VR collaboration tools don't?

I could give you a guided tour of our Stornoway station, get you up atop the 50-storey digester tanks and show you the kit layout, take you out on-site with the work crews or even let you spy on them for a surprise H&S auditm, take you down the pipe networks (especially the ones too small for man-entry) and let you see the defects first-hand and live... all while you're sat in your Japan office and while I'm lazing at home in my 8-Pack boxer shorts with the holes in!!

 

[FoxEye]

I could give you a guided tour of our Stornoway station, get you up atop the 50-storey digester tanks and show you the kit layout, take you out on-site with the work crews or even let you spy on them for a surprise H&S auditm, take you down the pipe networks (especially the ones too small for man-entry) and let you see the defects first-hand and live... all while you're sat in your Japan office and while I'm lazing at home in my 8-Pack boxer shorts with the holes in!!

1. That's not exactly what collaboration "normally" means... we're talking daily meetings rather than virtual tours.
2. You can do that without VR, because people have been doing virtual tours for ages without VR. It's not new, except the VR component.

e: As for real-time and live... you'd need cameras located all around your work-site. How else if the VR world going to be created? You'd need so many cameras to build the VR world I'm not even sure if what you said is possible. Plus you'd need a system to take these real-time camera feeds and build them into a 3D VR world... for what?

You could much easier just piggyback on someone's head mounted camera, seeing what they see. Much,much less expensive without all the real-time 3D world building software.

e2: I'm not even sure you're talking about VR at all...

 

[ttaskmaster]

1. That's not exactly what collaboration "normally" means... we're talking daily meetings rather than virtual tours.

We do have daily site meetings... But things like VR would mean I don't have to go out at 3am in the ******* rain to the darkest parts of flippin' East London!

2. You can do that without VR, because people have been doing virtual tours for ages without VR. It's not new, except the VR component.

You do kinda need complete-environment 3D vision to appreciate the sorts of things we get on site, though... and it'd be cheaper than forking out for a vehicle, fuel, safety kit, training courses and all that.

e: As for real-time and live... you'd need cameras located all around your work-site. How else if the VR world going to be created? You'd need so many cameras to build the VR world I'm not even sure if what you said is possible.

You'd need a single drone with twin cameras. There were several companies trying to sell us this very feature-set last month. It just happened to be a small benefit to their integrated database system thingy they were plugging. It's already being used in America.
And yes, it's scanned-in VR imagery, rather than simple camera footage.

 

[FoxEye]

So you're talking about a guy in a VR headset piloting a drone, which is combining the feeds from two on-board cameras with pre-existing (pre-rendered) site imagery. So it's not all live and real-time, just the location surrounding the drone, with the rest of the landscape in your VR world being previously modelled like a typical virtual world (ie not live data).