Virtual reality technology has grown by leaps and bounds in recent years. Much of its popularity is down to its ability to convincingly deliver an alternate reality. Well-executed VR provides highly immersive experiences where users can explore and interact with their environment, and feel the same sort of neural and physiological responses they would when confronted with that situation in real life.
Essentially, VR offers you the ability to lose yourself in another world. And it’s very versatile too; everyone from video game developers to military departments and private corporations have used this VR for creating engaging VR content that’s built to achieve specific outcomes.
If you’re considering leveraging the technology yourself, here are some pointers to help create robustly immersive VR experiences.
Virtual Immersion Explained
Immersion is the extent to which you can experience a virtual world as realistically as if it were a physical one. Say you’re playing a VR-enabled racing video game. Does the simulation and gear require you to make the kind of physical exertions you would in an actual car? Are you subconsciously triggered to follow road safety rules as if you were on an actual road? Does it ignite your competitive instincts, perhaps get your pulse racing?
In short, does it provoke the same kind of reactions an actual race car would? The answer gives you a sense of how immersive an experience that VR simulation was.
It’s worth noting that while VR is perhaps the most immersive of the XR trinity, it’s still not a fully immersive technology in the sense that it can only completely immerse a couple of senses — the visual and auditory ones. We are not yet at the point where VR gear can stimulate haptic, olfactory, and somatosensory responses in the same way real life would. However, given the rapid advance in virtual technology, that day isn’t very far.
Building an Immersive VR Experience
Building an immersive experience is about understanding what constitutes reality. Is it the presence of a physical object or person that you can see, smell, and touch? Or is it a construct of the mind that can be engendered through the right stimuli?
Here is how you can craft a VR experience that feels genuinely immersive for your users.
1. Technical Factors
The first thing a user notices about a VR simulation is the level of its visual realism. Much of the buy-in for the user is down to technical aspects, such as the quality of graphics and screen size.
Technology is critical. For example, King Crow Studios offers the highest-fidelity graphics possible to render virtual environments with life-like clarity. This is particularly useful for training solutions where the simulations have to mirror real-world environments to acclimatize the students. “Digital twin” replicas, coupled with an enlarged field-of-view, can provide incredibly immersive VR experiences that improve user engagement and training outcomes.
2. VR Gear
The software and hardware aspects of a VR system work together to provide the eventual experience. The latter, in particular, is crucial to helping provide the necessary stimuli, such as haptic and olfactory feedback, to increase the level of immersion for users.
Quality VR gear is also key to helping users explore and interact with the virtual world they’re present in. This greatly increases immersion, since this is exactly what the average user would expect from a real-life environment. While the technology for VR gear is still evolving, its prospects look bright. Manufacturers are finding new ways to fit in the higher processing power required for creating VR content into ever smaller and cost-effective headsets, which is a good sign for the commercialization of this technology.
3. Emotive Responses
In a recent study at the University of Bath, UK, researchers exposed a group of 360 participants to different VR environments. The findings showed that while technical factors of a VR system were important, they weren’t enough to create immersion. Human factors were found to be the primary driver, with fear being the most effective emotion.
If a VR experience is to be immersive, its goal should be to spur the kind of emotions that people would expect to feel in real life. Aspects like narrative, course formulation, and user agency are critical to the success of a simulation.
4. Subject-Matter Expertise
Finally, creating a truly impactful VR experience requires you to have an understanding of how the real-life version of that environment works. Say you’re developing a training program for emergency responders, you need to know what kind of situations a paramedic, police officer, or firefighter is likely to face. This allows you to provide quality training to your students and realistically prepare them for the job that awaits them.
At King Crow Studios, our VR and training developers work directly with your field and subject-matter experts to learn everything they need to know about that job. This helps us in creating powerful VR content that delivers superlative training outcomes.
Partner With Industry Leaders for Truly Immersive VR Experiences
King Crow Studios is an SBIR Phase III award-winning firm and the preferred VR training partner for some of the nation’s apex enterprises and government departments. Our technology can deliver incredibly realistic VR simulations that engage users on another level. Learn more about what goes into creating VR content at King Crow Studios. Follow our blog or reach out for a consultation.