I work in finance and talked to somebody who implemented a Bloomberg terminal wall in VR. This would be a great application for VR since you never can have enough Bloomberg terminals open and usually never have enough screen space.
However he told me that VR can not be used for anything productive right now because of many problems. One thing is, only very few people can wear a VR headpiece for 8 to 10 hours straight without getting serious headaches and dizziness. The resolution has to at least be one order of magnitude higher for meaningful sized fonts being properly readable. The head pieces have to be one order of magnitude lighter. If you want to do more than a 2D wall displayed like a canvas in 3D you have to solve the problem that your eyes automatically try to focus differently on different depths which is also one major source of headache.
All in all I was convinced by him that the VR technology is at least 2 generations behind what you would need for serious work. Until then all kinds of software, SDKs and Hardware will change dramatically. Hence investing in VR productivity software development right now is a complete waste of time and money.
> Hence investing in VR productivity software development right now is a complete waste of time and money.
Do you think advances in technology just happen by themselves? We need people to invest time and money RIGHT NOW to get to better software, hardware, and mainstream adoption.
I think the application of VR for finance applications like what you describe is definitely a really exciting use case that will become more realistic as the headsets improve in terms of comfort and resolution - per your comments. We actually explored some other similar use cases, for example customer service - where a VR HMD could in effect replace the 2-3 monitor / desktop + headset set up that customer service reps drive to call centers to use every day.
However, these "full day" applications are definitely a few years out. We've seen sessions of dream where people have little issue of up to 90 minutes, and on average something like 45 minutes. Effectively the duration of a meeting - and this is where we're focusing our efforts, where productivity and collaboration intersect.
I think that from the perspective of investing into these technologies as a financial institution to change the way people access financial data all day, it's a not here yet. However, to get there, we need to start building these platforms today. This has been our intention, and think that even in the meanwhile - being able to have a remote meeting with 4-6 people that are all over the world. Then being able to bring in content like presentations or generic web pages will provide a level of utility out of reach of even some of the $300K teleconferencing solutions out there.
Regardless of the hype the industry has received, these headsets are still in their infancy. One of the big steps is about to be taken by the upcoming Quest headset due to launch Spring 2019 by Oculus. The big step this HMD takes is detaching the umbilical cord to the computer, and providing the first fully 6DOF headset (both HMD and controllers). They even through in a healthy resolution bump, which we're excited about. This well could be the 'blackberry' moment for VR.
However he told me that VR can not be used for anything productive right now because of many problems. One thing is, only very few people can wear a VR headpiece for 8 to 10 hours straight without getting serious headaches and dizziness. The resolution has to at least be one order of magnitude higher for meaningful sized fonts being properly readable. The head pieces have to be one order of magnitude lighter. If you want to do more than a 2D wall displayed like a canvas in 3D you have to solve the problem that your eyes automatically try to focus differently on different depths which is also one major source of headache.
All in all I was convinced by him that the VR technology is at least 2 generations behind what you would need for serious work. Until then all kinds of software, SDKs and Hardware will change dramatically. Hence investing in VR productivity software development right now is a complete waste of time and money.