Consumer electronics giants Sony and HTC are looking to diversify their virtual reality, or VR, business beyond video games and into sectors such as cinema and medicine.
Sony Interactive Entertainment's initial virtual reality focus was on video games because that sector provided an excellent market for the technology, Yasuo Takahashi, director of the company's hardware global product strategy & management department, told EFE here Thursday.
Takahashi said the games occur in real time and provide the user a sense of immersion, although he added that there is a much broader scope for the employment of virtual reality.
The Japanese company, which is participating through Sept. 18 in the Tokyo Game Show - one of the world's largest video game fairs - is working to bring its VR technology to fields such as cinema, giving viewers a much more real sense of what it is like, for example, to be on a battlefield or in outer space, Takahashi said.
Sony, which did not reveal further details, is currently focused on its Playstation VR, a virtual reality gaming headset that is due to hit the market in October.
For its part, Taiwanese company HTC, which released its own virtual reality head-mounted gaming display earlier this year, also shares the same vision of diversifying VR technology.
Virtual reality is not exclusively for games, the head of HTC's Japanese division, Hiroshi Tamano, told EFE, adding that the technology is rapidly spreading to other industries.
Tamano, who was also present on the first day (reserved for the press) of the four-day fair, said builders and developers were already using virtual reality to simulate apartment floorings, facades and interiors.
It used to be necessary to build a showroom on the first floor, but with VR the fifth, 20th and even 50th floor of a building can be simulated, he said.
The automobile industry is also benefitting from virtual reality, with companies such as Audi using it to design their cars and even allow customers to configure their own dream vehicles, the executive added.
Moreover, virtual reality is assisting neurologists, who have used VR technology in scanners to create images of patients' brains and gain insight into how to proceed with their operations, Tamano said.
Source: EFE
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