Advances in bridging the gap: Using virtual reality to enhance productivity

Virtual Reality (VR) technologies have been around for many years and have without doubt evolved from those early approaches with head-mounted displays (HMDs) with an extremely limited field of view and tracking devices with a resolution of tens of centimeters. Recent years have brought to us alternative output devices such as CAVE(tm)-like environments or stereoscopic wall projection and more precise input devices with optic tracking, for example. However, it is time to consider - and people from industry keep asking us this question - where there have been real breakthroughs in utilizing VR for serving people's needs - in particular in the industrial domain. This paper summarizes some examples for recent progress in this field and gives hints where VR technologies can be expected to be used profitably.