Since its beginning in the 1950s and 1960s, virtual reality has grown to play an important role in military combat training and its visual capabilities have become powerful resources for research. According to Tractica’s new report, “Virtual reality for enterprise and industrial markets”, virtual reality product sales will grow from just $114 million in 2014 to $4.5 billion by 2020.
“Virtual reality will take hold first in enterprise and industrial applications that benefit from powerful and versatile visualization tools,” says principal analyst Craig Foster. “As the technology matures and costs decline, VR will increasingly be utilized for more mainstream commercial purposes such as marketing and advertising, travel and tourism, and retail.
In Tractica’s forecast, the list of key markets with the highest potential application includes virtual prototyping, 3D modeling, training, simulation, medical, academia, research and development, in marketing and advertising. Along with significant use of VR products in healthcare, large companies including Facebook, HTC and Sony have utilized VR advancements.
As commercial use of VR expands, adoption challenges are being overcome, but some still remain. Just as average VR selling prices are decreasing and VR equipment simplifies, making consumers comfortable using VR and applying VR to business practices is still a challenge.
This report analyzes market opportunity for VR equipment including motion capture cameras, displease and projectors, hand tracking devices, locomotion devices, software applications and content creation tools.
To view an executive summary of the report, click here for a free download.
