In February/March 2015, HTC partnered with Valve Corporation announced their virtual reality headset HTC Vive and controllers, along with their tracking technology called Lighthouse, which is indicated on the Steam platform to have a release date of November 2015.
In July 2015, OnePlus became the first company to launch a product using virtual reality. They used VR as the platform to launch their second flagship device the OnePlus 2, first viewable using an app on the Google Play Store, then on YouTube. The launch was viewable using OnePlus Cardboard, based on the Google’s own Cardboard platform. The whole VR launch had a runtime of 33 minutes, and was viewable in all countries.
Education and training
Strides are being made in the realm of education, although much needs to be done. The possibilities of VR and education are endless and bring many advantages to pupils of all ages.
Few are creating content that may be used for educational purposes, with most advances being done in the entertainment industry, but many understand and realize the future and the importance of education and VR.
Another example of virtual reality usage in the educations is Virtonomics. Students have a chance to use the platform for educational purposes. Due to gamification processes, students are able to test their knowledge and skills in virtual economy. Many great academics are using Virtonomics platform for education purposes. Dan Simonds, a social studies teacher at Mahidol University International Demonstration School (MUIDS) in Salaya, Nakhon Pathom Thailand is using Virtonomics in his economics subject.
Training
The usage of VR in a training perspective is to allow professionals to conduct training in a virtual environment where they can improve
upon their skills without the consequence of failing the operation.
VR plays an important role in combat training for the military. It allows the recruits to train under a controlled environment where they are to respond to different types of combat situations. A fully immersive virtual reality that uses Head-mounted display (HMD), data suits, data glove, and VR weapon are used to train for combat. This setup allows the training's reset time to be cut down, and allows more repetition in a shorter amount of time. The fully immersive training environment allows the soldiers to train through a wide variety of terrains, situations and scenarios.
VR is also used in flight simulation for the Air Force where people are trained to be pilots. The simulator would sit on top of a hydraulic lift system that reacts to the user inputs and events. When the pilot steer the aircraft, the module would turn and tilt accordingly to provide haptic feedback. The flight simulator can range from a fully enclosed module to a series of computer monitors providing the pilot's point of view. The most important reasons on using simulators over learning with a real aircraft are the reduction of transference time between land training and real flight, the safety, economy and absence of pollution. By the same token, virtual driving simulations are used to train tank drivers on the basics before allowing them to operate the real vehicle.[31] Finally, the same goes for truck driving simulators, in which Belgian firemen are for example trained to drive in a way that prevents as much damage as possible. As these drivers often have less experience than other truck drivers, virtual reality training allows them to compensate this. In the near future, similar projects are expected for all drivers of priority vehicles, including the police.[32]