Virtual Reality Video Conferencing

         Video conferencing is a remote meeting via audio and video over the Internet. Organizations and individuals made several attempts at innovating video conferencing technology in the early 19^th century, but several problems ensued that limited the success. Picturephone, the first video conferencing technology, was introduced to the public by AT&T in 1964 when it was used as a commercial solution in New York’s hosted World’s Fair (Habr, 2019). The testers of this technology were able to talk to the person at the other end, located at Disneyland Park in Anaheim, California, for 10 minutes. A lot of challenging forces, like financial, social, technical, and technological, to mention a few, hindered the continuity of video conferencing until the late 80s when PictureTel was introduced (Vyopta, 2018). PictureTel was sold for $80,000, far less than about $250,000 others cost at that time. In 2003, six Estonian developers, including Niklas Zennström and Janus Friis, introduced Skype to the public. This was a huge success, and it expanded the tentacles of video conferencing. Eric Yuan’s zoom rolled-in in 2011, followed by Microsoft Teams (Raphael, 2022). Several improvements and price drops continued to roll in through the years, and video conferencing got more popular (Vyopta, 2018). Then came the powerful COVID-19 pandemic that skyrocketed the usage of video conferencing and got it popular across all ages and groups. Schools, and religious organizations, from both formal and informal gatherings, started using video conferencing for all their meetings. Post COVID-19 era has a lot of capabilities and functionalities added to video conferencing to make it more effective and efficient; this has made work lives better for its users. Even with all the current functionalities, video conferencing could be made better in the future. I hereby introduce Virtual Reality Video Conferencing (VRVC), where users will have the total experience of being in a conference room while they are in different parts of the world and joining a meeting remotely.

 

Scope

Virtual reality video conferencing is promising to be tremendously beneficial to organizations, including formal and informal users, as it will be a replica of a conference room. One of the features of VRVC is its touch functionality which would give users a realistic feel of the meeting room. Another feature to complement the functionalities of its reality is smell (nose organ). This would give a realistic relaxing aroma to the meeting participants.

The limitation of VRVC is the cost of acquiring it. VRVC would also go through what video conferencing went through as a few would be able to afford it.

Purpose

This VRVC aims to have at least four most relevant sensory organs for communication, out of the five sensory organs. Presently in video conferencing, two are very active; ear (audio) and eye (visual). VRVC promises to introduce the remaining necessary two sensory organs: touch (skin) and smell (nose). The smell is more necessary than some people think it is. I could remember when my child got college admission and we were to take a virtual tour of the hostels. The hostel I chose looked very good and pleasant, but when I got there, the fetor that welcomed me was very offensive. If we were able to have a realistic smell of the hostel, I wouldn’t have chosen it. Therefore, having smell and touch combined with the available audio and visual, would provide the avatars of the meeting participants and gives the users a complete virtual reality feel.

                                                          References

 BCcampus. (2022). Group decision-making. Principles Of Social Psychology – 1st International H5p Edition. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0377221721009978

Habr. (2019). A brief history of video conferencing: from the beginning to full commercial use. https://habr.com/en/post/465459/

Laouris, L., & Romm, N.R.A. (2022). Structured dialogical design as a problem structuring method illustrated in a Re-invent democracy project. European Journal of Operational Research Volume 301, Issue 3, 16 September 2022, Pages 1072-1087. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0377221721009978

Raphael, R. (2022). Zoom into the future of video conferencing. Https://www.greenbook.org/mr/executive-insights/zoom-into-the-future-of-video-conferencing/#:~:text=by%202021%2c%20the%20market%20size,grow%20for%20the%20foreseeable%20future

TDL. (2022). The Delphi method. https://thedecisionlab.com/reference-guide/management/the-delphi-method

Vyopta. (2018). A brief history of video conferencing. https://www.vyopta.com/blog/video-conferencing/brief-history-video-conferencing/