Why Use Virtual Worlds?
Virtual Worlds offer commercial, industrial and manufacturing exercises a wide variety of opportunities to do things in a new and better way. The key advantage of virtual worlds is that they use one platform and system to perform the functions currently carried out by a variety of different systems across the business. By using just one system there are obvious savings to be had in deployment and support costs and staff training.
Training
Training is the most obvious use of virtual worlds within an industrial context. Unlike conventional web-based eLearning virtual world learning can be both collaborative and spatial - so users get a sense of how a factory or industrial site actually works. This can be particularly important for areas like Health & Safety, resilience management, process operations and maintenance, where the spatial relationships can be vital to the effective execution of a task, or management of an incident. In a virtual world we can easily build a complete oil rig, factory or chemical plant and let users learn safely within it.
And being virtual, the training can be carried out at remote sites without the need to travel, saving time, money and carbon. Read more about our Training Solutions.
Data Visualisation and Collaboration
Virtual Worlds can be used as collaboration and meeting spaces. Most come with in-built audio, so you immediately get the functionality of an audio conference, and most let you browse the web, show presentations and share documents, giving you the added benefits of web conferencing. But most importantly the virtual world gives the participants a sense of space, location and event. People remember the meeting based on where it is held virtually, how avatars look and act and where they stand, not based on the audio-conferencing unit in a lonely office. The evidence is that meetings are better remembered as a result. read more about our Virtual Meeting Solutions
Whilst many might start with a virtual meeting room that looks like a real meeting room the full potential of virtual worlds becomes apparent when you meet in a truly virtual space. Virtual worlds can import data form the web, databases and even excel and visualise that data as points in a 3d space or on a 2D map in the 3D space. You can also bring in 3D models of anything from a mobile phone or jet engine to a complete city block or country! This lets you focus the meeting totally on the topic in hand. Read more about our visualisation tools.
Estates Planning and Management
A third way in which virtual worlds can be used is to model your estate - whether its an office complex or manufacturing site - as a 1:1 (or lower) scale model which your staff and employees can walk through and explore at will. Such a model can be used not only to plan new builds, but also to plan changes to existing sites, and as a location to train staff in health & safety, evacuation, visitor management and other procedures. Read more about our built environment solutions.
Next Steps
If you would like to know more about Virtual Worlds, and how they could help your business then please get in touch today and we can arrange a free demonstration at your office.
Why not:
- Look at our project list to see the variety of projects that we've been involved with.
- Download our white papers on virtual worlds, or training in virtual worlds.
