These days, reality can be tough and troublesome and sometimes you just want an escape.  Virtual reality and alternate reality have been around for years and have been a fun ‘escape’ from reality into a virtual world where you can do anything you want with full immersion.  These virtual reality headsets allow you to view everything around you in full detail, walk around with room scale tracking, and even allow you to interact with objects using hand held controllers or even hand tracking, depending on the type of headset being used.  While this has been a hot topic for a while, it is mostly used for video games and entertainment purposes.  However, this technology could be utilized to train people to perform dangerous jobs more efficiently and at a lower risk of hurting themselves or others.  This technology has gotten cheaper throughout the years and while it has been used in some instances for training people for jobs, there is so much more that this technology could accomplish.

Throughout the years and development of virtual reality, it has become substantially cheaper and more accessible.  According to the Washington Post, the company Oculus, owned by Facebook, created the Oculus Quest 2 that sells for $299 and can play virtuality games and applications with no external desktop and no wires.  The Oculus Quest 2 can also track you individual fingers with its built in hand tracking and complete surround sound.  If all of this can be achieved in a completely wireless headset that can do almost anything in VR at only $299, you could only begin to imagine what could be achieved with a budget of millions of dollars.  Another big thing in VR right now is full body tracking, which can work with only a few small, cheap sensors that you place around your waist, knees, and feet to achieve full body tracking in virtual reality.  Virtual reality can have so much potential in such a short span of time if it were researched and funded properly.

Now that we know that the doorway into VR is very cheap and accessible by almost anyone, we can talk about the power of VR.  The best place to start would be with its original purpose, video games.  Virtual reality was originally created for people to be able to immerse themselves in a ‘virtual’ reality where they could do anything.  A great example of this is the game released fairly recently known as Half-Life: Alyx, and was created by Valve.  As The Washington Post Says, “The release of Valve's "Half-Life: Alyx," a AAA game developed specifically for virtual reality, coupled with more affordable headsets helped bolster the VR market in 2020, according to recent market analysis”.  For anyone unfamiliar with what a AAA game is, it is a category of a video game that would be comparable to films with multiple big name celebrities in them.  Half-Life: Alyx had a budget of about fifty million dollars and opened many people’s eyes to the capabilities of virtual reality.  If these kinds of games can be made in virtual reality and be sold to make tens of millions of dollars for Valve, then it could easily be possible to create simulations to help train people in certain jobs.

Since the power and ease of access for virtual reality is so apparent, why haven’t we seen so much use for it yet?  The answer to that may be unknown, but one example of possible use would be from the Racine County Sheriff Department.  According to CNN Wire, the Racine County Sheriff Department is looking into purchasing virtual reality equipment that can help train officers in de-escalation situations so that violence won’t have to be a choice against threats to society.  If virtual reality could be used to train police officers, why couldn’t it be used to train the military?  It could very well be used to train the military to train soldiers for dangerous battle scenarios, but it is not yet being used because it is hard to replicate the feel of a firearm and the real life danger in a virtual reality simulation.  While virtual reality may not be ready for some specific jobs, it can still be used in many different jobs to help train people to do their jobs more effectively and with a lower chance of harm to themselves or others and overall make the world a safer place.

So, can virtual reality be utilized for many different jobs to help with training?  Virtual reality and alternate reality can be used to train people to be better suited for their job of choice.  We can see over the years that virtual reality has gotten cheaper with the greatest example being the Oculus Quest 2 with a full standalone VR headset coming in at only $299, virtual reality has gotten more immersive with the best example be Valve’s AAA title Half-Life: Alyx, and has even been considered for training officers by Racine County Sheriff Department to help with the training of de-escalation.  In conclusion, virtual reality could very well be the baseline for training in all sorts of jobs because of its safety, its affordability, and its potential. 

Works Cited Page

"Oculus Quest 2 is lighter, faster, better ... cheaper? Yup, cheaper." Washingtonpost.com, 16 Sept. 2020. Gale In Context: Opposing Viewpoints, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A635648908/OVIC?u=edmo80637&sid=OVIC&xid=858c9280. Accessed 11 Feb. 2021.

"Racine County Sheriff's Office looking to get new virtual reality training tools." CNN Wire, 9 Oct. 2020, p. NA. Gale In Context: Opposing Viewpoints, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A637924366/OVIC?u=edmo80637&sid=OVIC&xid=e324bf74. Accessed 11 Feb. 2021.

"Virtual reality is starting to see actual gains in gaming." Washingtonpost.com, 4 Feb. 2021. Gale In Context: Opposing Viewpoints, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A650741782/OVIC?u=edmo80637&sid=OVIC&xid=c057fc0b. Accessed 11 Feb. 2021.