Billions have been sunk into virtual reality software and hardware since 2017. Meta alone has pumped $36 billion into its metaverse and VR businesses since 2019. In order to make these investments worthwhile, the VR industry needs to achieve growth and become more sustainable.

Today in The Conversation Canada, Bree McEwan from the University of Toronto explains what the VR industry needs to do to achieve these goals — starting with unlocking VR's full potential.

At the moment, VR is still primarily used as a gaming device. But it has the potential to expand beyond the gaming industry into other areas. Social VR, where users can meet and interact with one another in a virtual world, is one such area.

For VR to expand outside the gaming industry, it needs to achieve something called interoperability. Interoperability would allow VR programs and applications to run on any VR hardware, not just a few select devices. This is one of the VR industry's biggest challenges, but it's the key to achieving the kind of growth the industry needs.

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Eleni Vlahiotis

Assistant Editor, Business + Economy

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While VR is still used primarily as a gaming device, it has the potential to move beyond the industry and revolutionize the way people interact with one another in the metaverse. (Shutterstock)

Billions have been sunk into virtual reality. To make it worth it, the industry needs to grow beyond its walled gardens

Bree McEwan, University of Toronto

If the VR industry is to experience the kind of growth that will make it worthy of the billions of dollars that have been invested in it, we need to view the metaverse as public infrastructure.

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