Virtual reality is coming! Free spins to be replaced by futuristic gaming within years

    Virtual reality technology for entertainment and learning

    Virtual reality is the future of online gaming – meaning everything from online slots to video games and beyond will be using VR in the coming years.

    Just 20 years ago gamblers could only pull a lever at land-based casinos while gamers played the original PlayStation and Nintendo 64, but new technological advances in VR have put us on the cusp of a new world.

    Soon it may be that punters looking for free spins with no wagering could be putting on a VR headset and entering a completely virtual casino. The same goes for video game fans.

    But what is virtual reality? Well, it’s a computer-generated, three-dimensional environment that can be interacted with by a user. Current VR technology uses headsets and controllers allowing players to look around and interact with their surroundings whilst stimulating their senses like vision, touch, hearing and smell.

    Born in the early 1950s when cinematographer Morton Heilig built ‘Sensorama’ – essentially a pod that played five short films whilst engaging with the senses of sight, sound, smell and touch.

    A decade later and developers were continuing to link the real and virtual worlds by moulding geometric 3D shapes like cubes or parallelepipeds, with several industries like medicine, flight simulation, automobile and military training using versions of VR.

    By the 1980s the term ‘virtual reality’ had been coined by Jaron Lanier, a modern pioneer in the field. And by the 90s the first consumer headsets were released with the Sega VR, while Virtuality was launched featuring headsets and exoskeleton gloves to give one of the first truly ‘immersive’ experiences.

    In 2010 the Oculus Rift was live, boasting a 90-degree field of view which was previously unheard of in the market while four years on in 2014 Facebook purchased this technology for a cool £3 billion.

    In October 2015, gambling and VR were the next big thing with SlotsMillion VR appearing as the world’s first virtual reality casino creating a truly new and unique experience for players.

    By 2016, there were at least 230 companies developing VR-related products including Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Sony and Samsung. And over the last few years more and more headsets have been released.

    This year EASA (European Union Aviation Safety Agency) approved the first VR-based flight simulation training device for rotorcraft pilots, enhancing safety by opening up the possibility of practising risky maneuvers in a virtual environment. This addresses a key risk area in rotorcraft operations, where statistics show that around 20% of accidents occur during training flights.

    Due to the coronavirus restrictions that started around March 2020 and are still being felt today, VR is experiencing a huge uplift. According to Grand View Research the global VR market will grow to $62 billion by 2027.

    And while it certainly hasn’t broken through to the mainstream just yet, some key figures involved are really excited about what it can do.

    Chris Milk, founder of more than one virtual reality related company, has given TED talks on the power of VR as a medium to advance humanity and on the birth of VR as a new art form.

    “This doesn’t replace television or cinema,” he said. “Nothing goes away. People said radio was the end to literature and TV was the end of radio. But we still read books and listen to the radio and watch TV.

    Influential German filmmaker Werner Herzog adds: “I am convinced that this is not going to be an extension of cinema or 3-D cinema or video games. 

    “It is something new, different, and not experienced yet. In this case, we do have a technology, but we don’t have any clear idea how to fill it with content.”