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Virtual Reality Isabell Wohlgenannt • Alexander Simons • Stefan Stieglitz

Received: 4 December 2019 / Accepted: 22 April 2020  Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden GmbH, ein Teil von Springer Nature 2020

Keywords Virtual reality
Augmented reality
Mixed reality
Extended reality
Immersive systems

1 Introduction Virtual Reality (VR) has become a trendy IT topic in the past few years. When Steven Spielberg turned Ernest Cline’s popular novel, Ready Player One, into a film, VR became known to an audience of millions. Still, few people are aware that core VR technology has been available since the 1960s (e.g., Sutherland 1965), as high equipment costs and insufficient quality have long been barriers to its broad adoption (Valmaggia 2017). Many had already declared VR ‘‘dead’’ (Slater and Sanchez-Vives 2016, p. 1), as VR was ‘‘over-hyped’’ for a long time (Walsh and Pawlowski 2002, p. 298) and stuck in the ‘trough of disillusionment’ of Gartner’s Hype Cycle (see, e.g., Linden and Fenn 2003). However, with the emergence of affordable, consumergrade VR headsets for gaming and entertainment, VR is experiencing a second spring. VR’s development is far from finished, but since its arrival on Gartner’s ‘slope of enlightenment’ in 2016, VR has become mature enough no longer to be part of Gartner’s Hype Cycle.

Accepted after one revision by Christof Weinhardt. I. Wohlgenannt
A. Simons (&) Institute of Information Systems, University of Liechtenstein, Fu¨rst-Franz-Josef-Strasse, 9490 Vaduz, Liechtenstein e-mail: [email protected]

Simply put, VR simulates a virtual environment that immerses users to the extent that they have the feeling of ‘‘being there’’ (Bowman and McMahan 2007, p. 36). Researchers from several disciplines, including computer science, engineering, and the social sciences (see, e.g., Freina and Ott 2015), have been studying VR technology for several decades, but as Walsh and Pawlowski (2002, p. 297) noted from the viewpoint of Information Systems (IS) research, ‘‘much of the reported research on VR is technological rather than social, leaving only a limited understanding of its behavioral and organizational impacts.’’ As a result, IS researchers’ interest in VR has been increasing (see, e.g., Cavusoglu et al. 2019; Parvinen et al. 2018). The market for VR technology has been growing along with the technology’s rapid development. Its global market size is estimated to increase from US$ 7.3 bn in 2018 to US$ 120.5 bn in 2026 (Fortune Business Insights 2019). However, a significant part of the VR market share is consumer software, particularly video games, as VR headsets like Facebook’s Oculus Quest and HTC’s VIVE are about to revolutionize gaming and entertainment. Still, companies such as IKEA, Volkswagen, and Takeda have also started to use VR technology, so this article discusses VR’s potential applications from the viewpoint of nongaming industries. In addition, it reviews the history of VR and distinguishes it from related concepts. Finally, the article provides an overview of VR resea