Visualisation comes in many forms, from mapping out flows in cityscapes, recreating real world objects in a controlled or virtual environment, medical decision making to advanced problem solving.

Data visualisation has become key within almost all businesses and even more so with a distributed workforce as meetings are virtual and you can’t just tap your colleague on the shoulder and ask them for the answer anymore.

Data visualisation tools give you a different way to view your data. You are now able to overlay your data into your field of view and over physical objects. With virtual reality you can now transform the way you view your data by completely immersing the user into a created space.

User cases that utilise this type of solution:

• Contextual data overlay
  Interact with the data and get real-time feedback on what changes you are making, be that with a step-by-step walk-through or by aligning the digital world with the real world and feeding data back about how the two iterations work with each other.
  

• Digital Twin
  Improve the R&D process through the use of digital twins, because they enable a more effective range of data to be available to designers. Feeding this data back leads to insights that might not have been fully, or even acknowledged, resulting in better products going to market.
  

• Collaboration over distances
  Having the ability to work with colleagues and experts from anywhere in the world through powerful data visualisation across a number of device types, opens up a much wider pool for collaboration. Be that for a medical procedure, where you want a second opinion from another specialist to the senior designer at your head office through to an analyst who will interpret a model in ways that you might not see.
  

• Rapid digital prototyping and visualisation
  Whether this is of buildings, cities, roads or physical products, the use case here is strong. By taking BIM (Building Information Modelling) data, putting it through a VIM (Virtual Information Modelling) platform to create a full 3D representation of a structure or product in safe environment, where it can be interacted with. For designers, analysts, engineers and key decision-makers, this means decisions can be made faster, saving money, time and depending on the application, lives.

XR solutions for Data Visualisation address the following key areas:

• Reduction in travel costs
  A common theme across all XR solutions and use cases, you don’t need to be in the same room, city, country or even continent as the people you are working with on a visualisation project. Through any of the immersive technology device types, experts can come together.

• Dramatic increase in data perception and analysis
  The saying, seeing is believing comes into play here, perfectly. Often it is hard to truly understand the impact of specifics within a data environment without seeing how the situation will play out. Using immersive technology.

• Increased response rate and comprehension to alert notifications
  If you can see the problem or a situation going wrong, you can respond to it much faster. But without data to tell you that, you can’t see it before it happens. Being able to see and predict a problem before it happens, saves downtime, money and reduces future problems too.

The type of headset/technology will provide a difference in functionality: