Virtual Reality has reached the world of video games, and with something less to the world of online and cultural support, but there are other utilities that are still being applied, such as office automation.
This is shown by the work carried out by researchers who have decided to show how the spreadsheets would look in an immersive 3D space. The project could expand Google spreadsheets and Microsoft Excel files from flat screens to 3D spaces, bringing together productivity in many cases.
One of the objectives is to remove the limits of windows and 2D screens, showing floating menus, cell selection options and repositioning. In one example, a virtual reality viewer reflects the view of a spreadsheet page displayed on a physical tablet, while two virtual sheets are located on the left and right, allowing you to drag and drop access to your cells, and a general description hovers over the tablet.
The document shows more examples, such as areas surrounding the tablet to display useful reference materials, expanded formulas views or the complete collection of pages from a spreadsheet, which are displayed as floating previews. Floating desktop objects and a virtual trash can would be other options for this project.
In the team of researchers we have professionals from the Mixed Reality Laboratory of the University of Coburg in Germany, as well as a professor from the University of Cambridge and two leading researchers from Microsoft: the mixed reality expert Eyal Ofek and the UX engineer Michel Pahud.
For the project and presentation they used HTC Vive Pro virtual reality glasses and a Microsoft Surface Pro 4 tablet, with a pencil with spatial tracking.
At the moment they are only analyzing possibilities, but the thing promises.
