# Current Perceptions of Virtual Reality Technology
## 4 Comparison with Manufacturer Responses  
A related survey was conducted with participants from industries involved in VR/AR/MR technology [127], with questions that delved into the factors that were deemed important for the adoption of these technologies. A total of 191 professionals from established technology companies (47%), start-ups (19%), consultants (16%), investors (12%), and policymakers (5%) took part in the survey in 2020. The following section compares the responses found in the current study to those reported in that survey. One question in the survey asked what the biggest obstacle to mass adoption of AR and VR was. The most common answer for VR was content offerings, followed by user experience. For AR, user experience was judged the most important factor, followed by content. User experience includes features such as bulkiness and technical issues; in the study of potential users, participants agreed that VR headsets were somewhat bulky and had an ambivalence about whether or not they would own a headset in the future. This, in combination with Figure 6, is in agreement with the industry survey. However, purchase price was ranked second most important here, whereas only 11% of manufacturers ranked the cost to consumers as important. In another question, manufacturers reported that a reduction in the size of the devices would be the top improvement to VR software in the following two years, which will address some of the concerns on this aspect that were expressed in the current survey. In response to the question asking manufacturers to identify what their biggest concern to their own organisation was, 61% stated consumer privacy/data security in 2019, which reduced to 49% in 2020. It is reassuring that the companies are aware of this being an issue, as this also appeared in the free-text responses in the current study when participants were asked what precautions the manufacturers need to take into consideration. Data protection also emerged, both in the responses for what manufacturers need to take into consideration and also for users of the devices. Just over half of manufacturers (54%) stated that they had updated their privacy policies and disclosures regarding consumer data, however less than half (48%) stated that they were limiting the amount of personal information from consumers that are collected/shared/used. The manufacturers are not currently taking the steps desired by consumers to overcome these privacy issues but are relying on terms and conditions that are unlikely to be read by consumers [128]. A total of 47% of manufacturers stated that they would earn from having product placement within the immersive experience of VR devices. This might be beneficial for those users who deemed content personalisation somewhat appropriate inside VR if they visualised getting personalised recommendations for other games they might enjoy but not advertisements for non-related products or services being offered in the physical world. Suggestions for improvements to VR technology were invited in the current study, and alterations to the hardware appeared to be most agreed upon. The manufacturers were asked a similar question to state what improvements would make the greatest impact for consumers; here, hardware improvements were not ranked in the top five. Solutions  
Figure 14: Sentiment analysis conducted on the free-text responses to the question ‘what do you associate VR with?’. Larger words indicate a higher frequency, sorted into positive and negative categories. for application experiences, bugs, compatibility, connectivity, and cyber-security were all detailed as being more important for the manufacturers when taking the perspective of the consumers. Less than half of the participants here thought that VR would become a daily commodity in the next few years; more manufacturers reported immersive technologies becoming mainstream in the two to five years after the survey than any other time period.