How VR is Revolutionizing Online Casino Games with a Fully-Immersive Experience

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Virtual reality (VR) has been the “next big thing” looming in technology for literally decades. Attempts to hook up consumers to headsets and transfer them to computer-generated lands of immersive experiences date back to the early 1990s. Unfortunately, these early VR worlds proved less than captivating, and a true VR revolution remained a pipe dream.

Technology has finally caught up. What was once an imaginary future for VR is in the now. Online casinos are one business embracing VR in a big way, thanks to the enhanced experience and the host of benefits this platform affords players. It's predicted that the experience of VR is one of the ways online casinos will develop over the coming year.

While we’re only at the tip of the iceberg in terms of the impact VR will have on online casinos, chances are your favorite games are already available in this immersive format. Whether you’re a fan of slots, a poker lover, a blackjack guru, roulette ruler, or boss of the baccarat table, a bevy of exciting games await your VR headset.

Patrons of online VR casinos can expect a fully-immersive gaming atmosphere that rivals that of being inside of a land-based casino. All of the sights and sounds you expect from a casino are present in the VR world. Look up, look down, or spin all the way around.

Photo by Tim Savage, CC0

The VR casino experience fills the entire room, wall-to-wall and floor-to-ceiling. You can see other patrons playing slots and table games, socialize with them the way you would in a land-based casino, and even interact with dealers.

VR casino games might seem to be a radical leap into the future, completely disconnected from anything we’ve seen before. However, they can be understood as an evolution of the current online casino experience or certain video games.

Online casino patrons are quite familiar with interactive content such as live dealer games and the live-streaming of festivals and tournaments by PokerStars. VR has the ability to make these offerings even more immersive.

Similarly, online video gamers, especially fans of MMO RPGs such as World of Warcraft and Rift, will have a sense of how VR casino play feels, given the social aspect of the technology. VR casinos expertly blur the line between interactive video games, eSports, and the casino-going experience.

Some players accustomed to land-based casinos might find traditional online casinos limiting because the gameplay action extends only as far as the edges of their display. VR casinos solve this problem by offering three-dimensional depictions of very realistic casino settings. In fact, real-life, land-based casinos can be modeled in VR. Imagine a patron located in London instantaneously stepping foot onto the casino floor of the Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas to play her favorite progressive slot. It’s as if you had the power to bring Vegas to your house! This isn’t some far-flung notion of teleportation ripped from a Sci-Fi movie. VR could make spontaneously traveling to your favorite land-based casino nearly possible.

We recommend that you use a VR headset to get the most out of your VR casino experience. Leading headsets, such as Facebook’s Oculus Rift or Vive from HTC, will provide your visual and auditory senses with 360-degree immersion into exciting casino surroundings, placing you right in the middle of the action. If you enjoy online casino play on your smartphone, consider a VR headset specialized for mobile like Google Daydream. You can still play VR casino games without a headset and see the games in 3D, but the experience of actually being inside the casino is lost.

There are other benefits of VR casinos you should consider as well. Patrons can choose from a range of cool, conversation-starting avatars to represent themselves on the virtual gaming floor. Voice and chat functions enable communication with other patrons and casino staff in real-time, creating the same lively, social ambience of a land-based casino. VR casino operators have an incentive to consistently roll-out new games or provide game-enhancing upgrades to rope in new customers and keep existing ones coming back.

And just like the online casinos patrons have loved for years, VR casinos offer you the convenience of playing your favorite slots and table games from the privacy of your home. This easy accessibility and anonymity is also great for inexperienced players who want to learn casino games on their own time without having to visit a land-based casino. But unlike the constraints of classic online casinos, newbies get to truly experience the casino firsthand.

The VR revolution of how we play and experience casino games is just getting underway. We may be in the nascent stages, but the technology of immersion is already changing how patrons interact with their favorite games and other players in real time. How will you get in on the 3D, 360-degree casino excitement?