As the virtual reality and augmented reality interfaces continue to evolve, organizations across the board are faced with the problem of seamlessly integrating this unique technology in their digital platforms which goes on to improve the overall customer experience and does not detract from it. The stakes are generally higher in the virtual reality application owing to their fully immersive technologies with visual and auditory aid.
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Challenges of Virtual Reality Application Testing
With the use of advanced technology, virtual reality creates a 3D world for the users which immerses them in a simulated environment and connects them to an artificial world through multiple sensory interactions like vision, touch, and auditory aid. It takes the users out of their normal world and enables them to experiment, play, and learn in a new virtual world.
As compared to a typical software application, the virtual reality applications pose unique challenges for the automation testing companies. The lack of adequate software testing might lead to long term negative consequences for the end-users, and ultimately the company as well. One of the key components of the virtual reality applications is that they are designed to offer various sensory experiences to users which can have serious health issues for the customers if not tested properly. Owing to the full-body immersion experience which is offered by VR apps, the users might experience nausea, vomiting, headaches, eye strains, and even permanent damage to the hearing in the worst-case scenario. A simple glitch in the functionality or a slight issue in the user experience can cause irreparable damages to the application, for instance, if a user trips and falls down because of a performance issue, it may cause them serious bodily harm.
In virtual reality applications, one of the main challenges with software testing is the generation of unique test cases, as some of the bugs are only triggered in specific scenarios, especially if there are more than one users involved. Without knowing the root cause of the problem and where the bug originated from, tracing the issue and figuring out a way to resolve it may prove to be a hassle for the testers. In these type, manual cases would only be more time consuming but it would require a lot more effort from the resources. Hence, the automated testing approach is more viable for these applications as compared to manual testing.
Types of Testing for Virtual Reality Applications
In order to deliver highly engaging and functioning VR applications, companies across the board require the services of automation testing companies. A comprehensive testing strategy for these applications comprise of;
Functional testing – the mainline functions of the application are tested to ensure that there would be no possible glitches which may negatively impact user experience. Exploratory tests and test case executions are conducted for high-quality end products.
Usability testing – in this type of testing, the quality assurance managers run pre-production tests on the demographic audiences to gauge whether the use cases for the virtual reality apps makes sense for the target audiences. This also allows the testers to determine how the users interact with the application.
Hardware testing – with the virtual reality applications, a separate hardware component is a requirement for the whole application to work seamlessly. Hence, a hardware test is also necessitated to measure if all the hardware components work well on various devices and software which are needed to run the simulation.
Immersive testing – with this testing the teams ensure that the application offers proper immersive experience and that the users do not experience motion sickness or any other health issues while using this application. It also provides insights and suggestions about the physical environment and how much open space is needed for the users, etc.
Author Bio:
As a Senior Marketing Consultant at Kualitatem, Ray Parker loves to write tech-related news, articles, specifically quality assurance and information security. Apart from his techie appearance, he enjoys soccer, reading mysteries, and spending long hours working over at the New York office.
