Virtual Reality
Abstract:
Virtual reality is an artificial environment that is
created with software and presented to the user in
such a way that the user suspends belief and accepts
it as a real environment. On a computer, virtual
reality is primarily experienced through two of the
five senses: sight and sound.
The relationship between our actions and their
perceivable results is ruled by what we call the laws
of nature. It is general understanding that our actions
act upon real objects, which react according to the
laws of nature, what then can be perceived. Virtual
Reality Facilities (VRFs) simulate the action
perception relationship in a physically correct manner
but without involving real objects or real events. Just
the same do mathematical models of nature (physical
theories). So it stands to reason that VRFs can be
considered as analog models of nature.
If a physical theory is false its predictions cannot be
verified. If a VRF were false we would have strange
and unusual perceptions as if different laws of nature
would be valid. It is suggesting to say that we would
fail to survive in nature when using a false
mathematical as well as a false analog model. So, an
analog model of nature can be useful even if it is not
'true'.
History of Virtual Reality where
did it all begin?
Virtual Reality had become significantly popular
during the 1990s. It became one of the best topics for
movies and even for virtual reality games. During the
1950s, an attempt by a cinematographer named
Morton Heilig to stimulate the different senses
became the idea of what we know today as Virtual
Reality. This is the same person who made use of the
machine called Sensorama. Sensorama included
moving chairs and odor meters while providing
a visual treat to the audience.
A number of people think that the Virtual Reality
concept is something new. In fact, just a few years
after the conservative idea of the 1950s, the Virtual
Reality concept already emerged thanks to the vision
of Douglas Englbart. The first step towards
making VR what it is today was Englbarts idea to
connect the computers in a screen. Using the screen
to visualize the information, this was the real first
taste of VR. Before the 1950s, computers were bulky
machines that had been used by the military. They
used to be powerful machines that could take out a
towns power supply. From the Mark 1 to the 1960s
computer technology, computers have come a long
way.
In 1961 a company decided to stick with a project
called Headsight. Philco Corporation made use of
Headsight as their project to produce visual
stimulation together with a tracking system. This also
had been used for military purposes. For instance,
pilots can now train under the Headsight in order to
simulate flying in complete darkness. In 1965, Ivan
Sutherland tried to mimic the physical world with
the use of his invention. He called it Ultimate
Display. The Virtual Reality in this invention would
look like the world the person lived in. The thing
with Sutherlands version is that it focuses on 3D
objects. But it also provides tactile stimuli considered
by some to be the original concept when considering
the history of Virtual Reality.
During the 1980s and 90s, Virtual Reality became a
concept that was been believed to be the future. With
the improving graphics in video games during that
time, it has catered to consoles like PlayStation.
Today, Sony PS4 and Xbox One makes use of cutting
edge graphics to mimic reality. These are concepts
started by Virtual Reality.
INTRODUCTION
Virtual reality (VR) means experiencing things
through our computers that don't really exist. From
that simple definition, the idea doesn't sound
especially new. When you look at an amazing
Canaletto painting, for example, you're experiencing
the sights and sounds of Italy as it was about 250
years agoso that's a kind of virtual reality.If we're
going to understand why books, movies, paintings,
and pieces of music aren't the same thing as virtual
reality, we need to define VR fairly clearly. For the
purposes of this simple, introductory article, I'm
going to define it as:
A believable, interactive 3D computer-created world
that you can explore so you feel you really are there,
both mentally and physically.
Putting it another way, virtual reality is essentially:
1 Believable: You really need to feel like
you're in your virtual world and to keep
believing that, or the illusion of virtual
reality will disappear.
2 Interactive: As you move around, the VR
world needs to move with you. You can
watch a 3D movie and be transported up to
the Moon or down to the seabedbut it's
not interactive in any sense.
3 Computer-generated: Why is that
important? Because only powerful
machines, with realistic 3D computer
graphics, are fast enough to make
believable, interactive, alternative worlds
that change in real-time as we move around
them.
4 Explorable: A VR world needs to be big
and detailed enough for you to explore.
However realistic a painting is, it shows
only one scene, from one perspective. A
book can describe a vast and complex
"virtual world," but you can only really
explore it in a linear way, exactly as the
author describes it.
5 Immersive: To be both believable and
interactive, VR needs to engage both your
body and your mind. Paintings by war artists
can give us glimpses of conflict, but they
can never fully convey the sight, sound,
smell, taste, and feel of battle. You can play
a flight simulator game on your home PC
and be lost in a very realistic, interactive
experience for hours (the landscape will
constantly change as your plane flies
through it), but it's not like using a real flight
simulator (where you sit in a hydraulically
operated mockup of a real cockpit and feel
actual forces as it tips and tilts), and even
less like flying a plane.
We can see from this why reading a book, looking at
a painting, listening to a classical symphony, or
watching a movie don't qualify as virtual reality. All
of them offer partial glimpses of another reality, but
none are interactive, explorable, or fully believable.
If you're sitting in a movie theater looking at a giant
picture of Mars on the screen, and you suddenly turn
your head too far, you'll see and remember that you're
actually on Earth and the illusion will disappear. If
you see something interesting on the screen, you can't
reach out and touch it or walk towards it; again, the
illusion will simply disappear. So these forms of
entertainment are essentially passive: however
plausible they might be, they don't actively engage
you in any way.
VR is quite different. It makes you think you are
actually living inside a completely believable virtual
world (one in which, to use the technical jargon, you
are partly or fully immersed). It is two-way
interactive: as you respond to what you see, what you
see responds to you: if you turn your head around,
what you see or hear in VR changes to match your
new perspective.
Types of virtual reality
"Virtual reality" has often been used as a marketing
buzzword for compelling, interactive video games or
even 3D movies and television programs, none of
which really count as VR because they don't immerse
you either fully or partially in a virtual world. Search
for "virtual reality" in your cellphone app store and
you'll find hundreds of hits, even though a tiny
cellphone screen could never get anywhere near
producing the convincing experience of VR.
Nevertheless, things like interactive games and
computer simulations would certainly meet parts of
our definition up above, so there's clearly more than
one approach to building virtual worldsand more
than one flavor of virtual reality. Here are a few of
the bigger variations:
Fully immersive
For the complete VR experience, we need three
things. First, a plausible, and richly detailed virtual
world to explore; a computer model or simulation, in
other words. Second, a powerful computer that can
detect what we're going and adjust our experience
accordingly, in real time (so what we see or hear
changes as fast as we movejust like in real reality).
Third, hardware linked to the computer that fully
immerses us in the virtual world as we roam around.
Usually, we'd need to put on what's called a head-
mounted display (HMD) with two screens and stereo
sound, and wear one or more sensory gloves.
Alternatively, we could move around inside a room,
fitted out with surround-sound loudspeakers, onto
which changing images are projected from outside.
We'll explore VR equipment in more detail in a
moment.
Non-immersive
A highly realistic flight simulator on a home PC
might qualify as nonimmersive virtual reality,
especially if it uses a very wide screen, with
headphones or surround sound, and a realistic
joystick and other controls. Not everyone wants or
needs to be fully immersed in an alternative reality.
An architect might build a detailed 3D model of a
new building to show to clients that can be explored
on a desktop computer by moving a mouse. Most
people would classify that as a kind of virtual reality,
even if it doesn't fully immerse you. In the same way,
computer archaeologists often create engaging 3D
reconstructions of long-lost settlements that you can
move around and explore. They don't take you back
hundreds or thousands of years or create the sounds,
smells, and tastes of prehistory, but they give a much
richer experience than a few pastel drawings or even
an animated movie.
Collaborative
What about "virtual world" games like Second Life
and Minecraft? Do they count as virtual reality?
Although they meet the first four of our criteria
(believable, interactive, computer-created and
explorable), they don't really meet the fifth: they
don't fully immerse you. But one thing they do offer
that cutting-edge VR typically doesn't is
collaboration: the idea of sharing an experience in a
virtual world with other people, often in real time or
something very close to it. Collaboration and sharing
are likely to become increasingly important features
of VR in future.
Web-based
Virtual reality was one of the hottest, fastest-growing
technologies in the late 1980s and early 1990s, but
the rapid rise of the World Wide Web largely killed
off interest after that. Even though computer
scientists developed a way of building virtual worlds
on the Web (using a technology analogous to HTML
called Virtual Reality Markup Language, VRML),
ordinary people were much more interested in the
way the Web gave them new ways to access real
realitynew ways to find and publish information,
shop, and share thoughts, ideas, and experiences with
friends through social media. With Facebook's
growing interest in the technology, the future of VR
seems likely to be both Web-based and collaborative.
Augmented reality
Mobile devices like smart phones and tablets have
put what used to be supercomputer power in our
hands and pockets. If we're wandering round the
world, maybe visiting a heritage site like the
pyramids or a fascinating foreign city we've never
been to before, what we want is typically not virtual
reality but an enhanced experience of the exciting
reality we can see in front of us. That's spawned the
idea of augmented reality (AR), where, for example,
you point your smartphone at a landmark or a striking
building and interesting information about it pops up
automatically. Augmented reality is all about
connecting the real world we experience to the vast
virtual world of information that we've collectively
created on the Web. Neither of these worlds is virtual,
but the idea of exploring and navigating the two
simultaneously does, nevertheless, have things in
common with virtual reality. For example, how can a
mobile device figure out its precise location in the
world? How do the things you see on the screen of
your tablet change as you wander round a city?
Technically, these problems are similar to the ones
developers of VR systems have to solveso there are
close links between AR and VR.
Applications:
Business:
Virtual reality is being used in a number of
ways by the business community which
include:
Virtual tours of a business environment.
Training of new employees.
A 360 view of a product
Training:
Virtual reality environments have been used
for training simulators.
 Examples include flight simulators,
battlefield simulators for
soldiers,paratrooping.
Engineering and Design:
VR is widely used in engineering and
designing process.
It gives better understanding of the design
and facilitates changes wherever necessary
It helps to reduce the time and cost factor.
Examples: Building construction, car designing
Medical:
Healthcare is one of the biggest adopters
of virtual reality which encompasses surgery
simulation, phobia treatment, robotic
surgery and skills training.
VR finds its application in nursing, dentistry,
health issues for the disabled.
Entertainment:
The entertainment industry is one of the
most enthusiastic advocates of virtual
reality, most noticeably in games and virtual
worlds.
Virtual Museum, e.g. interactive exhibitions
Gaming
Virtual theme parks
Conclusion:
Virtual Reality is a growing industry.
PC and specialized hardware are getting
better, faster and cheaper because of
development in VR.
In the past, computing power has doubled
approximately every 18 months. If this is the
case then we should have a computer
powerful enough to run immersive VR
programs in our own homes by the year
2037.
CHALLENGES
The big challenges in the field of virtual reality are
developing better tracking systems, finding more
natural ways to allow users to interact within a virtual
environment and decreasing the time it takes to build
virtual spaces.While there are a few tracking system
companies that have been around since the earliest
days of virtual reality. Likewise, there arent many
companies that are working on input devices
specifically for VR applications. Most VR developers
have to rely on and adapt technology originally
meant for another discipline, and they have to hope
that the company producing the technology stays in
business. As for creating virtual worlds, it can take a
long time to create a convincing virtual environment
-the more realistic the environment, the longer it
takes to make it. It could take a team of programmers
more than a year to du-plicate a real room accurately
in virtual space.
CONCLUSION
Virtual Reality is now involved everywhere. You
cant imag-ine your life without the use of VR
Technology. In this paper we define the Virtual
Reality and its history. We also define some
important development which gives the birth of this
new technology.
Now we use mail or conference for communication
while the person is not sitting with you, but due to
technology distance is not matter.This technology
give enormous scope to explore the world of 3D and
your own imagination.
It has many applications from product development
to enter-tainment. It is still very much in the
development stage with many users creating their
own customized applications and setups to suit their
needs.