Virtual reality

Virtual reality (VR) is a computer-generated sensory experience were people have their senses fooled by immersive visuals, audio, and other sensory clues that they are physically somewhere else.

VR immerses a person into a new virtual, digital world that exists only "in" computers. The use of virtual reality technologies is required to fool a person's senses into accepting that they are present in a different space (and thus, in a place that extends reality). Although the new location in which a person participates is in a virtual world, their bodies are fooled into accepting that their experience in the virtual world is likewise real and they can suspend their disbelief and begin to participate.

The goal of VR is to be as immersive as possible as to fool the body's senses that what they are experiencing is real and that the user could actually be physically present within the virtual world that has been rendered by the computer.

VR is similar to augmented reality, but VR differs in that digital information is not projected onto the real world environment like it is in augmented reality. Instead, VR occurs entirely within a digitally rendered space, challenging the user to consider and suspend disbelief that they are physically present in a new digitally rendered, virtual location (and not where their physical body is).

Viable virtual reality technologies today include:

(1) video technologies that completely fool the eyes. The most convincing virtual reality hardware completely covers the eyes in dark goggles and projects stereoscopic images to both eyes to produce a similar visual experience to how the eyes physically work. Images in virtual reality are also commonly rendered as 3-dimensional objects, which is the most common way that humans perceive the world using their eyes.

(2) audio technologies that provide audio cues about the virtual world in a way that human ears would be most likely able to perceive it in the real world. This includes stereo projection and surrounding audio, if possible, as audio exists in 3-dimensional space, much like images.

(3) movement technologies that actively and rapidly respond to the person's movements within the physical (real-world) environment so that they can feel like they are moving in the virtual world. Movement technologies also collect information about hazards and environment to keep the user safe while they are moving about the physical world, but cannot see

Other technologies that can be included in VR, but are still needing substantial development:

(4) haptic or touch technologies, that mimic the touch and feel of an object for the user that is being rendered in the virtual world. This is a more difficult technology to achieve, as it requires physical matter in the real world environment to take similar shape so that the person may feel it with their hands and body.

(5) smell and taste, which are largely experimental in today's virtual reality research, but aim to include tastes and smells in VR environments to maximize a person's immersiveness.

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