What is virtual reality?
In our age of information technology it is impossible to imagine a person without a phone, computer or other gadget, which would serve as a portal to the world network for us.
The Internet has become a parallel universe, in which almost everyone from small to large lives. Once the creation of the world network was considered a breakthrough, an unprecedented progress of human thought in the field of technology, but now we have moved even further.
What is virtual reality?
By this term we mean a virtual world created with the help of various technical means and transmitted to a human by means of a system of analyzers in our organism, i.e. by means of hearing, sight, touch and even smell.
In order to create a virtual reality for a long time researches have been conducted on the behavior of various objects of our reality under different conditions, and under different impacts on these objects.
This information was carefully selected and analyzed, and then became part of the virtual world with the output into the real world through certain technologies.
What technologies are used to immerse people in virtual reality?
It is worth starting with our visual analyser, or image output technologies.
There are several technologies:
1. Virtual reality helmet or HMD-display
Although it is called the Virtual Reality Helmet, this device does resemble glasses with systems that affect other analyzers in our body.
The principle of operation of this equipment is not complicated. The helmet consists of one or more displays, a system of lenses to adjust the geometry of the image so that the house, for example, was not less than a person, and tracking systems – mechanisms that make up a report on the position of the helmet in space, which just helps to feel in virtual reality, as in the real world.
The tracking system resembles the work of a gyroscope or accelerometer, which makes it possible to determine the position of the body under its control in space, relative to all known basic axes of coordinates.
2. MotionParallax3D displays
This is another class of virtual reality devices, which allows you to be a person in the virtual world by displaying a virtual reality object in a certain projection volumetric and at an angle at which the person is looking at this object at a given time.
These devices can be in the form of a display similar to the TV in our apartment, and in the form of specially equipped rooms in which there are sensors that monitor the position of the person in this room, and depending on this changing the position of the virtual reality objects.
The peculiarity of these devices is that this system uses such a mechanism of volume perception as motion parallax. In simple terms, the system calculates your coordinates at a given time and reproduces the image at an angle and in volumes that they would be in our real world, when you were at a certain distance from them.
Here are some examples of virtual reality devices:
- Amazon Fire Phone Smartphone.
- NettleBox Virtual Reality System.
- Virtual room (CAVE) EON ICube.
All these and some other devices help a person to be in a completely different world, to feel his whole: to see, hear, feel.
Each system of such a plan is also equipped with additional devices such as multichannel speaker system that allows you to play the localization of the sound source, gloves of virtual reality, allowing you to feel a tactile response when interacting with objects of virtual reality.
As well as to most accurately recreate the user’s contact with the environment, user interfaces are used, the most realistically appropriate simulated: computer steering wheel with pedals, handles control devices, target designation.
They help to connect all other analyzers of our organism, that’s why virtual reality is not only an opportunity for a person to travel around the world without leaving the room, but also a great chance to visit unknown worlds of favorite computer games and movies.
There is another class of devices that relate to the technology of virtual reality, but still developers are still thinking about the correctness of their classification, and put this device between virtual reality and augmented reality. So, number three is a virtual retinal monitor.
This may sound daunting, but it’s an amazing technology that reproduces the image directly to the retina, which allows you to see the virtual / augmented reality object in all the colors.
This class of devices cannot be called virtual reality just because the projected object is still in our reality, although it is not real. Only under certain conditions, a good shading of space can these devices immerse you in the world of virtual reality.
Technology does not stand still, it develops and is far from harming all of humanity, as we wanted to show in the movie “Terminator”. By approaching the emerging development prospects wisely, our lives will indeed be enriched with new experiences and opportunities.