(Enter the dream world of virtual reality—find yourself in a different world—very much like what you see in a video game. But this is different. You are inside the game yourself.)
Imagine this. You put on goggles on your eyes. Then you wear a glove on your right hand. The goggles and the glove are connected to a computer. You are inside a room. If you turn your head to the right, you find a window and a table. You turn left, and you see the kitchen. There are bunch of grapes and a red apple. You take the apple then throw, and in the screen, you see the apple going out of the window! Of course, everything is not real. It is an artificial reality, one created by the computer. But it looks virtually or almost real. It is virtual reality (VR). And that is actually what this new and exciting technology is called. The video industry has recently given birth to VR, a new form of electronic entertainment which enables the user to virtually enter the world depicted in the video itself.
Grabbing a virtual apple is just one of the many things which you can do with VR. There are infinitely more, depending on your imagination, or at least on the imagination of the creators of VR games. You may be able to live inside the human heart, walk on planet Pluto, travel inside the computer circuits, or even slide down the drain in the kitchen sink. In a typical VR experience, a helmet blocks out the real world and immerses the patient in the sights and sounds of a computer-generated 3-D world. The helmet positions goggle-size television screens close to each eye, enabling the patient to see a single image with realism and depth. Headphones supply sound; joysticks and gloves let the patient manipulate the scene. This combined sensory input creates the illusion of being in that virtual world. With a VR game, the player does not simply control the character. Technically, VR is a full-colour, full-motion, three-dimensions world created by a computer and displayed inside a pair of goggles worn by a virtual player.
How it works
VR is created when people wear a kind of computerized clothing over the sense organs—usually goggles, headphones, hand gloves or joysticks, sensitive pads under the feet and in some more advanced versions, a body suit. The VR goggles put a small TV in front of each eye so you can see moving images in three dimensions. The goggles have a sensor which allows a computer to tell where your head is facing. What you see is created completely by the computer, which generates a new image every 1/20 of a second.
The Future of VR
Virtual reality is still new, but it is developing very fast. VPL Research Inc. founder Jaron Lanier has this to say about VR: “I think, we’ve discovered a new planet, but one we are inventing instead of discovering. We’re just starting to sight the shore of one of its continents. Virtual reality is an adventure worth centuries.” Indeed, the technology is so promising that the US National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) supports 16 VR research projects. “People are coming up with more and more clever ways of using this,” says Dave Thomas, co-chair of NIDA’s virtual reality working group. “But we’re just scratching the surface.
