What is VIRTUAL REALITY ?

A virtual environment (VE) is a digital space in which a user’s movements are tracked and his or her surroundings rendered, or digitally composed and displayed to the senses, in accordance with those movements.

Why VR?

VR is able to immerse you in a computer-generated world of your own making: a room, a city, the interior of human body With VR, you can explore any uncharted territory of the human imagination.

Types of VR : Immersive VR. Augmented Reality. Through The Window. Mirror World or 2nd

Person VR.

What is Immersive VR?

Immersive virtual reality provides an immediate, first-person experience. In immersive VR, the user is placed inside the image; the generated image is assigned properties which make it look and act real

in terms of visual perception.

What is Augmented Reality?

A variation of immersive virtual reality is Augmented Reality where a see-through layer of computer graphics is superimposed over the real world to highlight certain features and enhance

understanding.

With this kind of system, the user sees the 3-D world through the 'window' of the computer screen and navigates through the space with a control device such as a mouse.

What is Through The Window VR?

Mirror World

It is also known as 2nd Person VR. Mirror Worlds (Projected Realities) provide a second-person experience in which the viewer stands outside the imaginary world, but communicates with characters or objects inside it.

APPLICATIONS

There are 3 types of VR Applications.

Perambulation Synthetic Experience Realization

Perambulation

This involves walking or flying sort of thing in the Virtual world. For example, a person is walking through a building. Here, the users are mostly interested in observing aspects not in interactions. Users may focus on moving objects in the Virtual Environment.

Synthetic Experience

These allow participants to safely and cheaply practice skills which are dangerous as well as expensive in the real world to develop like perform surgery, learn flying aircrafts, operate a plant control room etc. A participant learns how to perform actions by participating them with the hands.

Realization

These allow us to see and graphically manipulate context dependent data in a 3-D world. VR allows the participant to reach out in the virtual world and manipulate data representations e.g. foreign currency, inventory of items etc, as they are the real objects.

Devices

Head-Mounted Display (HMD) - A Helmet or a face mask providing the visual

and auditory displays.- Use LCD or CRT to display stereo images.- May include built-in head-tracker and stereo

headphones

Binocular Omni-Orientation Monitor (BOOM)

- Head-coupled stereoscopic display device.- Uses CRT to provide high-resolution display.- Convenient to use.- Fast and accurate built-in tracking.

Devices

Cave Automatic Virtual Environment (CAVE)

- Provides the illusion of immersion by projecting stereo images on the walls and floor of a room-sized cube.

- A head tracking system continuously adjust the stereo projection to the current position of the leading viewer.

Devices

Data Glove

• Outfitted with sensors on the fingers as well as an overall position/orientation tracking equipment.

• Enables natural interaction with virtual objects by hand gesture recognition.

Devices

Control Devices

• Control virtual objects in 3 dimensions.

Devices

Other Applications

Virtual Reality is also used in Medicine, Manufacturing, Education Training etc.

Medicine- Practice performing

surgery.- Perform surgery on a

remote patient.- Teach new skills in a

safe, controlled environment.

Manufacturing

• Easy to modify• Low cost• High efficient

Other Applications

Education & Training• Driving simulators.• Flight simulators.• Ship simulators.• Tank simulators.

Other Applications

Architectural

Desktop Computers equipped with visualization packages and simple interface devices are far from being an optimal solution for data presentation and manipulation. VR promises more intuitive way of interaction. The first attempts to apply VR as a visualization tool were architectural walkthrough systems.

Technologies of VR Software

VRML (Virtual Reality Modeling Language)

• Standard language for interactive simulation within the World Wide Web.

• Allows to create "virtual worlds" networked via the Internet and hyperlinked with the World Wide Web.

• Aspects of virtual world display, interaction and internetworking can be specified using VRML without being dependent on special gear like HMD.

• VR models can be viewed by Netscape or Google chrome with a browser plug-in.

SUMMARY:

Visualization of complicated, large data is helpful for understanding and analysis.

VR offers us a new way to interact with computer. VR enables us to experience the virtual world that is

impossible in real world. VR is changing our life, eventually VR will increasingly

become a part of our life.