What is Virtual Reality?

What is Virtual Reality?

Virtual Reality comes from the definition of both ‘Virtual’ and ‘Reality’. Virtual means ‘near’ and Reality is what we experience as a human. So, the term Virtual Reality can be called as “Near Reality”. It is basically a reality emulsion. Virtual Reality is a computer generated a 3D environment which tricks the user senses to believe that they are actually present in the real world. Unlike any traditional UI, VR places the user inside an experience. It is generally done for playing games, watching videos, etc.

How can you experience Virtual Reality?

To Experience Virtual Reality, one had to wear a gadget on head called VR Headsets. There are basically two types of Modern VR Headsets: Mobile VR Headsets and Tethered VR Headsets.

Mobile VR Headsets: These Headsets just needs your smartphones placed into the shells, the lenses separate your smartphone screen into two images for your eyes, and turns your smartphone into a VR Device. You don’t need any extra wires or devices. Google Daydream view and Samsung Gear VR are the two most popular mobile VR Headsets in the market. Mobile VR Headsets tracks your head movement and adjust the environment according to it to immerse you in the environment. Mobile Headsets costs around $100 to $130.

Tethered VR Headsets: You can use tethered headsets to play Games on your PC as well as on Play Station. Tethered VR Headsets had a dedicated display in them instead of a smartphone. They also had built-in sensors and an external camera tracker, which makes our experience far better. Oculus Rift, HTC Vive, and PlayStation VR are the most popular tethered VR Headsets. They cost around $500 to $630.

How do Virtual Reality Work?

Virtual Reality works by just tricking our brain into believing that we are in a 3D world. The first way VR does this is by creating a Stereoscopic display. Stereoscopic display just works by displaying an image at two different angles to each eye, creating a sense of depth. Try this, hold your thumb in front of your eye and see it with one eye closed at a time. You would notice the change in position of the thumb as you switch the eyes. Try it by keeping your thumb both far and near. You would notice, the shift is less when the thumb is far away and it’s more when the thumb is near. This is actually the sense of depth.

So, when you wear the Google Cardboard, for example, there is a partition between the two lenses, so that your each eye gets to look at the picture from two slightly different angles and this fools your brain into thinking that it’s looking at a 3D image by creating a sense of depth. Also, your phone has a couple of sensors that track the movement of your head and positions you accordingly in the 3D world or basically exploring unseen parts of the virtual world.

There are lot more things that go in parallel with a stereoscopic display like the Field of view and latency. Field of view is the extent of the visible world that can be seen at any time. For e.g. humans have about 180 degrees of field of view while looking straight ahead. Latency is the time delay between the user movement and the ability of environments adjustment to it. So, for a good Virtual Reality System, it should have wider Field of view and low latency.

The virtual reality system isn’t only about tracking head movements. It should involve our senses and should also interact with us or basically, we should get feedback from the system. The combination of a sense of immersion and interactivity is called Telepresence. Telepresence is the extent to which one feels present in the simulated world. So, a good VR experience causes you to be unaware of your real surrounding and focus on your existence inside the virtual environment.

Immersion deals with display resolution, the sophistication of system’s audio output and a number of sensory dimensions simultaneously present. Basically, Immersion expects a high resolution, very good audio output and all your senses involved in the system. You should able to see, hear, smell and touch things in the virtual world. Interaction is basically navigating in the virtual world. It also includes being able to modify the environment. A good Virtual environment will respond to the user’s action in a way that makes sense.

Applications of VR

VR has many applications in day to day life. The most common is Gaming using Sony PlayStation VR on PS4. Well, it has some other interesting applications as well.

1. Virtual Reality in Education: VR enables students to interact with each other and with a 3D environment which can be used to simplify complex data that is both easy and fun to learn. For e.g. Students can learn about the solar system by actually interacting with the objects itself.

2. Virtual Reality in Military: VR can be used to train soldiers for combat situations or other dangerous situation where they need to learn how to react. The air force can use VR to train their pilots without spending too much money on fighter planes.

3. Virtual Reality in Entertainment:  VR can be used in Games, watching videos or visiting places like museums and theme parks.

4. Virtual Reality in Engineering: VR Engineering includes the use of 3D modeling tools and visualization techniques as a part of the design process. VR enables engineers to view their project in 3D and gain a greater understanding of how it works.

I tried to include everything about VR at the same time not extending the length of the post. Please comments below if you come up any doubts or suggestions. Finally, Thank you.