Virtual Reality (VR)

Virtual Reality (VR)

Virtual reality is a term that applies to computer-simulated environments that can simulate physical presence in places in the real world, as well as in imaginary worlds. Most current virtual reality environments are primarily visual experiences, displayed either on a computer screen or through special stereoscopic displays, but some simulations include additional sensory information, such as sound through speakers or headphones. Some advanced, haptic systems now include tactile information, generally known as force feedback, in medical and gaming applications. Furthermore, virtual reality covers remote communication environments which provide virtual presence of users with the concepts of telepresence and telexistence or a virtual artifact (VA) either through the use of standard input devices such as a keyboard and mouse, or through multimodal devices such as a wired glove.

The simulated environment can be similar to the real world in order to create a lifelike experience—for example, in simulations for pilot or combat training—or it can differ significantly from reality, such as in VR games. In practice, it is currently very difficult to create a high-fidelity virtual reality experience, due largely to technical limitations on processing power, image resolution, and communication bandwidth; however, the technology's proponents hope that such limitations will be overcome as processor, imaging, and data communication technologies become more powerful and cost-effective over time.

Virtual reality is often used to describe a wide variety of applications commonly associated with immersive, highly visual, 3D environments.

In the book The Metaphysics of Virtual Reality by Michael R. Heim, seven different concepts of virtual reality are identified: simulation, interaction, artificiality, immersion, telepresence, full-body immersion, and network communication. People often identify VR with head mounted displays and data suits.

• Virtual reality will be integrated into daily life and activity, and will be used in various human ways. Another such speculation has been written up on how to reach ultimate happiness via virtual reality.
• Techniques will be developed to influence human behavior, interpersonal communication, and cognition.
• As we spend more and more time in virtual space, there will be a gradual "migration to virtual space", resulting in important changes in economics, worldview, and culture.
• The design of virtual environments may be used to extend basic human rights into virtual space, to promote human freedom and well-being, and to promote social stability as we move from one stage in socio-political development to the next.

Tools used in Virtual reality:

·        Visualization

·        Navigation: can be fixed or moving (simulators)

·        Control &Touch: for example using gloves

·        Tracking Position :

·        Sound 3D

·        Augmented Reality: add to real environment virtual elements

Visualization:                 

·        Single Projection

·        Multiple Projections

·        computer monitor

·        Many computer monitors

·        Table-top

Head Mounted Display:

·        Head-Mounted Display (HMD)

·        3D glasses

·        3 D glasses with 3 D sound  and the ability of tracking

A virtual world is an online community that takes the form of a computer-based simulated environment through which users can interact with one another and use and create objects. The term has become largely synonymous with interactive 3D virtual environments, where the users take the form of avatars visible to others. These avatars usually appear as textual, two-dimensional, or three-dimensional representations, although other forms are possible (auditory and touch sensations for example). In general, virtual worlds allow for multiple users.

The computer accesses a computer-simulated world and presents perceptual stimuli to the user, who in turn can manipulate elements of the modeled world and thus experience a degree of telepresence. Such modeled worlds and their rules may draw from the reality or fantasy worlds. Example rules are gravity, topography, locomotion, real-time actions, and communication. Communication between users can range from text, graphical icons, visual gesture, sound, and rarely, forms using touch, voice command, and balance senses.

Massively multiplayer online games depict a wide range of worlds, including those based on fantasy, science fiction, the real world, super heroes, sports, horror, and historical milieus. The most common form of such games are fantasy worlds, whereas those based on the real world are relatively rare. Many MMORPGs have real-time actions and communication. Players create a character who travels between buildings, towns, and worlds to carry out business or leisure activities. Communication is usually textual, but real-time voice communication is also possible. The form of communication used can substantially affect the experience of players in the game.

Virtual worlds are not limited to games but, depending on the degree of immediacy presented, can encompass computer conferencing and text based chatrooms. Sometimes, emoticons or 'smilies' are available, to show feeling or facial expression. Emoticons often have a keyboard shortcut. Edward Castronova is an economist who has argued that "synthetic worlds" is a better term for these cyberspaces, but this term has not been widely adopted.

                                     

Application domains                       

Tourism                                                                

Tourism has been much touted since the advent of Virtual Worlds, it started appearing in various forms with Second Life , with virtual representation of Mexico and others. However they are often represented with misrepresentation as the information portray is often to semi realistic, users often have issues determining whats real and whats not. The latest Virtual World focusing on Tourism was just launch on in Dec 2011, 3rd Planet focus on realistic 3D representation of actual tourism sites.

Social                                                                     

Although the social interactions of participants in virtual worlds are often viewed in the context of 3D Games, other forms of interaction are common as well, including forums, blogs, wikis, chatrooms, instant messaging, and video-conferences. Communities are born in places which have their own rules, topics, jokes, and even language. Members of such communities can find like-minded people to interact with, whether this be through a shared passion, the wish to share information, or a desire to meet new people and experience new things. Users may develop personalities within the community adapted to the particular world they are interacting with, which can impact the way they think and act. Internet friendships and participation in online communities tend to complement existing friendships and civic participation rather than replacing or diminishing such interactions.

Medical                               

Virtual worlds can also be used, for instance by the Starlight Children's Foundation, to help hospitalised children (suffering from painful diseases or autism for example) to create a comfortable and safe environment which can expand their situation, experience interactions (when you factor in the involvement of a multiple cultures and players from around the world) they may not have been able to experience without a virtual world, healthy or sick. Virtual worlds also enable them to experience and act beyond the restrictions of their illness and help to relieve stress. Disabled or chronically invalided people of any age can also benefit enormously from experiencing the mental and emotional freedom gained by temporarily leaving their disabilities behind and doing, through the medium of their avatars, things as simple and potentially accessible to able, healthy people as walking, running, dancing, sailing, fishing, swimming, surfing, flying, skiing, gardening, exploring and other physical activities which their illnesses or disabilities prevent them from doing in real life. They may also be able to socialise, form friendships and relationships much more easily and avoid the stigma and other obstacles which would normally be attached to their disabilities. This can be much more constructive, emotionally satisfying and mentally fulfilling than passive pastimes such as television watching, playing computer games, reading or more conventional types of internet use.

Psychologically virtual worlds can help players become more familiar and comfortable with actions they may in real-life feel reluctant or embarrassed. For example, in World of Warcraft, /dance is the emote for a dance move which a player in the virtual world can "emote" quite simply. And a familiarization with said or similar "emotes" or social skills (such as, encouragement, gratitude, problem-solving, and even kissing) in the virtual world via avatar can make the assimilation to similar forms of expression, socialization, interaction in real life smooth. Interaction with humans through avatars in the virtual world has potential to seriously expand the mechanics of one's interaction with real-life interactions.

Entertainment

Single-player games

Some single-player games contain virtual worlds populated by non-player characters (NPC). Many of these allow you to save the current state of this world instance to allow stopping and restarting the virtual world at a later date. (This can be done with some multiplayer environments as well.)

The virtual worlds found in video games are often split into discrete levels.

Education

Virtual worlds represent a powerful new media for instruction and education that presents many opportunities but also some challenges. Persistence allows for continuing and growing social interactions, which themselves can serve as a basis for collaborative education. The use of virtual worlds can give teachers the opportunity to have a greater level of student participation. It allows users to be able to carry out tasks that could be difficult in the real world due to constraints and restrictions, such as cost, scheduling or location. Virtual worlds have the capability to adapt and grow to different user needs, for example, classroom teachers are able to use virtual worlds in their classroom leveraging their interactive whiteboard with the open source project Edusim. They can be a good source of user feedback, the typical paper-based resources have limitations that Virtual Worlds can overcome.

Virtual world can also be used with virtual learning environments, as in the case of what is done in the Sloodle project, which aims to merge Second Life with Moodle.

Virtual worlds allow users with specific needs and requirements to be able to access and use the same learning materials from home, as they would be receiving if they were in the presentation. This can help users to keep up to date with the relevant information and needs while also feeling as though involved. Having the option to be able to attend a presentation via a virtual world from home or from their workplace, can help the user to be more at ease and comfortable. The flexibility of virtual worlds have greatly improved the options for student study and business collaboration. Although virtual worlds are a good way of communicating and interacting between students and teachers, this is not a substitute for actual face-to-face meetings. When using virtual worlds, there are the downsides in that you lose the body language and other more personal aspects.

Adoption of the use of virtual worlds for education

In April 1999, Numedeon Incorporated launched Whyville as the first virtual world explicitly designed to engage young students in a wide range of educational activities. With a player base of over 3 million. Whyville has been particularly successful in attracting young teens.

With respect to older students, a growing number of universities such as the open university and other educational institutions are exploring existing general purpose virtual world platforms as a means to extend and enhance their offerings to students. Typically, educators create an online presence where students can interact, using their avatars to learn about new assignments or create projects that are viewable within the virtual world. For example, students taking a computer manufacturing class can log into a virtual world in which they are the inhabitants of a burgeoning village that needs their expertise for the construction of houses, furniture, machines, and other goods. A number of educational institutions are now running virtual classrooms and discussion sections in worlds like Second Life.

 Technologies can sometimes take up to 10 years to become fully incorporated within everyday life. For virtual worlds to be accepted, then it is vital that teachers and students alike adapt to new ideas and technologies and use them to their full potential and become a useful tool in education (Yukiko Inoue, Effects of virtual reality support compared to video support in a high-school world geography class). The best idea for a more complete and wider variety in learning techniques is to integrate both paper based and technology based methods.

Language education

Language learning is the most widespread type of education in virtual worlds, with many universities, mainstream language institutes and private language schools using 3D virtual environments to support language learning.

Business education

Virtual worlds are used in today's business environment for the training of employees for which it represents an excellent venue. In particular, virtual worlds environment (such as Second Life) have been used in business schools as an extension of the classroom. In some other cases virtual worlds have been used for creating business games^. Since the growth of the Internet, employees have been able to learn and to follow online trainings. This is a major breakthrough and helps to overcome problems such as distance, infrastructure or appointment. There are different methods in which this can be carried out: Video Conferencing is probably the most common tool. People can stay in their office to attend a live conference or a recorded meeting. This new way of training raises some questions: Is virtual training as effective as real training? Are people happy with virtual training and does this method encourage people to learn?

Using technology can affect people's behavior in many ways. First of all they can seem more interested in using virtual modes as a study method and because of this their satisfaction for learning will be greater when compared to traditional classroom techniques. Despite the fact that people are not in a face to face meeting and thus are not creating social links, the efficiency is not really affected. Actually, adults need this autonomy and need to learn by themselves with more self-direction than younger students.

Virtual training has a lot of advantages compared to the traditional classroom and meetings. Thanks to the rise of the Internet people can now interact with the information through a more user-friendly environment which allows them a greater level of involvement and creativity. A large number of websites offer tutorials and the possibility to test user knowledge with interactive online tests (using multiple choice questions). Virtual training is not so different from usual training in terms of content. Thus, it is not difficult to adapt the existing course to fit with virtual tools. This of course would not only save the company time but also money (no flight, accommodation costs etc.).

Virtual training is becoming a more widely accepted form of training and is being used more often. One example is made by the INSR-Institute competence in the area of occupational risk prevention: protecting workers’ health and safety and preventing occupational accidents or diseases. They have created a program to warn people about the chemical risk of products using interactive support. INSR used 3D environment show clearly a professional situation and involve people through this interactive support.

In addition to the use of virtual training, virtual reality can also provide useful tools. One of the widest uses of this technology is maybe the use of 3D environment to allow virtual visits. The concept is used by many companies and is usually divided into two purposes. The main use for a company is to provide a virtual preview of their tour. Moreover some public places allow free access to their facilities, thus allows people who cannot visit the location for real are due to personal constraints, are able to visit virtually. This allows an easy access to knowledge and it becomes a real alternative to video or picture.

Due to the ease of learning brought by the spread of virtual worlds, learning may become lifelong and the curriculum is in perpetual evolution, each employee being able to learn through virtual world, no matter where he lives or how old he is.

In fiction

The concept of a virtual world has become a popular fictional motif and setting in recent years, although science-fiction writers have been portraying similar ideas (for example, cyberspace) for decades. Among the most prominent virtual worlds in the literature are the ones written about by William Gibson. The first was probably John M. Ford's 1980 novel, Web of Angels. Virtual worlds were prominent in such movies and books as Tron, Neuromancer, The Lawnmower Man, The Lawnmower Man 2, Epic, Snow Crash, .Hack//Sign, Real Drive, Summer Wars, The Matrix and Ghost in the Shell. There are many other examples of the virtual world; for example Lyoko in the French animated television series Code Lyoko.

Series 4 of the smash hit New Zealand TV series, The Tribe featured the birth of Reality Space and the Virtual World that was created by Ram, the computer genius leader of The Techno's.

In 2009, BBC Radio 7 commissioned Planet B, set in a virtual world in which a man searches for his girlfriend, believed to be dead, but in fact still alive within the world, called "Planet B". The series is the currently the biggest ever commission for an original drama series.

Massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPGs), also called virtual game worlds, where the user playing a specific character is a main feature of the game (Vanguard for example).

Massively multiplayer online real-life games (MMORLGs), also called virtual social worlds, where the user can edit and alter their avatar at will, allowing them to play a more dynamic role, or multiple roles.

                                  

Future

According to K Zero, a virtual world consultancy service, there are over 1 billion (1,009,000,000) people worldwide registered in virtual worlds today.

Rita J. King, CEO of Dancing Ink Productions, a strategic creative content development and research company, believes virtual worlds will augment what she calls "the Digital Culture."

"I envision virtual worlds evolving for business and cultural development as the medium becomes more ubiquitous."

"Chatting in a two-dimensional platform can be fun, informative and valuable," argued King. "But co-creating and inhabiting a three-dimensional space that can then be collaborated upon cannot be matched. This allows people to 'be together' despite geographical location, age, gender, ethnic or sociopolitical affiliation."

"But interactions will only be as developed as the imaginations and motivations of the people involved."

Ideally, King believes we will move to a position where people can augment their physical lives with virtual realities. This may ultimately affect our perceptions of physical 'wants'.

"Things change and develop so fast," Nergiz Kern, an English language educator inside Second Life, told IOL. "But I think virtual worlds will become as normal as the internet is now. Most people who are online will have an avatar and use VW [virtual worlds] for all kinds of activities from meeting and chatting with friends to learning and doing business."

Wasko, Teigland, Leidner, & Jarvenpaa question how virtual worlds will affect our traditional economic and governance models and argue that firms, governments and leaders should pay attention to their development as they may lead to a "mobility" of labor that may impact national and organizational competitiveness in a way similar to the way that first the mobility of goods and then the mobility of labor impacted competitiveness.