FREE ESSAY ON VIRTUAL REALITY

VIRTUAL REALITY

An Insight Into Virtual Reality is to trick the human senses, to help people believe and
uphold an illusion. Virtual reality engineers are space makers, to a certain degree they
create space for people to play around in. A space maker sets up a world for an audience
to act directly within, and not just so the audience can imagine they are experiencing a
reality, but so they can experience it directly. The film maker says, 'Look, I'll show
you.' The space maker says, 'Here, I'll help you discover.' However, what will the space
maker help us discover? Are virtual reality systems going to serve as supplements to our
lives, or will individuals so miserable in their daily existence find an obsessive refuge
in a preferred cyberspace? What is going to be included, deleted, reformed, and revised?
Will virtual reality systems be used as a means of breaking down cultural, racial, and
gender barriers between individuals and thus nurture human values? During this century,
responsive technologies are moving even closer to us, becoming the standard interface
through which we gain much of our experience. The ultimate result of living in a
cybernetic world may create an artificial global city. Instead of a global village,
virtual reality may create a global city, the distinction being that the city contains
enough people for groups to form affiliations, in which individuals from different
cultures meet together in the same space of virtual reality. The city might be laid out
according to a three dimensional environment that dictates the way people living in
different countries may come to communicate and understand other cultures. A special
camera, possibly consisting of many video cameras, would capture and transmit every view
of the remote locations. Viewers would receive instant feedback as they turn their heads.
Any number of people could be looking through the same camera system. Although the
example described here will probably take many years to develop, its early evolution has
been under way for some time, with the steady march of technology moving from accessing
information toward providing experience. As well, it is probably still childish to
imagine the adoption of virtual reality systems on a massive scale because the starting
price to own one costs about $300,000. Virtual Reality is now available in games and
movies. An example of a virtual reality game is Escape From Castle Wolfenstein. In it,
you are looking through the eyes of an escaped POW from a Nazi death camp. You must walk
around in a maze of dungeons were you will eventually fight Hitler. One example of a
virtual reality movie is Stephen King's The Lawnmower Man. It is about a mentally
retarded man that uses virtual reality as a means of overcoming his handicap and becoming
smarter. He eventually becomes crazy from his quest for power and goes into a computer.
From there he is able to control most of the world's computers. This movie ends with us
wondering if he will succeed in world domination. From all of this we have learned that
virtual reality is already playing an important part in our world. Eventually, it will
let us be able to date, live in other parts of the world without leaving the comfort of
our own living room, and more. Even though we are quickly becoming a product of the world
of virtual reality, we must not lose touch with the world of reality. For reality is the
most important part of our lives. Bibliography Bains, S. Surgeons Slice a Virtual Leg,
New Scientist, Vol. 131, Pg. 28, July 6, 1991 Baudrillard, J., The Ecstasy of
Communication, Translated by Bernard and Caroline Schutze, New York: Semiotext, 1987
Helsel, K. Virtual Reality-Theory, Practice, and Promise London: British Library, 1991
Neira, C. The CAVE: Autovisual Experience Automatic Virtual Environment, Communications
of the ACM, vol. 35, pg. 65-72, summer 1992 Venkat, P. Integrating Virtual Reality, IEEE
Transactions, vol. 36, pg. 35-38, 1991