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What is VR?
Virtual reality or virtual realities (VR), also known as immersive multimedia or computer-simulated reality, is a computer technology that replicates an environment, real or imagined, and simulates a user's physical presence and environment to allow for user interaction. Virtual realities artificially create sensory experience, which can include sight, touch, hearing, and smell.
Most up-to-date virtual realities are displayed either on a computer monitor or with a virtual reality headset (also called head-mounted display), and some simulations include additional sensory information and focus on real sound through speakers or headphones targeted towards VR users. Some advanced haptic systems now include tactile information, generally known as force feedback in medical, gaming and military applications. Furthermore, virtual reality covers remote communication environments which provide virtual presence of users with the concepts of telepresence andtelexistence 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 or omnidirectional treadmills. The immersive 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.
Application:
Training
The usage of VR in a training perspective is to allow professionals to conduct training in a virtual environment where they can improve upon their skills without the consequence of failing the operation. Thomas A. Furness IIIwas one of the first to develop the use of VR for military training when, in 1982, he presented the Air Force with his first working model of a virtual flight simulator he called the Visually Coupled Airborne Systems Simulator (VCASS). By the time he started his work on VCASS, aircraft were becoming increasingly complicated to handle and virtual reality provided a better solution to previous training methods. Furness attempted to incorporate his knowledge of human visual and auditory processing to create a virtual interface that was more intuitive to use. The second phase of his project, which he called the "Super Cockpit," was even more advanced, with high resolution graphics (for the time) and a responsive display. Furness is often credited as a pioneer in virtual reality for this research.
Video games
The use of graphics, sound and input technology in video games can be incorporated into VR. Several Virtual Reality head mounted displays (HMD) were released for gaming during the early-mid 1990s. These included theVirtual Boy developed by Nintendo, the iGlasses developed by Virtual I-O, the Cybermaxx developed by Victormaxx and the VFX1 Headgear developed by Forte Technologies. Other modern examples of narrow VR for gaming include theWii Remote, the Kinect, and the PlayStation Move/PlayStation Eye, all of which track and send motion input of the players to the game console somewhat accurately.
Several companies are working on a new generation of VR headsets: Oculus Rift is a head-mounted display for gaming purposes developed by Oculus VR, an American technology company that was acquired for US$2 billion by Facebook in 2014. One of its rivals was named by Sony as PlayStation VR (codenamed Morpheus), which requires a PS4 instead of a PC to run. In 2015, Valve Corporation announced their partnership with HTC to make a VR headset capable of tracking the exact position of its user in a 4.5 by 4.5 meters area, the HTC Vive.All these virtual reality headsets are tethered headsets that use special curved lenses to magnify and stretch a 5.7-inch screen (in the case of Morpheus) across your field of vision. There are many more gaming VR headsets in development, each with its own special abilities. StarVR, for instance, offers a 210° field of view, whereas FOVE tracks the position of your eyes as an input method.
Fine arts
David Em was the first fine artist to create navigable virtual worlds in the 1970s.His early work was done on mainframes at Information International, Inc., Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and California Institute of Technology. Jeffrey Shaw explored the potential of VR in fine arts with early works like Legible City (1989), Virtual Museum (1991), and Golden Calf (1994). Canadian artist Char Davies created immersive VR art piecesOsmose (1995) and Ephémère (1998). Maurice Benayoun's work introduced metaphorical, philosophical or political content, combining VR, network, generation and intelligent agents, in works like Is God Flat? (1994), "Is the Devil Curved?" (1995), The Tunnel under the Atlantic (1995), and World Skin, a Photo Safari in the Land of War (1997). Other pioneering artists working in VR have include Luc Courchesne, Rnmnmita Addison, Knowbotic Research, Rebecca Allen, Perry Hoberman, Jacki Morie, Margaret Dolinsky and Brenda Laurel. All mentioned artists are documented in the Database of Virtual Art.
Heritage and archaeology
The first use of a VR presentation in a heritage application was in 1994, when a museum visitor interpretation provided an interactive "walk-through" of a 3D reconstruction of Dudley Castle in England as it was in 1550. This consisted of a computer controlled laserdisc-based system designed by British-based engineer Colin Johnson. The system was featured in a conference held by the British Museum in November 1994, and in the subsequent technical paper, Imaging the Past – Electronic Imaging and Computer Graphics in Museums and Archaeology.
Virtual reality enables heritage sites to be recreated extremely accurately, so that the recreations can be published in various media.The original sites are often inaccessible to the public or, due to the poor state of their preservation, hard to picture.This technology can be used to develop virtual replicas of caves, natural environment, old towns, monuments, sculptures and archaeological elements.
Architectural design
One of the first recorded uses of virtual reality in architecture was in the late 80s when the University of North Carolina modeled its Sitterman Hall, home of its computer science department, in a virtual environment.
Several companies, including IrisVR and Floored, Inc., provide software or services that allow architectural design firms and various clients in the real estate industry to tour virtual models of proposed building designs. IrisVR currently provides software that allows users to convert design files created in CAD programs like SketchUp and Revit into files viewable with an Oculus Rift, HTC Vive, or a smartphone "in one click," without the need for complex tiered workflows or knowledge of game engines such as Unity3D.Floored, meanwhile, manually constructs and refines Rift-viewable 3D models in-house from either CAD files for un-built designs or physical scans of already built, brick-and-mortar buildings, and provides clients with access to its own viewing software, which can be used with either an Oculus Rift or a standard 2D web browser, afterward.
VR software products like these can provide a number of benefits to architects and their clients. During the design process, architects themselves can use VR in order to actually experience the designs they are working on before they are built. In particular, seeing a design in VR can help impress upon the architect a correct sense of scale and proportion.Having an interactive VR model on hand also eliminates the need to waste time and resources constructing physical miniatures in order to demonstrate or examine a design concept to clients or the public. Later on, after a building is constructed, developers and owners can create a VR model of a space that allows potential buyers or tenants to tour a space in VR, even if real-life circumstances make a physical tour unfeasible. For instance, if the owner of an apartment building in Manhattan has a VR model of a space while the building is under construction, they can begin showing and renting the units before they are even ready to be occupied. Furthermore, this sort of showing can be conducted over any distance, as long as the potential customer has access to a VR setup (or, even, with the help of Google Cardboard or a similar phone-based VR headset, nothing but an ordinary smartphone.)
Urban design
In 2010, 3D virtual reality was beginning to be used for urban regeneration and planning and transport projects.
In 2007 development began on a virtual reality software which took design coordinate geometry used by land surveyors and civil engineers and incorporated precision spatial information created automatically by the lines and curves typically shown on subdivision plats and land surveying plans. These precise spatial areas cross referenced color and texture to an item list. The item list contained a set of controls for 3D rendering such as water reflective surface or building height. The land surface in software to create a contour map uses a digital terrain model (DTM). By 2010, prototype software was developed for the core technology to automate the process leading from design to virtualization. The first beta users in 2011 were able to press a single function and automatically drape the design or survey data over the digital terrain to create data structures that are passed into a video gaming engine to create a virtual interactive world showing massing of buildings in relation to man made improvements.
It was the first application where virtual reality was made effortless for Urban Planning principals using technology. The software was improved to implement massing or 3D models from other free or commercially sold software to create more realistic virtual reality with very little time and effort (see the below image). The software is marketed as LandMentor and is the first precision design technology to make Urban Planning widely available with a short learning curve.
Therapy
The primary use of VR in a therapeutic role is its application to various forms of exposure therapy, includingphobia treatments.
Theme parks
Since 2015, virtual reality has been installed onto a number of roller coasters, including Galactica at Alton Towers, The New Revolution at Six Flags Magic Mountain and Alpenexpress at Europapark, amongst others.
Concerts
In Oslo Spektrum on May the 3rd 2016, Norwegian band a-ha cleared away their normal stage-production to give room for a very different concert performance in collaboration with Void, a Norwegian computational design studio working in the intersection between design, architecture, art and technology. The collaboration resulted in a unique one-of-a-kind concert with advanced scenography using 360 virtual reality technology.
The concept involved several movement sensors that reacted to the bands movements, voices and instruments. 3D cameras, 20000 lines of codes, 1000 square meters of projection film and massive projectors was set up into a visual show that made the Oslo Spektrum arena in Oslo, Norway into a light installation and visual experience that unfolded live for the audience instead of a pre programmed sequence. The stereoscopic VR-experience was made available for Android users directly through a YouTube app and also made available for iPhone users and other platforms.
Retail
Lowe's, IKEA, and Wayfair have developed systems that allow these company's products to be seen in virtual reality, to give consumers a better idea of how the product will fit into their home, or to allow the consumer to get a better look at the product from home.
Film
Many companies, including GoPro, Nokia, Samsung, and Nikon, develop omnidirectional cameras, also known as 360 degree cameras or VR cameras that have the ability to record in all directions.These cameras are used to create images and videos that can be viewed in VR. Films produced for VR permit the audience to view the entire environment in every scene, creating an interactive viewing experience.
Production companies, such as Fox Searchlight Pictures and Skybound, utilize VR cameras to produce films that are interactive in VR. Fox Searchlight, Oculus and Samsung Gear VR collaborated on a project titled, "Wild – The Experieince", starring Reese Witherspoon. The VR film was presented at the Consumer Electronics Show as well as the Sundance Film Festival in January 2015.
On December 8, 2015, the production company Skybound announced their VR thriller titled, "Gone". In collaboration with the VR production company WEVR, and Samsung Gear VR, the 360 degree video series was released on January 20, 2016.
Media
Companies such as Paramount Pictures, and Disney have applied VR into marketing campaigns creating interactive forms of media.
In October 2014 Paramount Pictures, in collaboration with the media production company Framestore, created a VR experience utilizing the Oculus DK2. The experience was dubbed a "time sensitive adventure in space" that took place in a portion of the Endurance space ship from the film "Interstellar." The experience was available to the public at limited AMC theater locations.
In May 2016 Disney released a VR experience titled, Disney Movies VR, on Valve Corporation's Steam software, free for download. The experience allows users to interact with the characters and worlds from the Disney, Marvel, and Lucasfilm universes
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