"Virtual reality" has often been used as a marketing buzzword to create a hype among the masses for compelling, interactive video games or even 3D movies and television programs, none of which really count as VR because they don't immerse you either fully or partially in a virtual world. Search for "virtual reality" in your mobile app store and you'll find hundreds of hits, even though a tiny cellphone screen could never get anywhere near producing the convincing experience of VR or even the computer games which markets Virtual reality. Let’s take a deeper look to understand the true meaning of VR and its variations:
Virtual reality is a 3D computer universe that one can access using digital technology. It comes with visual machinery attached to a computer to create the virtual experience. When you are connected to a virtual reality setup, the feeling is ecstatic as it looks so real.
For example, With Virtual Reality (Fully Immersive), you can take a trip to the moon and it would feel and look exactly like you just landed on the moon but in reality, you are just sitting a chair in a room experiencing all this. Unlike movie experience where you are stationed in one position looking at a big screen, Virtual Reality is much more different as you can move around and the computer world would be moving along with you.
Virtual reality is based on five types:
- Fully Immersive
- Non Immersive
- Collaborative
- Web Based
- Augmented Reality
Fully immersive- The complete VR experience:
For the complete VR experience to be realistic as possible, we need three things. First, a credible, and richly detailed and creative virtual world to explore or in other words a computer model or simulation created with high end graphics. Second, a powerful processing computer that can detect what we're going and adjust our experience accordingly, in real time (so what we see or hear changes as fast as we move—just like in real reality). Third, hardware linked to the computer that fully immerses us in the virtual world as we roam around or do some tasks. Usually, we'd need to put on what's called a head-mounted display (HMD) with two screens and stereo sound, and wear one or more sensory gloves to give a realistic feeling in the virtual world close to the real world. Importantly, we need space inside a room, fitted out with surround-sound loudspeakers, onto which changing images are projected from outside. Examples include VR simulation of Roller coaster
Non-immersive
A highly realistic flight simulator on home PC OR TV might qualify as non-immersive virtual reality, especially if it uses a very wide screen, with headphones or surround sound, and a realistic joystick and other controls depending on the simulation like steering wheels, clutch pedals etc. Not everyone wants or needs to be fully immersed in an alternative reality, non- immersive provides the real world experience in a screen with the help of alike joysticks of real world to do a specific task or to practice that job before doing that in real time. Other Examples include Multiplayer Motor Racing Games in simulated real tracks around the world to give similar vibe of real motor racing.
Collaborative
What about "virtual world" games like Second Life and Minecraft? Although they meet the first four of our criteria (believable, interactive, computer-created and explorable) of virtual reality, they don't really meet the fifth: they don't fully immerse you. So do they count as Virtual reality? Not really but close to it since the one thing they do offer is collaboration: the idea of sharing an experience in a virtual world with other people, often in real time or something very close to it. Collaboration and sharing are likely to become increasingly important features of VR in future.
Web-based VR:
Virtual reality was assumed to be one of the hottest, fastest-growing technologies in the late 1980s and early 1990s, but the sudden steep of interest in VR got killed after that and made the growth of VR saturated for a decade and so. Even though computer scientists tried their best to develop a way of building virtual worlds on the Web, since it was the very early days of internet the technologies of those days didn’t support to create the virtual world as it is today. Ordinary people in 90s were much more interested in the way the World Wide Web gave them new ways to access real world—new ways to find and publish information, share thoughts, ideas, and experiences with friends and the world through social media. With Many Tech Giants today has a growing interest in the Web Based VR and Companies like Facebook has been working on this for a long time, the future of VR seems likely to be both Web-based and collaborative.
Augmented Reality
Mobile devices like smartphones and tablets have been delivering the experience and data what used to be supercomputer power in the developing days of computing. To understand what is AR , For eg, If we're wandering round the world, maybe visiting a tourist spot like the pyramids or a fascinating foreign city we've never been to before, what we want is a virtual reality but without an HMD , computer gadgets and space to explore part without compromising the enhanced experience of the exciting reality we can see in front of us. That's created the idea of augmented reality (AR), where, for example, in your smartphone if you choose a place in which AR is present you just have to move around your mobile with your hands like upwards, sideways etc. to explore the place which is really nice feature at your hands without moving around in the real world and also interesting information about the place pops up automatically. Augmented reality is all about connecting the real world we experience to the vast virtual world of information that we've collectively created on the Web.
Conclusion:
Virtual Reality is arguably the next footstep towards a modern/post-modern era of development. The potential groundbreaking effects that loom behind these machines is mysterious. With the ability to save lives, act as a medium for business development and confrontations, and provide its users with endless hours of entertainment, learning, and discovery, the world should be pushing for an increased presence of this product, just the same as it did in the 1990’s. This time around, our technology will have come far enough to support the needs for these devices and will begin implementing virtual reality within homes, medical centers, and offices.
