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Users can often interactively manipulate a VR environment, either through standard input devices like a keyboard, or through specially designed devices like a cyberglove. The simulated environment can be similar to the real world—for example, in simulations for pilot or combat training—or it can differ significantly from reality, as in VR games.
In practice, it is very difficult to create a convincing virtual reality experience, due largely to technical limitations on processing power and image resolution.
Virtual reality originally denoted a fully immersive system, although it has since been used to describe systems lacking cybergloves etc., such as VRML on the World Wide Web and occasionally even text-based interactive systems such as MOOs or MUDs.
The term virtual reality was coined by Jaron Lanier in 1989. Lanier is one of the pioneers of the field, founding the company VPL Research (from Virtual Programming Languages) which built some of the first systems in the 1980s. The related term artificial reality has been in use since the 1970s and cyberspace dates to 1984This page is about the year 1984. For other uses of 1984, see 1984 (disambiguation). 1984 is a leap year starting on Sunday (link shows calendar). Events January January 1 Brunei becomes a fully independent state January 1 AT&T is broken up into 22 indepe.
Virtual reality has been heavily criticized for being an inefficient method for navigating non-geographical information. At present, the idea of ubiquitous computingUbiquitous computing (ubicomp, or sometimes ubiqcomp) integrates computation into the environment, rather than having computers which are distinct objects. Another term for ubiquitous computing is pervasive computing . Promoters of this idea hope that emb is very popular in user interfaceThe user interface is the part of a system exposed to a user. In general, the system can be any kind of system with which a user may interact at will, such as a mechanical system or a computer system. For example, in an automobile the user interface consi design, and this may be seen as a reaction against VR and its problems. In reality, these two kinds of interfaces have totally different goals and are complementary. Ubiquitous computing's goal is to bring the computer into the user's world, rather than force the user to go inside the computer. The current trend in VR is actually to merge the two user interface paradigms together to create a fully immersiveThe term immersive refers to the impression that someone has of being somewhere while, in reality, he is physically in another place. Related topic: Virtual Reality. and integrated experience.
Many science fictionScience fiction generally speaking, is a form of speculative fiction which deals principally with the impact of imagined science and/or technology upon society or individuals. There are, perhaps, exceptions to (or at least, some very unusual examples of) books and movies have imagined characters being "trapped in virtual reality". The first movie to do this was TRON; a famous recent example was The MatrixThis article is about the film The Matrix, for other usages of the term, see Matrix. The Matrix is a film first released in the USA on March 31, 1999, written and directed by the Wachowski brothers (Andy and Larry). It stars Keanu Reeves, Laurence Fishbur.
National Lampoon's Last Resort was significant in that it presented virtual reality and reality as often overlapping, and sometimes indistinguishable. Also, the British comedy Red Dwarf utilized in several episodes the idea that life (or at least the life seen on the show) is a virtual reality game. This idea was also used in . .Hack centers around a virtual reality video game.
However, in reality, it is always easy to tell VR from reality: the images are less than realistic, they lag one's movements, and other senses, including the senses of touch and smell, give away the unreality of the scene before you.
Other science fiction books have promoted virtual reality as a partial (but not total) substitution for the misery of reality (in the sense that a pauper in the real world can be a prince in VR), or have promoted it as a method for creating breathtaking virtual worlds in which people would regularly live and play and socialize. One of the best examples of both ideas was Neal Stephenson's novel Snow Crash. However, in 2003, Stephenson admitted to Wired magazine that Snow Crash was a "failed prophecy."
See simulated reality for a discussion of what might have to be considered if a flawless virtual reality technology was possible.
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