What is Virtual Reality?
In the world we live in there are many things that you may not get to do or accomplish in your lifetime. You may never be able to actually travel the world or travel through space but you may be able to do so virtually. Virtual reality (VR) makes use of computer technology to create a simulated environment. In this simulated environment users are able to be immersed in many simulations of situations that they would never have gotten to experience otherwise. You could travel the world or travel through space. If you so choose you could also 'walk' in someone else's shoes and experience life from a different perspective. It is this perspective taking/perspective shifting that makes virtual reality such a unique technology. With it, a user might be able to change their views or behaviors because of the experiences that are taken through and because of this exciting technology. This idea, that VR might be able to change a person's views or behaviors, is the main topic that this website will be seeking to address but in order to understand why this can occur an overview of how virtual reality came to be must first be established. Even though there has been a resurgence in excitement about VR technology in recent years, it is by no means a 'new' technology. VR has a history of being used to help train people in certain professions (surgeons, scientists, military, etc.) and as a way to give users a glimpse into certain aspects of the world they might never have seen.
To begin with, there are some terms that would be helpful to know and remember when navigating through this website. The first being, what is meant by a simulated environment? At its core, virtual reality cannot exist without taking shape from some real world input. VR simulates our current understanding of the world or any idea that programmers and users have to create certain situations and environments to explore. To do this, most VR machines make use of head-mounted displays (HMD) which display stereoscopic 3D images. Stereoscopic imagery refers to a pair of stereo (two) images that are presented slightly offset to the left and right eye of the user. These two two-dimensional dimensional images are then combined using lenses and give the brain the perception of 3D depth. In addition to the stereoscopic 3D images, VR headsets are most often equipped with audio speakers and motion tracking software that captures the users head movements and changes the image, video, or games camera accordingly. This motion tracking software is not one hundred percent complete and can still cause some problems when users are using the VR headsets. Some of these problems include motion sickness and head pain. Some of these problems are addressed on this website and some answers are discussed as well.
This website hopes to give readers an overview into the history of virtual reality and hopes to start the conversation to ascertain if virtual reality can affect real world behaviors along with the benefits and problems of using this technology to do so.