Description

Virtual Reality (VR) is a new and exciting technology that holds much promise for delivering innovative new ways for people to interact with computers. What is Virtual Reality? The goal of a VR system is to place the user in a synthetically generated three-dimensional environment that he or she can directly manipulate. Ideally, users cease to think of themselves as interacting with a computer; they think of themselves as interacting with the environment it has created. Special input and output devices allow a user to interact with a virtual environment. These capture the user&#**9;s motion and gestures and produce the sensory feedback from the synthetic environment to the user&#**9;s vision, hearing and touch. Virtual Reality Technology The popular conception of VR involves full immersion of the user. That is, he or she wears a head-mounted stereo display to provide full visual immersion, special gloves and a body-suit for movement detection and tactile feedback, and wears earphones - or uses loudspeakers - for audio immersion. The user position and movement are tracked in real time and animated perceptual feedback is provided. Accordingly, the user perceives him or herself → her as being inside a physical environment, and able to manipulate the virtual objects it contains by ordinary body movements. Small movements of a user can be amplified to obtain enhanced or unusual effects in these virtual worlds. VR and Telecommunications VR technology has the potential to be a means of delivering a flexible effective way for the customer to gain access to tele-education, tele-working, teleshoping, and other services necessary to support the activities of daily life in a community. The current pace of development is sufficiently great to start fulfilling this potential within several years.