In areas such as consumer electronics or Marketing virtual reality (such as 3D configurators) is the absolute mega trend at the moment. Virtual reality have changed our dialy live and provides for companies a enormous potential in the future.
User have by virtual reality the feeling of sinking in another reality.
However, this is not a new concept: already in the 60ies and 70ies first virtual reality projects are realized. But due to the low computer performance in this time the projects unrest quickly break down.
The motor of the early VR development was the military and the film industry. Today virtual reality is increasingly used by firms from the consumer electronics, medicine or architecture industry.
The best known experiment in VR is the game Virtua Boy from the year 1995:
But these experiments were not persuasive. Due the low computer performance at that time the first trials did not result in convincing 3D effects.
Head Mounted Displays and datagloves are very popular at the moment.
The dataglove is a input device. The following video visualize the functioning of datagloves.
Head mounted displays are the most popular VR output devices at the moment. The user wear the head mounted display of the head. The user completely immersed in the virtual world.
VR is naturally very important in research and development. For example test persons can sink by the Cave Automatic Virtual Environment (CAVE) at the university of Illinois in another world:
VR applications can classify to various aspects. They vary for example of the level of immersion. A destinction is made between the 4 following classifications.
Pseudo-VR is precalculated and don`t allows presentations in Realtime. The level of immersion is very low.
The use of Desktop-VR leads to a middle level of immersion.
Relatively new are intuitive input devices. By free movement they leads to a high level of immersion.
By inverse VR virtual elements are integrated in the real world of user. Here is the level of immersion negative.
VR was early used in military. At the centre of attention were flightsimulators like the MS Flight Simulator:
A another popular scope is medicine. VR be used in the invasive surgery or in education.
The most popular scope is in consumer electronics. Examples are Desktop-VR in Onlinegames or Head Mounted Displays.
Very important is VR also in the sectors medicine or vehicles.