Virtual Reality
TVR 3101
Assignment 1
Submission: 7/1/2002
Lecturer: Wong Ya Ping
Introduction
1) Definition of VR - Siti Mahfuzah Sarif , 98100500
2) Various Term in VR - Nor Azdalina Adam , 98100312
3) Misconception of VR - Raisyan Auni , 98100448
4) History of VR - Filzah Mohd Othman , 98100703
5) VR Applications - S. Shushmita Jahan , 1991149587
6) Example of Virtual World - Kim Bok Hee , 1011173654 on WWW
Definition of Virtual reality
Most popular definitions of ‘Virtual Reality’ make reference to a particular technological system or hardware. This hardware usually includes a computer, which capable of real-time animation, controlled by bunch of wired gloves and joysticks, and using a head-mounted stereoscopic display for visual output. The following are three examples of such definitions:
ü Virtual Reality is electronic simulations of environments experienced via head mounted eye goggles and wired clothing enabling the end user to interact in realistic three-dimensional situations. (Coates, 1992)
ü Virtual Reality is an alternate world filled with computer-generated images that respond to human movements. These simulated environments are usually visited with the aid of an expensive data suit, which features stereophonic video goggles and fiber-optic data gloves. (Greenbaum, 1992)
ü The terms virtual worlds, virtual cockpits, and virtual workstations were used to describe specific projects. In 1989, Jaron Lanier, CEO of VPL, coined the term virtual reality to bring all of the virtual projects under a single rubric. The term therefore typically refers to three-dimensional realities implemented with stereo viewing goggles and reality gloves. (Krueger, 1991, p. xiii)
Though these three definitions vary somewhat, all include the statements of both electronically simulated environments and of "goggles and gloves" systems as the key elements to enter these environments. As the images displayed become larger and interactive controls more complex, the perception of ‘reality’ increases.
However, it is possible to define virtual reality without reference to particular hardware. For instance, a simple and less technical definition of virtual reality - a simulation of a real or imagined environment that can be experienced visually in the 3 dimensions of width, height, and depth and may additionally provide an interactive experience visually in full real-time motion with sound and possibly with other forms of feedback. The simplest form of virtual reality is a 3-D image that can be explored interactively at a personal computer, usually by manipulating keys or the mouse so that the content of the image moves in some direction or zooms in or out. Most of these images require installing a plug-in for the browser.
“Virtual reality can be divided into:
· The simulation of real environments such as the interior of a building or a spaceship often with the purpose of training or education
· The development of an imagined environment, typically for a game or educational adventure”
(Taken from the whatis.com websites)
Popular software for creating virtual reality effects on PC includes Extreme 3D, 3D Studio MAX, and Maya. The Virtual Reality Modeling Language (VRML) allows the creator to specify images and the rules for their display and interaction using textual language.
Various Terms in Virtual Reality
Virtual Environment (VE)
A virtual environment (VE) is a computer-simulated world consisting of mathematical and software representations of real (or imagined) agents, objects and processes; and a human-computer interface for displaying and interacting with these models. Through this system, users are able to see, hear and touch data that would normally be beyond the range of their senses. Anything that can be describe digitally can be seen, heard, touch and interacted with in a virtual environment, even if it is an object not in the range of our normal experiences.
A virtual environment consists of three important components: interactive, immersive and involve real time rendering. It is interactive as users are able to manipulate or modify objects in the world using any hardware input devices and, changes can be seen instantaneously. It is immersive in the sense that users really feel like they have been transported to a virtual world. Real time rendering is an important aspect of virtual environment because users in the system are supposed to see the same objects in the world even after it has been modified by any of them. Hence, it is important that rendering is fast enough to respond to the changes made by users.
Despite technical limitations, a virtual environment is the most effective form of information technology for providing multi-sensory experience including visual, auditory and to some extend hap tic and tactileues. The sense of presence ensures that the perceived experience is interpreted as being real and makes it likely that skills learned in the virtual environment will be transferred to the real world.
Collaborative Virtual Environment (CVE)
Collaborative virtual environment (CVE) involves the use of distributed virtual reality technology to support group work. A necessary, but not sufficient condition for a CVE is the provision of simultaneous multi-user access to a virtual reality system. However, there may be a world of difference between a multi-user system and one that actually support cooperative work and so a second condition is that the system must explicitly consider and support the needs of users who wish to work together.
The essence of CVE is that users are explicitly represented to each other within a shared space. Furthermore, they should be free to move around within this space, encountering each other and also objects and information of common interest. There are several general reasons for supposing that CVEs might be useful. There general ones are as follows:
1) Support for natural spatial social skills.
The development of single user interface technologies has involved exploiting an individual’s cognitive spatial skills (the ability to reason about space). However, humans also posses social spatial skills whereby they make use of shared space as a means of negotiating interaction with one another.
2) Inherent Scalability
There is a real need to address synchronous communication between many hundreds of thousands of simultaneous users. In order to do this, the underlying approach must have some inherent property that is scaleable. Shared space is one such property as it provides a natural way to interact with many people and yet separate what is immediate and local from what is peripheral and distant.
3) Applicability to cooperative spatial tasks
Some highly spatial tasks such as 3-D design (e.g. architectural design) and environmental planning which is currently the domain of single user virtual reality applications may also offer possibilities for collaborations.
Below is an example of a collaborative virtual environment. All users see the same virtual environment from their respective points of view. Each user is presented as a virtual human (avatar) to the other participants. The users can see each other, communicated with each other, and interact with the virtual world as a team.
Figure: Collaborative Virtual Environment
Misconception of Virtual Reality
Although there is a tremendous growth of virtual reality applications in today’s life, yet some people still have the wrong idea of the exact concept of virtual reality.One of the misconceptions is that VR is meant only to be 3 dimensional, which consists of height, width and depth. This is untrue as for the fourth component to our life is ‘time’ and true VR allows this component to be created as well.
There is also a misconception that VR files conceive a lot of space. Traditionally, their sizes are actually huge but they can be small if they consist mostly of vector graphics. Furthermore, with the increasing bandwidth of the computer nowadays, there is no need to worry about the file size anymore.
When we talk about VR applications, people think that they must also include a Head Mount Display (HMD). This display technology has several problems; it is difficult to put on, prone to breakage and have hygienic risks within heavy use environments. Actually there is an alternative for this. WindowVR technology delivers a fully integrated VR solution complete with display, position tracking and built-in navigation controls.
Another common misconception of VR is that this state-of-the-art technology only covers for entertainments, science laboratory and video arcade. However current studies show that VR application can be spread into much wider fields. By right, VR is more than entertainment. Possible use of VR is approved to be highly efficient to be conducted in business and medical field.
History of Virtual Reality (How VR Evolved)
Virtual reality may have popped into the headlines only in the past few years, but its roots reach back four decades. It was in the late 1950s when the idea arose. The concept has altered the way people think and view the world of computing as VR is based on interactivity between the real and the virtual world. At the time, computers were hulking Goliaths locked in air-conditioned rooms and used only by those familiar in obscure programming languages. A young electrical engineer and former naval radar technician named Douglas Engelbart envisioned them as tools for digital display. He then reasoned out and connects the computer to a screen and use both to solve problems.
At first, Engelbart's ideas were dismissed, but by the early 1960s other people were thinking the same way. Moreover, communications technology was intersecting with computing and graphics technology. The first computers based on transistors rather than vacuum tubes became available. This synergy yielded more user-friendly computers, which laid the groundwork for personal computers, computer graphics, and later on, the emergence of virtual reality.
About over thirty years ago, a young man by the name of Morton Heilig who was a cinematographer, wanted to utilize the other seventy-two percent of the spectator's viewing field. He wanted to create an ultimate full-view experience for the spectator and created a unit called the "Sensorama Simulator", released in the early 1960's. This virtual workstation utilized 3-D video, obtained with three 35 mm cameras mounted on the cameraman. The setup included stereo sound, integrated with the full 3-D camera views. The viewer could ride a motorcycle while sensing the wind, simulated by a fan, and even potholes in the road. The machine was crude, but it opened the door for a multitude of ideas on virtual world.
In 1966, Ivan Sutherland, a graduate student at the University of Utah, picked up where Heilig had left off. Sutherland used two Cathode Ray Tubes mounted near the ears to simulate the three dimensional experience. Sutherland started the idea of the graphics accelerator, an integral part in modern virtual simulation. The military quickly recognized the potential of this idea in flight simulation, and spent most of the seventies designing helmets that could simulate a view of flight. Also, NASA began research on using the technology for space flight, and later, moon landings.
Ironically, the VR evolution can be seen in a few areas namely data simulation, military and war games and, entertainment industry.
Data simulation
Decades ago, in fear of nuclear attack has prompted the U.S. military to commission a new radar system that would process large amounts of information and immediately display it in a form that humans could readily understand. The resulting radar defense system was the first "real time," or instantaneous, simulation of data.
Then, Aircraft designers began experimenting with ways for computers to graphically display, or model, air flow data. Computer experts began restructuring computers so they would display these models as well as compute them. The designers' work paved the way for scientific visualization, an advanced form of computer modeling that expresses multiple sets of data as images and simulations.
Soon after, a combination of self-styled computer wizards strove to reduce the barriers to human interactions with the computer by replacing keyboards with interactive devices that relied on images and hand gestures to manipulate data. In 1962 Ivan Sutherland developed a light pen with which images could be sketched on a computer. Sutherland's first computer-aided design program, called Sketchpad, opened the way for designers to use computers to create blueprints of automobiles, cities, and industrial products. By the end of the decade, the designs were operating in real time. By 1970, Sutherland also produced a primitive head-mounted display a pointing device for moving text around on a computer screen that is the first "mouse."
Military
One of the most influential histories of virtual reality was the flight simulator. Following World War II and through the 1990s, the military and industrial complex pumped millions of dollars into technology to simulate flying airplanes. As a result, it was cheaper, and safer, to train pilots on the ground before subjecting them to the hazards of flight. The early flight simulators consisted of mock cockpits built on motion platforms that pitched and rolled. A limitation, however, was they lacked visual feedback. This changed when video displays were coupled with model cockpits.
By the 1970s, computer-generated graphics had replaced videos and models. These flight simulations were operating in real time, though the graphics were primitive. In 1979, the military experimented with head-mounted displays. These innovations were driven by the greater dangers associated with training on and flying the jet fighters that were being built in the 1970s. By the early 1980s, better software, hardware, and motion-control platforms enabled pilots to navigate through highly detailed virtual worlds.
Entertainment
By the 1970s, some of Hollywood's most dazzling special effects were computer-generated, such as the battle scenes in the big-budget, blockbuster science fiction movie Star Wars, which was released in 1976. Later came such movies as Terminator and Jurassic Park. In the early 1980s, the video game business boomed.
One direct spin-off of entertainment's venture into computer graphics was the data glove, a computer interface device that detects hand movements. It was invented to produce music by linking hand gestures to a music synthesizer. NASA Ames was one of the first customers for this new computer input device for its experiments with virtual environments. But the biggest consumer of the data glove was the Mattel Company, which adapted it into the ‘Power Glove’, the pervasive mitt with which children conquered adversaries in the popular Nintendo game.