Virtual reality is a dummy environment built from scratch, which generally requires the use of a VR headset. It allows you to participate in a multitude of experiences, whether to play, have fun or meet.
What is Virtual Reality?
In everyday language, virtual reality (or VR, for Virtual Reality) is a sort of vast umbrella that covers the spaces and environments created from scratch as well as the tools that allow access to them. Virtual reality is a technology that allows the user to be immersed in a 3D environment in which they can generally move around, in order to participate in experiences that are impossible to reproduce in reality (or difficult to set up).
Is it the same as augmented reality?
No, because augmented reality (AR, Augmented Reality) adds virtual elements to a real environment, usually by overlaying them on real images (with a smartphone camera or glasses, for example). VR, on the other hand, creates a completely virtual environment that can be inspired by reality, but can also be totally imaginary. We can’t see through.
Is it the same as metaverse?
It depends on the case (and it causes a lot of debate). If we can consider that a metaverse is a virtual universe, not all metaverses allow a sensory experience as described above. Lots of games (like sims Where Second Life) are metaverses, without the user being able to move there directly. But, in some cases (Horizon Worldsfor example), a metaverse can work only in virtual reality.
How long has virtual reality existed?
The first so-called virtual reality machine was the Sensorama, a machine built by Morton Hellig in 1956. It allowed its user to be immersed in a dummy environment using several of his senses (touch, hearing, smell , etc.) and operated using devices taken from the movie industry. The American army has also taken an interest in the subject, in particular to create flight simulators.
The first virtual reality headsets date back to the 1990s, when NASA pushed research in this area. The world of video games is quickly seeking to take hold of it, but will have to wait several years before being able to develop tools that are accessible to the general public and really functional.
Why is virtual reality trendy?
As technologies evolve, immersion becomes possible. This inevitably makes manufacturers want to develop the technology.
In 2007, for example, Google models the planet with Google Street View. For the first time, a tool makes it possible to travel virtually to almost all regions of the world. But, we inevitably say that the technology is not suitable for computer screens.
In 2009, the American Palmer Lucker, a fan of electronics, built a series of VR headset prototypes. He meets John Carmack, of the video game studio ID Software, which allows him to gain notoriety. Soon, he created the Oculus VR structure and marketed a must: the Oculus Rift. In 2014, Oculus was bought by Facebook (which has since become Meta) for $2 billion. The same year, several big names in video games and electronics — Valve, publisher of Steam, Samsung, then HTC, announced projects in virtual reality (whether helmets allowing access to it, where the development of games and virtual worlds in which to move).
After a relative slump due to the cost of VR equipment and the fact that it continues to make some users dizzy or nauseous, VR has returned to center stage. Under the combined effect, among others:.
- From the pandemic – being constrained at home has revived interest in more or less realistic meeting spaces online,
- big announcements from companies like Meta, which wants to develop a complete metaverse (in this case, a 3D virtual universe, in which we can move around once equipped with the right helmet),
- and the frenzy around Web3. By making it possible to create currencies of exchange and titles of ownership (for example, on skins, useful objects in a video game or spaces created in digital worlds), blockchain applications are sometimes seen as a means to develop in virtual spaces uses hitherto reserved for reality short — buy land, for example.
What are the main uses of VR?
Several quite different sectors show a real interest in the possibilities offered by VR.
- In real estate, it gives a new dimension to online apartment visits. Without the experience necessarily being immersive, VR allows the Internet user to move around in the space that interests him in “doll’s house” mode. He can therefore apprehend much more easily – and without moving – the places that make up the home he or she is considering buying or renting.
- In museums, which are starting to offer immersive experiences, for example, to reconstruct events from the past. If you go through Nemours, know that in a dungeon of the castle, you can put on a VR helmet to follow the explanations of Gauthier I of Villebéon, who initiated the construction of the building in the 12th century (we tested for you, c is deliciously cringe-instructive).
- In medicine, where virtual reality allows changes in operating methods, in particular.
- In video games – think of Ready Player One – VR brings a much more developed sensory dimension than when the player is facing a screen, since it takes him into the video game universe.
If it’s virtual, is it unreal?
As is often the case in digital technology, the vocabulary we use can be confusing. It’s not because we talk about virtual reality that what we experience there is not real. It is therefore not because the interactions that we conduct take place in an online space, programmed from A to Z, that we must behave there anyhow – attacking our neighbor, dumping his unfiltered hatred, etc. Anyway, that’s for the principle: in reality, as soon as the virtual space dreamed up by Mark Zuckerberg was launched, stories of aggression emerged. It remains to be seen, therefore, what tricks we will create to encourage a minimum of civility in virtual worlds.
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