Virtual reality

U.S. Navy personnel using a VR parachute trainer
World Skin (1997), Maurice Benayoun's virtual reality interactive installation

Virtual reality (VR) is a term that applies to computer-simulated environments that can simulate places in the real world, as well as in imaginary worlds. Most current virtual reality environments are primarily visual experiences, displayed either on a computer screen or through special stereoscopic displays, but some simulations include additional sensory information, such as sound through speakers or headphones. Some advanced, haptic systems now include tactile information, generally known as force feedback, in medical and gaming applications.

Users can interact with a virtual environment or a virtual artifact (VA) either through the use of standard input devices such as a keyboard and mouse, or through multimodal devices such as a wired glove, the Polhemus, and omnidirectional treadmills. The simulated environment can be similar to the real world—for example, in simulations for pilot or combat training—or it can differ significantly from reality, such as in VR games. In practice, it is currently very difficult to create a high-fidelity virtual reality experience, due largely to technical limitations on processing power, image resolution, and communication bandwidth; however, the technology's proponents hope that such limitations will be overcome as processor, imaging, and data communication technologies become more powerful and cost-effective over time.

Virtual reality is often used to describe a wide variety of applications commonly associated with immersive, highly visual, 3D environments. The development of CAD software, graphics hardware acceleration, head mounted displays, database gloves, and miniaturization have helped popularize the notion. In the book The Metaphysics of Virtual Reality by Michael R. Heim, seven different concepts of virtual reality are identified: simulation, interaction, artificiality, immersion, telepresence, full-body immersion, and network communication. The definition still has a certain futuristic romanticism attached. People often identify VR with head mounted displays and data suits.

Contents

Background

Terminology and concepts

The term "artificial reality", coined by Myron Krueger, has been in use since the 1970s; however, the origin of the term "virtual reality" can be traced back to the French playwright, poet, actor, and director Antonin Artaud. In his seminal book The Theatre and Its Double (1938), Artaud described theatre as "la réalite virtuelle", a virtual reality "in which characters, objects, and images take on the phantasmagoric force of alchemy's visionary internal dramas".[1] It has been used in The Judas Mandala, a 1982 science-fiction novel by Damien Broderick, where the context of use is somewhat different from that defined above. The earliest use cited by the Oxford English Dictionary is in a 1987 article titled "Virtual reality",[2] but the article is not about VR technology. The concept of virtual reality was popularized in mass media by movies such as Brainstorm and The Lawnmower Man. The VR research boom of the 1990s was accompanied by the non-fiction book Virtual Reality (1991) by Howard Rheingold.[3] The book served to demystify the subject, making it more accessible to less technical researchers and enthusiasts, with an impact similar to that which his book The Virtual Community had on virtual community research lines closely related to VR. Multimedia: from Wagner to Virtual Reality, edited by Randall Packer and Ken Jordan and first published in 2001, explores the term and its history from an avant-garde perspective. Philosophical implications of the concept of VR are systematically discussed in the book Get Real: A Philosophical Adventure in Virtual Reality (1998) by Philip Zhai, wherein the idea of VR is pushed to its logical extreme and ultimate possibility. According to Zhai, virtual reality could be made to have an ontological status equal to that of actual reality. Digital Sensations: Space, Identity and Embodiment in Virtual Reality (1999), written by Ken Hillis, offers a more critical and theoretical academic assessment of the complex set of cultural and political desires and practices culminating in the development of the technology.

Timeline

Virtual reality can trace its roots to the 1860s, when 360-degree art through panoramic murals began to appear. An example of this would be Baldassare Peruzzi's piece titled, Sala delle Prospettive. In the 1920s, vehicle simulators were introduced. Morton Heilig wrote in the 1950s of an "Experience Theatre" that could encompass all the senses in an effective manner, thus drawing the viewer into the onscreen activity. He built a prototype of his vision dubbed the Sensorama in 1962, along with five short films to be displayed in it while engaging multiple senses (sight, sound, smell, and touch). Predating digital computing, the Sensorama was a mechanical device, which reportedly still functions today. Around this time, Douglas Englebart uses computer screens as both input and output devices. In 1966, Tom Furness introduces a visual flight stimulator for the Air Force. In 1968, Ivan Sutherland, with the help of his student Bob Sproull, created what is widely considered to be the first virtual reality and augmented reality (AR) head mounted display (HMD) system. It was primitive both in terms of user interface and realism, and the HMD to be worn by the user was so heavy it had to be suspended from the ceiling. The graphics comprising the virtual environment were simple wireframe model rooms. The formidable appearance of the device inspired its name, The Sword of Damocles. Also notable among the earlier hypermedia and virtual reality systems was the Aspen Movie Map, which was created at MIT in 1977. The program was a crude virtual simulation of Aspen, Colorado in which users could wander the streets in one of three modes: summer, winter, and polygons. The first two were based on photographs—the researchers actually photographed every possible movement through the city's street grid in both seasons—and the third was a basic 3-D model of the city. In the late 1980s, the term "virtual reality" was popularized by Jaron Lanier, one of the modern pioneers of the field. Lanier had founded the company VPL Research in 1985, which developed and built some of the seminal "goggles and gloves" systems of that decade. In 1991, Antonio Medina, a MIT graduate and NASA scientist, designed a virtual reality system to "drive" Mars rovers from Earth in apparent real time despite the substantial delay of Mars-Earth-Mars signals. The system, termed "Computer-Simulated Teleoperation" as published by Rand, is an extension of virtual reality.[4]

Future

In the short run, the graphics displayed in the HMD will soon reach a point of near visual (but not behavioral) realism. The audio capabilities will move into a new realm of three dimensional sound, which refers to the addition of sound channels both above and below the individual or a Holophony approach. Within existing technological limits, sight and sound are the two senses which best lend themselves to high quality simulation. There are, however, attempts being made to simulate smell. The purpose of current research is linked to a project aimed at treating Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) in veterans by exposing them to combat simulations, complete with smells. Although it is often seen in the context of entertainment by popular culture, this illustrates the point that the future of VR is very much tied into therapeutic, training, and engineering demands.[5] Given that fact, a full sensory immersion beyond basic tactile feedback, sight, sound, and smell is unlikely to be a goal in the industry. It is worth mentioning that simulating smells, while realistically possible, requires costly research and development to make each odor, and the machine itself is expensive and specialized, using capsules tailor made for it. As a result, basic and very strong smells such as burning rubber, cordite, and gasoline fumes have been made. Japan's NTT Communications has recently finished testing an Internet-connected odor-delivery system to be used by retailers and restaurants to attract customers. But as new trials and applications are tried out and more data is gathered, Hamada says he is sure the technology "will take communications to a new level in content richness, compared to today's communications, which only offers images and sounds".[6]

In order to engage the other sense of taste, the brain must be manipulated directly. This would move virtual reality into the realm of simulated reality, similar to the brain interface ports used in The Matrix. Although no form of this has been seriously developed at this point, Sony has taken the first step. On April 7, 2005, Sony went public with information that they had filed for, and received a patent for the idea of non-invasive beaming of different frequencies and patterns of ultrasonic waves directly into the brain to recreate all five senses.[7] There has been research to show that this is possible. Sony has conducted tests and says that it is a good idea.

Virtual reality is a costly development in technology. Because of this, the future of VR is dependent on whether or not those costs can be reduced in some way. If VR technology becomes affordable, it could be very widespread, but for moment, major industries are the sole buyers that have the opportunity to utilize this resource.

Impact

There has been an increase in interest in the potential social impact of new technologies, such as virtual reality. Mychilo S. Cline, in his book Power, Madness, and Immortality: The Future of Virtual Reality, argues that virtual reality will lead to a number of important changes in human life and activity.[8] He argues that:

Heritage and archaeology

The use of VR in heritage and archaeology has potential in museum and visitor centre applications, but its use has been tempered by the difficulty in presenting a "quick to learn" real time experience to numerous people at any given time. Many historic reconstructions tend to be in a pre-rendered format to a shared video display, thus allowing more than one person to view a computer generated world, but limiting the interaction that full-scale VR can provide. The first use of a VR presentation in a heritage application was in 1994, when a museum visitor interpretation provided an interactive "walk-through" of a 3D reconstruction of Dudley Castle in England as it was in 1550. This consisted of a computer controlled laserdisc-based system designed by British based engineer Colin Johnson. It is a little known fact that one of the first users of virtual reality was Queen Elizabeth II, when she officially opened the visitor centre in June 1994. The system was featured in a conference held by the British Museum in November 1994, and in the subsequent technical paper, Imaging the Past - Electronic Imaging and Computer Graphics in Museums and Archaeology.

VR reconstruction

Virtual reality enables heritage sites to be recreated extremely accurately, so that the recreations can be published in various media.[11] The original sites are often inaccessible to the public, or may even no longer exist. This technology can be used to develop virtual replicas of caves, natural environment, old towns, monuments, sculptures and archaeological elements.[12]

Mass media

Mass media has been a great advocate and perhaps a great hindrance to its development over the years. During the research "boom" of the late-1980s into the 1990s, the news media's prognostication on the potential of VR, and potential overexposure in publishing the predictions of anyone who had one, built the expectations of the technology so high as to be impossible to achieve under the technology then or any technology to date. Entertainment media reinforced these concepts with futuristic imagery many generations beyond contemporary capabilities.

Fiction books

Many science fiction books and movies have imagined characters being "trapped in virtual reality".

A comprehensive and specific fictional model for virtual reality was published in 1935 in the short story Pygmalion's Spectacles by Stanley G. Weinbaum. In the story, the main character, Dan Burke, meets an elfin professor, Albert Ludwig, who has invented "a movie that gives one sight and sound [...] taste, smell, and touch. [...] You are in the story, you speak to the shadows (characters) and they reply, and instead of being on a screen, the story is all about you, and you are in it." A more modern work to use this idea was Daniel F. Galouye's novel Simulacron-3, which was made into a German teleplay titled Welt am Draht ("World on a Wire") in 1973. Other science fiction books have promoted the idea of virtual reality as a partial, but not total, substitution for the misery of reality, or have touted it as a method for creating breathtaking virtual worlds in which one may escape from Earth. They are not aware of this, because their minds exist within a shared, idealized virtual world known as Dream Earth, where they grow up, live, and die, never knowing the world they live in is but a dream.

Stanisław Lem wrote a short story in early 1960 called "dziwne skrzynie profesora Corcorana", in which he presented a scientist who devised a completely artificial virtual reality. Among the beings trapped inside his created virtual world, there is also a scientist, who also devised such machines creating another level of virtual world. The Piers Anthony novel Killobyte follows the story of a paralyzed cop trapped in a virtual reality game by a hacker, whom he must stop to save a fellow trapped player slowly succumbing to insulin shock. This novel toys with the idea of both the potential positive therapeutic uses, such as allowing the paralyzed to experience the illusion of movement while stimulating unused muscles, as well as virtual realities' dangers. Vernor Vinge's True Names, published in 1981, imagines a virtual world which is probably the first to represent a metaverse. In the story, characters interact with each other in a complete world, where they own homes and are represented using avatars. This type of virtual world was later to be realized as Second Life, which was launched in 2003.

Other popular fictional works that use the concept of virtual reality include William Gibson's Neuromancer which defined the concept of cyberspace, Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash, in which he made extensive reference to the term avatar to describe one's representation in a virtual world, and Rudy Rucker's The Hacker and the Ants, in which programmer Jerzy Rugby uses VR for robot design and testing.

Television

Perhaps the earliest example of virtual reality on television is the Doctor Who serial "The Deadly Assassin". This story, first broadcast in 1976, introduced a dream-like computer-generated reality, known as the Matrix. The first major American television series to showcase virtual reality was Star Trek: The Next Generation. Several episodes featured a holodeck, a virtual reality facility that enabled its users to recreate and experience anything they wanted. One difference from current virtual reality technology, however, was that replicators, force fields, holograms, and transporters were used to actually recreate and place objects in the holodeck, rather than illusions of physical objects, as is done today.

Cult British BBC2 sci-fi series Red Dwarf featured a virtual reality game titled "Better Than Life", in which the main characters had spent many years connected. Virtual reality has also been featured in other Red Dwarf episodes, including "Back to Reality", where venom from the despair squid caused the characters to believe that all of their experiences on Red Dwarf had been part of a VR simulation. Other episodes that feature virtual reality include "Gunmen of the Apocalypse", "Stoke Me a Clipper", "Blue", "Beyond a Joke", and "Back in the Red".

The popular .hack multimedia franchise is based on a virtual reality MMORPG dubbed "The World" The French animated series Code Lyoko is based on the virtual world of Lyoko and the Internet. The virtual world is accessed by large scanners which use an atomic process, and breaks down the atoms of the person inside, digitizes them, and recreates an incarnation on Lyoko.

Motion pictures

Steven Lisberger's 1982 movie TRON was the first mainstream Hollywood picture to explore the idea of virtual reality. One year later, it would be fully expanded in the Natalie Wood film Brainstorm. One of the non-science fiction movies that uses VR as a story driver is 1994's Disclosure, starring Michael Douglas and based on the Michael Crichton book of the same name. A VR headset is used as a navigating device for a prototype computer filing system. James Cameron's Avatar depicts a time when people's consciousness are virtually transported into biologically grown avatars.

Games

Classic Virtual reality HMD with glove

In 1991, Virtuality (originally W Industries) licensed the Amiga 3000 for use in their VR machines, and released a VR gaming system called the 1000CS. This was a stand-up immersive HMD platform with a tracked 3D joystick. The system featured several VR games including Dactyl Nightmare, Legend Quest, Hero, and Grid Busters. The Aura Interactor Virtual Reality Game Wear is a chest and back harness through which the player can feel punches, explosions, kicks, uppercuts, slam-dunks, crashes, and bodyblows. It works with the Sega Genesis and Super Nintendo Entertainment System.

In the Mage: The Ascension role-playing game, the mage tradition of the Virtual Adepts is presented as the creators of VR. The Adepts' ultimate objective is to move into virtual reality, scrapping their physical bodies in favour of improved virtual ones. Also, the .hack series centers on a virtual reality video game. This shows the potentially dangerous side of virtual reality, demonstrating the adverse effects on human health and possible viruses, including a comatose state which some players assume. Metal Gear Solid bases heavily on VR usage, either as a part of the plot (notably Metal Gear Solid 2), or simply to guide the players through training sessions.

Radio

In 2009, British digital radio station BBC Radio 7 broadcasted Planet B, a science-fiction drama set in a virtual world. Planet B is the largest ever commission for an original drama programme.[13]

Fine Art

David Em was the first fine artist to create navigable virtual worlds in the 1970s. His early work was done on mainframes at III, JPL, and Caltech. Jeffrey Shaw explored the potential of VR in fine arts with early works like Legible City (1989), Virtual Museum (1991), and Golden Calf (1994). Canadian artist Char Davies created immersive VR art pieces Osmose (1995) and Ephémère (1998). Maurice Benayoun's work introduced metaphorical, philosophical or political content, combining VR, network, generation and intelligent agents, in works like Is God Flat (1994), The Tunnel under the Atlantic (1995), and World Skin (1997). Other pioneering artists working in VR have include Luc Courchesne, Rita Addison, Knowbotic Research, Rebecca Allen, Perry Hoberman, Jacki Morie, and Brenda Laurel. All mentioned artists are documented in the Database of Virtual Art.

Marketing

A side effect of the chic image that has been cultivated for virtual reality in the media is that advertising and merchandise have been associated with VR over the years to take advantage of the buzz. This is often seen in product tie-ins with cross-media properties, especially gaming licenses, with varying degrees of success. The NES Power Glove by Mattel from the 1980s was an early example, as well as the U-Force and the Sega Activator. TV commercials featuring VR have also been made for other products, however, such as Nike's "Virtual Andre" in 1997, featuring a teenager playing tennis using a goggle and gloves system against a computer.

Therapeutic uses

The primary use of VR in a therapeutic role is its application to various forms of exposure therapy, ranging from phobia treatments to newer approaches to treating PTSD. A very basic VR simulation with simple sight and sound models has been shown to be invaluable in phobia treatment, like zoophobia, and acrophobia, as a step between basic exposure therapy such as the use of simulacra and true exposure. A much more recent application is being piloted by the U.S. Navy to use a much more complex simulation to immerse veterans suffering from PTSD in simulations of urban combat settings. Much as in phobia treatment, exposure to the subject of the trauma or fear leads to desensitization, and a significant reduction in symptoms.[14][15]

Other research fields in which the use of virtual reality is being explored are physical medicine, rehabilitation, physical therapy, and occupational therapy. In adult rehabilitation, a variety of virtual reality applications are currently being evaluated within upper and lower limb motor rehabilitation for individuals recovering from stroke or spinal cord injury. In pediatrics, the use of virtual reality is being evaluated to promote movement abilities, navigational abilities, or social skills in children with cerebral palsy, acquired brain injury, or other disabilities. Research evidence is emerging rapidly in the field of virtual reality for therapeutic uses. A number of recent reviews published in peer-reviewed journals have summarized the current evidence for the use of Virtual Reality within pediatric and adult rehabilitation. One such review concluded that the field is potentially promising.[16]

Implementation

To develop a real time virtual environment, a computer graphics library can be used as embedded resource coupled with a common programming language, such as C++, Perl, Java, or Python. Some of the most popular computer graphic libraries are OpenGL, Direct3D, Java3D, and VRML, and their use are directly influenced by the system demands in terms of performance, program purpose, and hardware platform. The use of multithreading can also accelerate 3D performance and enable cluster computing with multi-user interactivity.

Manufacturing

Virtual reality can serve to new product design, helping as an ancillary tool for engineering in manufacturing processes, new product prototypes, and simulation. Among other examples, Electronic Design Automation, CAD, Finite Element Analysis, and Computer Aided Manufacturing are widely utilized programs. The use of Stereolithography and 3D printing shows how computer graphic modeling can be applied to create physical parts of real objects used in naval,[17] aerospace,[18] and automotive industries,[19] which can be seen, for example, in the VR laboratory of VW in Mladá Boleslav. Beyond modeling assembly parts, 3D computer graphics techniques are currently used in the research and development of medical devices for therapies,[20][21][22] treatments,[23] patient monitoring,[24] and early diagnoses[25] of complex diseases.

Urban Design

3D virtual reality is becoming widely used for urban regeneration and planning and transport projects,[26] especially in East Asia.

Challenges

Virtual reality has been heavily criticized for being an inefficient method for navigating non-geographical information. At present, the idea of ubiquitous computing is very popular in user interface design, and this may be seen as a reaction against VR and its problems. In reality, these two kinds of interfaces have different goals and are complementary. The goal of ubiquitous computing is to bring the computer into the user's world, rather than force the user to go inside the computer. The current trend in VR is actually to merge the two user interfaces to create a fully immersive and integrated experience.

Pioneers and notables

  • Maurice Benayoun
  • Mark Bolas
  • Fred Brooks
  • Edmond Couchot
  • James H. Clark
  • Doug Church
  • Char Davies
  • Tom DeFanti
  • David Em
  • Scott Fisher
  • William Gibson
  • Morton Heilig
  • Myron Krueger
  • Knowbotic Research
  • Jaron Lanier
  • Brenda Laurel
  • Randy Pausch
  • Mark Pesce
  • Warren Robinett
  • Dan Sandin
  • Susumu Tachi
  • Ivan Sutherland
  • Michael Naimark

See also

Notes

  1. ↑ Erik Davis, Techgnosis: myth, magic and mysticism in the information age, 1998.
  2. ↑ Garb, Yaakov (Winter 1987). "Virtual reality". Whole Earth Review (57): 118ff. 
  3. ↑ Rheingold.com-howard Virtual Reality. 1991. ISBN 0262681218. http://www.rheingold.com/howard/ Rheingold.com-howard. 
  4. ↑ Gonzales, D. (editor) (1991). "Automation and Robotics for the Space Exploration Initiative: Results from Project Outreach". [1]. 92 (17897): 35. 
  5. ↑ http://scout.cs.wisc.edu/Reports/NSDL/MET/2005/met-050422-topicindepth.php
  6. ↑ Boyd, J. (2008). "NTT Becomes a Smell-o-Phone Company". IEEE Spectrum. 45 (1): 8. 
  7. ↑ Times Online
  8. ↑ Cline, Mychilo Stephenson (2005). Power, Madness, & Immortality: the Future of Virtual Reality. Virtualreality.universityvillagepress.com. http://books.google.com/?id=7OxbJWzIaVEC&printsec=frontcover&dq=power+madness+and+immortality&q=. Retrieved 2009-10-28. 
  9. ↑ "The Future of Virtual Reality with Mychilo Cline » Introduction to the Future of Virtual Reality". Virtualreality.universityvillagepress.com. http://virtualreality.universityvillagepress.com/index.php?itemid=25&catid=4. Retrieved 2009-10-28. 
  10. ↑ Castranova, E. (2007). Exodus to the Virtual World: How online fun is changing reality. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
  11. ↑ Pimentel, K., & Teixeira, K. (1993). Virtual reality. New York: McGraw-Hill. ISBN 9780830640652
  12. ↑ "Architecture's Virtual Shake-Up" Tayfun King, Click, BBC World News (2005-10-28)
  13. ↑ Hemley, Matthew (2008-09-30). "BBC radio launches major cross-station sci-fi season". The Stage. http://www.thestage.co.uk/news/newsstory.php/21930/bbc-radio-launches-major-cross-station-sci-fi. Retrieved 2009-04-09. 
  14. ↑ A Dose of Virtual Reality
  15. ↑ http://www.onr.navy.mil/media/article.asp?ID=86
  16. ↑ Sandlund M, McDonough S, Häger-Ross C. "Interactive computer play in rehabilitation of children with sensorimotor disorders: a systematic review.", Developmental Medicine & Child Neurology, v51 n3 p173-179 Mar 2009. Retrieved on 2010-07-22
  17. ↑ Rapid Marine Prototype -[Marine Prototyping, Yacht Prototyping, Marine Design, Boat Modeling, Design, and Engineering ]- » Case Study
  18. ↑ "CEI : News". Legacy.ensight.com. http://legacy.ensight.com/news/ncc.html. Retrieved 2009-10-28. 
  19. ↑ "Werkzeug- und Formenbau — Motion Control Systems — Siemens". Automation.siemens.com. http://www.automation.siemens.com/mc/mc-sol/en/977978ba-1d82-47b3-a560-eb298ce89d42/index.aspx. Retrieved 2009-10-28. 
  20. ↑ "Silicone Medical Device Testing". Dynatek dalta. http://www.dynatekdalta.com/silicone_medical_device_testing.htm. Retrieved 2009-10-28. 
  21. ↑ "Special Feature: Emerging Technologies | Medical Product Manufacturing News". Mpmn-digital.com. http://www.mpmn-digital.com/mpmn/200803/?pg=24. Retrieved 2009-10-28. 
  22. ↑ Shantesh Hede, Nagraj Huilgol. ""Nano": The new nemesis of cancer Hede S, Huilgol N, - J Can Res Ther". Cancerjournal.net. doi:10.4103/0973-1482.29829. http://www.cancerjournal.net/article.asp?issn=0973-1482;year=2006;volume=2;issue=4;spage=186;epage=195;aulast=Hede. Retrieved 2009-10-28. 
  23. ↑ "IngentaConnect Nanotechnology: Intelligent Design to Treat Complex Disease". Ingentaconnect.com. 2006-06-16. doi:10.1007/s11095-006-0284-8. http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/klu/pham/2006/00000023/00000007/00010284;jsessionid=8tqn6da8a03l0.alice. Retrieved 2009-10-28. 
  24. ↑ "Over the Horizon: Potential Impact of Emerging Trends in information and Communication Technology on Disability Policy and Practice". Ncd.gov. http://www.ncd.gov/newsroom/publications/2006/emerging_trends.htm. Retrieved 2009-10-28. 
  25. ↑ "Nanomedicine - 1(1):67 - Summary". Future Medicine. http://www.futuremedicine.com/doi/abs/10.2217/17435889.1.1.67. Retrieved 2009-10-28. 
  26. ↑ Roudavski, S. (2010). Virtual Environments as Techno-Social Performances: Virtual West Cambridge Case-Study, in CAADRIA2010: New Frontiers, the 15th International Conference on Computer Aided Architectural Design Research in Asia, ed. by Bharat Dave, Andrew I-kang Li, Ning Gu and Hyoung-June Park, pp. 477-486

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Virtual and Mixed reality
Concepts
Virtual · Augmented reality · Augmented virtuality · Real life (meatspace) · Projection augmented model · Virtuality Continuum · Artificial reality · Simulated reality · Ubiquitous computing · Virtual world (Persistent world) · Multimodal interaction · telepresence
Technology
Compositing · Camera resectioning · Head-mounted display · Head-up display · Image-based modeling and rendering · Real-time computer graphics · Virtual retinal display · Wearable computer · Stereoscopy (Computer stereo vision)  · Chroma key  · Visual hull · Omnidirectional treadmill
Tracking
Motion capture · Tracking system · Types: optical, inertial, magnetic · Devices: Wired glove, Sixense TrueMotion, Gametrak
Applications
Alternate reality game · ARToolKit · Interactive art (Virtual Graffiti) · Cave Automatic Virtual Environment
See also
Simulated reality in fiction