Page 6 - Magazine Sample
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Virtual Reality At a glance
Virtual reality is an experience generated by a computer meant to stand in for the physical
reality around us.
At the heart of virtual reality are two concepts immersion and interaction.
Immersion refers to your sense of presence within a virtual world.
The more senses you can engage the better with virtual reality.
Some VR setups also engage our sense of touch in what's called haptic feedback.
The more interactive the experience, the more convincing it is.
Both immersion and interaction create the illusion that you're in a different world.
That illusion can be broken if the experience suffers from technical issues lag which we call
latency.
One of the most common elements in VR rigs is the head mounted display or HMD and
HMD contains sensors such as accelerometers and gyroscopes to track movement and
orientation.
Perhaps one day we'll build something similar to what VR pioneer Ivan Sutherland
described as the Ultimate Display that would be a room in which a computer could
generate everything you see hear smell taste and touch.
