Virtual reality is a medium that allows users to experience and interact with simulated environments. It uses interactive computer simulations to sense a user's position and actions to provide feedback to their senses, giving the feeling of presence in the virtual world. The key elements of a VR experience are an immersive virtual world, sensory feedback, and interactivity. A VR system combines hardware like head-mounted displays, software, and a virtual environment to produce the VR experience.

1. Virtual Reality
Mrs. Rashmi Bhat
Asst. Professor
St. John College of Engineering and Management

2. Terms you
should know...
• The state or quality of being
real.
Reality
• Being in essence or effect,
but not in fact.
Virtual
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3. What is Virtual Reality?
Virtual reality is a medium, a means by which humans can share ideas and
experiences.
• Experience convey an entire virtual reality participation session.
• The part of the experience that is “the world” witnessed by the participant and
with which they interact is referred to as the virtual world.
• Virtual world can be
• Virtual reality world
• Contents of novels, movies etc.
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4. Key Elements of
VR Experience
• Virtual world
• Immersion
• Sensory feedback
• Interactivity
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5. Key Elements of VR Experience
Virtual World
• A virtual world is the content of a given medium.
• Virtual world can be defined as
• An imaginary space often manifested through a
medium.
OR
• A description of a collection of objects in a space
and the rules and relationships governing those
objects.
• A virtual world can exist without being displayed in a
virtual reality system.
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6. Key Elements of VR
Experience
• Immersion
• VR is an immersion into an alternative
reality or point of view.
• It is important to manifest the ideas of our
imagination into some medium.
• e.g. Novel, drama or movie
• Each of these media produce only one-way
communication: from creator to audience.
• Mimesis: a writer's ability to pull the
reader into the story.
• There is no direct interaction between
the viewer and the world
• These media often present their worlds
from a third person's point of view (POV).
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7. Key Elements of VR Experience
• Immersion
• In VR, immersion is physical and mental.
• Immersion is a sensation of being in an environment; can
be a purely mental state or can be accomplished through
physical means.
• Mental immersion is a state of being deeply engaged;
suspension of disbelief; involvement.
• Physical immersion is a bodily entering into a medium;
synthetic stimulus of the body's senses via the use of
technology.
• Physical immersion is a defining characteristic of virtual
reality while mental immersion is probably the goal of
most media creators.
• Presence: sense of presence; being mentally immersed.
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8. Key Elements of
VR Experience
• Sensory Feedback
• VR allows participants to select their vantage point by positioning
their body and to affect events in the virtual world.
• What Reality is?
• Imagined reality refers to the experiences we have in our
thoughts and dreams or that we experience second- hand in
novels, films, radio, and so on.
• Imagining ourselves within the world presented through
the medium known as the diegesis.
• Physical reality is what we experience firsthand.
• Virtual reality is the medium through which we can
experience an imagined reality with many of our physical
senses
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9. Key Elements of
VR Experience
• Sensory Feedback
• The VR system provides direct sensory feedback to the
participants based on their physical position.
• A typical VR system will track the head of the participant
and at least one hand or an object held by the hand to
generate sensory output.
• Position tracking is the computerized sensing of the position
(location and/or orientation) of an object in the physical
world-usually at least part of the participant's body.
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10. Key Elements of VR Experience
• Interactivity
• For virtual reality to seem authentic, it should respond to user actions i.e. VR
should be interactive.
• Forms of Interactivity
• The ability to affect a computer-based world
• The ability to change one's viewpoint within a world.
• Interactive fiction (IF) can be defined in terms of the user/player's ability to
interact with a world by changing locations, picking up objects and setting them
down.
• Virtual reality (VR) is more closely associated with the ability of the participant
to move physically within the world, obtaining a new vantage point through
movements of the head.
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11. Key Elements of VR Experience
Interactivity
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12. Key Elements of VR Experience
• Interactivity
• Collaborative Environment
• An extension of the interactive element and refers to multiple users interacting
within the same virtual space or simulation.
• The users' representations in a virtual world are referred to as their avatars.
• Collaborative environment is where multiple users interact within a virtual world
that enables interaction among participants.
• A collaborative VR environment can be referred to as multi- presence or
multiparticipant.
• Avatar
• A virtual object used to represent a participant or physical object in a virtual world
• The object embodied by a participant.
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13. What is Virtual
Reality (VR)
A medium composed of interactive
computer simulations that sense the
participant’s position and actions,
providing synthetic feedback to one or
more senses, giving the feeling of being
immersed or being present in the
simulation (a virtual world).
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14. What is Virtual Reality (VR)?
• VR can be developed by modern computer systems through additional hardware
devices to provide user position sensing, sensory display, and programming of
suitable interaction.
• A typical VR system will substitute at least the visual stimuli, with aural stimuli also
frequently provided.
• A third, less common sense that is included is skin-sensation and force feedback,
which is jointly referred to as the haptic (touch) sense.
• Less frequently used senses include vestibular (balance), olfaction (smell), and
gustation (taste).
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15. What is Virtual Reality (VR)?
• e.g. Head Mounted Display (HMD)
• Graphic images are dis- played on a screen or a pair of
screens (one for each eye) in the helmet.
• A tracking sensor attached to the participant's head
tells the computer system where the participant is
looking.
• The computer quickly displays a visual image from the
vantage point appropriate to the participant's
position.
• Thus, the participant is able to look about a computer-
generated world in a manner similar to the real world
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16. What is Virtual Reality (VR)?
VR Related Technological Terms:
• Cyberspace
• People who are physically located in disparate physical locations can, through the use of some
mediating technology, interact as if they were physically proximate.
• Telepresence
• It is a means to virtually place a participant in another location in which they are not physically
present.
• The difference from VR is that this location is actually a real place that for one reason or another is too
difficult, dangerous or inconvenient for the person to visit in person.
• Augmented Reality (AR)
• AR gives the user an altered view of the real world.
• It is the visual sense that is augmented, providing the user with abilities such as peering through walls,
or into a patient’s body.
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17. VR Paradigms
• There are multiple ways by which VR systems
provide synthetic stimuli to the senses.
• Three basic display paradigms hold for not
only visual displays, but also for display to
other senses such as aural and touch (haptic)
display systems.
• Stationary displays
• Head-based displays
• Hand-based displays
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18. VR Paradigms
• Stationary Displays
• These are fixed in place.
• The virtual world is rendered in response to the
user’s bodily position.
• e.g. CAVE-type systems, single large screen
systems, and desktop monitors,
• Loudspeakers are an example of stationary aural
displays.
The CAVE, participants stand surrounded by screens onto which
the virtual world is displayed.
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19. VR Paradigms
• Head-based Displays
• These displays move in conjunction with the user’s
head.
• No matter which way users turn their head, the displays
move, remaining in a fixed position relative to the
body’s sensory inputs.
• Visual screens remain in front of the users’ eyes, and
headphones on their ears.
• e.g. HMDs, BOOM™-type displays
• Headphones are an example of head-based aural
displays. The BOOM head-based display mounts the screens on an arm that
keeps the weight from being applied to the user’s head.
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20. VR Paradigms
• Hand-based Displays
• Users hold the display in their hand.
• For visual hand-based displays,
monitoring both the user’s head
position as well as the position of the
display is required, because the
direction of view is important.
• e.g. haptic hand-based display SensAble
Technologies PHANToM™ arm. A hand-based display to superimpose virtual models on a stationary scene.
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21. Collaboration
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22. VR Collaboration
A set of processes, tools, and policies that encourage people
to come together in a simulated virtual space where they
can work together in real-time.
• Participants can read and react to a co-worker’s
facial expression, body language, and gestures,
significantly reducing the risk of miscommunication.
• Key Elements in VR Collaboration
• Virtual world
• 3D Avatar
• VR Headset or VR Compatible device
• Desktop streaming
• Collaboration and productivity tools 29
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23. VR
Collaboration
• VR environments can foster collaboration in a
number of different ways.
• Space can be shared, either physically or
virtually.
• Dialog can be held synchronously, or in an
asynchronous form.
• A major benefit of virtual shared spaces is that they
allow collaboration to take place via computer
networks.
• In a networked collaborative environment, each
participant can be represented as a virtual entity.
• A virtual entity that represents a human in a
collaborative environment is called an avatar.
• Can be either realistic or abstract
representation of the person.
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24. VR
Collaboration
• Not every sense always needs to be transmitted
in collaborative environments.
• Collaborators can inhabit the shared virtual
world concurrently and engage in synchronous
dialog and actions, or participate
asynchronously by saving the state of the
system after their component of the
collaborative activity.
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25. Use Cases of
VR
Collaboration
Brainstorming without location barriers
Data visualization and data-driven decisions
Collaborative 3D product design
Education and enterprise training
Employee engagement
Social networking
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26. Challenges in
VR
Collaboration
• Last-mile connectivity
• Gaps in global internet penetration
could make it difficult for employees
in certain regions to access VR
• Data Privacy and Diversity & Inclusion
(D&I)
• Ethical discussions around employee
data privacy and D&I in the VR world
must be fully ironed out.
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27. VR System
• The creation of a virtual reality
system requires the integration of
• Hardware
• Software
• Virtual World
• User Interface
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28. VR System
• Hardware
• Computer/Graphics Engines
• Display
• Visual Displays
• Aural Displays
• Haptic Displays
• Other Sensory Displays
• Input Devices/User Tracking
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29. VR System
• Hardware: Computer/Graphics Engine
• Responsible for calculating the physical behavior of the virtual world,
• Renders the state of the world into visual, aural, haptic, etc. Representations.
• Must require
• Enough computational power
• Ability to synchronize the display updates between multiple displays
• Ability to render sounds
• Ability to perform multiple operations at the same time
• Can be
• a single large computer that meets all the requirements
• interconnected via a low-latency, high-speed communication network.
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30. VR System
• Hardware: Visual Displays
• All the visual displays can either display stereoscopic images, or
monoscopic.
• Large-screen stationary displays
• Use fixed-position screens to fill a relatively large portion of the field-of-view
(FOV)
• Advantage:
• FOV coverage
• The reduced amount of hardware worn by users
• Disadvantage
• include an incomplete view of the virtual world (field-of-regard), cost,
and the difficulty of masking the real world if desired
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31. VR System
• Visual Displays
• Head-based Displays (HBD)
• Earlier referred as helmet-mounted displays (HMDs)
• Heavy headsets with attached screens positioned in front of the
wearer's eyes.
• Two other types of HBDs
• Mechanical arm mounted displays that users pull up to their face
• e.g. BOOM (binocular Omni Orientation Monitor)
• Smaller screens and weigh less than the original HMDs.
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32. VR System
• Visual Displays
• Head-based Displays (HBD)
• Advantage:
• User can turn head to see any direction in the world-100% field-of-
regard.
• Disadvantage
• Any latency in VR system is more noticeable to user and may cause
nausea or a headeache.
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33. VR System
• Visual Displays
• Desktop VR Displays (Fishtank VR)
• Similar to the large-screen displays.
• “fishtank VR” is derived from the way one peers
into a desktop VR display.
• It is a standard computer monitor, often
augmented with the ability to display
stereographically.
• By combining the monitor with the necessary
tracking and other input devices and VR software,
the scene appears to actually be inside the display
• If viewers moves their head left or right, they can
see the fish from a different perspective
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34. VR System
• Visual Displays
• Desktop VR Displays (Fishtank VR)
• Advantages
• It can make use of an existing desktop computer with a few inexpensive
additions.
• it can be used right at the user’s desk
• Disadvantage
• very limited field-of-view and very limited field-of-regard
• costs to upgrade to a stereoscopic image, along with some input hardware and
software to track the user’s movement
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35. VR System
• Visual Displays
• Hand-based VR Displays
• A pair of binoculars that contain two small screens instead of the typical lenses.
• A screen approximately the size of one’s palm in the hand.
• works well as a “magic lens” display, giving the user an altered view of the “reality.”
• Modern cellular “smart phones
• Advantages:
• when a VR experience has a natural interface
• user can choose when to look at a handheld display
• These displays are not very encumbering
• Disadvantage
• when the application requires a reasonable amount of FOV.
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36. VR System
• Aural Displays
• Aural image cannot be presented stereophonically.
• Monophonic channel of sound can provide a deeply immersive experience.
• Problem with stereophonic sound display
• it is preproduced (prerendered) to seem as though particular sounds come from
particular locations
• Spatialization
• Sounds that must appear to emanate from a particular location need to be
processed to create this effect, this processing is referred to as spatialization.
• Aural/Sound Display devices
• Loudspeakers (stationary paradigm)
• Headphones (head-based display paradigm)
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37. VR System
• Aural Displays
• Advantage:
• Loudspeakers can be more easily heard by a group of participants
• headphones are generally easier to use when producing spatialized sounds
• Disadvantage
• When using headphones, if an excessive signal is presented, it will be very close to
the listener’s ears
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38. VR System
• Haptic Displays
• Relate to the sense of touch
• Two components of haptic displays
• “tactile” (input through the skin)
• e.g. sensing temperature of hot water
• “proprioceptic” (input through the muscular and skeletal systems)
• e.g. Sensing how much effort is required to lift a box
• Haptic displays can be
• “world-grounded” (stationary)
• “self-grounded” (body-based)
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39. VR System
• Haptic Displays
• World-grounded displays
• Those that have a base
attached to the ceiling or that
sit on the desktop or are
affixed in some way to some
object in the real world.
• the user holds the end of an
arm with multiple linkages
leading back to the base.
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40. VR System
• Haptic Displays
• Self-grounded displays
• those that are somehow worn by the user.
• e.g. glove fitted with some form of tactile
display
• Force display devices can also be self-
grounded, a display that resists the
movement of the user’s arm relative to
their shoulder.
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41. VR System
• Other Sensory Displays
• The vestibular sense (the sense of balance)
• Olfactory display (smell)
• computer-controlled display of gustation (taste) virtually
nonexistence
• most common form of vestibular display is the “motion platform.”
• Another style of vestibular display is the bladder-equipped chair.
• e.g. VR Chair
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42. VR System
• Input Devices and User Tracking
• Virtual reality systems must track at least some subset of users’ bodies.
• Two types of inputs
• Cognitive inputs: events specifically triggered by the user
• User monitoring: tracking the body movements of the user
• Position Sensor
• Includes electromagnetic, mechanical, optical, ultrasonic, inertial/gyroscopic,
and neural/muscular devices.
• Factors: accuracy and precision, interfering media and encumbrance
• Props and platforms used to give cognitive inputs
• A prop is any physical object that is not part of the scenery and can be
manipulated by the actors.
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43. VR System
• Input Devices and User
Tracking
• Props and Platform
• Are physical
places where active
input sensors are
placed.
• Platform is a means
of user input to the
virtual world
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44. VR System
• Software
• Laws of Nature - Simulation code
• Programmed laws of nature that govern
the behaviors and interactions carried out
by the objects in the world.
• Only interaction possible is changing the
user’s viewpoint relative to the objects in
the world.
• Advanced simulations can have global
behaviors such as gravity, plus individual
rules that apply only to specific objects.
• It is possible to give objects fantastic
behaviors.
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45. VR System
• Software
• Rendering libraries
• Convert the form of the world from the internal
computer database to what the user experiences.
• Must include the appropriate rendering
algorithms for whatever sense is to be portrayed.
• Include features to render the basic elements of a
“scene” along with features to enrich the display.
• VR Libraries
• Acquire the necessary information about the
participant.
• Must operate in “real time.”
• Include the ability to perform multiple tasks at
once.
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46. VR System
• Software
• Ancillary libraries
• Modeling software
• Sound editing software
• Image processing software
• User interface libraries
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47. Representation
• VR experience may have represented
• With high degree of accuracy or
• With disregard to the structures and limitations extant in the
real world and create surreal or fantastic worlds with never-
seen-before objects, behaviors, and beings.
• A mapping must be made between concepts in the virtual world,
and the stimuli that will be presented to the user’s various
sensory organs.
• The choice of representations is limited to the kinds of
transducers available in the system
• Within the modes of presentation, tradeoffs exist regarding
fidelity versus cost and performance issues.
• User's avatar
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48. User Interaction
Interaction Techniques
• Direct Interaction
• Best mimics methods of manipulating the real world.
• e.g. Moving an object.
• Physical Interaction
• Input to the virtual world through input devices that the user actually
touches.
• e.g. Interaction through handheld wand, steering wheel etc.
• Virtual Interaction
• The “devices” with which one interacts are a part of the virtual world
itself.
• e.g. virtual button
• Rely on physical or direct interactions to activate the virtual device
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49. User Interaction
Interaction Techniques
• Agent Interaction
• Communicating with a computer entity (the agent), one lets their desires be
known, and expects the system to comply.
• e.g. travel through a solar system world, one might say the name of a planet
and be taken into orbit around the specified celestial object.
Making Selections
• Selecting an object on which to act, or to select a direction in which to go.
• Pointing with a finger, gazing with the eyes, or facing with the torso.
• Using a joystick or steering wheel
• The user makes contact with an item to activate it.
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50. User Interaction
Manipulating Virtual World
• Manipulated elements can be either an object of the virtual world or an
attribute of the overall virtual reality system
• e.g. throwing a ball or saving current status of VR experience in file.
• Way of acting on elements
• Mimicking the action of forces on elements
• Changing attributes of objects in the world
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51. User Interaction
• Navigation
• Describes how we move from place
to place.
• Navigation can be divided into two
subcomponents: Travel and
wayfinding
• Travel is the act of controlling one’s
movement through the world
• Wayfinding is using information
about the world to guide the
direction and speed of travel.
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52. User Interaction
• Navigation
• Common travel paradigms
• Physical locomotion
• The ability for participants to move their bodies to change the position of their point
of view within the virtual world
• Ride-along
• The method of travel that gives participants little or no freedom
• Tow-rope
• The user is being pulled along a predetermined path , but with the ability to move off
the centerline of the path for a small distance.
• Fly-through
• A generic term for methods that give the user almost complete freedom of control, in
any direction.
• Walkthrough: participants’ movements are constrained to follow the terrain
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53. User Interaction
• Navigation
• Common travel paradigms
• Pilot-through
• The form of travel in which users controls their movements by using controls that
mimic some form of vehicle in which they are riding.
• Move-the-world
• Users “grab” the world and can bring it nearer, or move or orient it in any way by
repositioning their hand.
• Scale-the-world
• Reducing the scale of the world, making a small movement, and then scaling the
world back to its original size.
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54. User Interaction
• Navigation
• Common travel paradigms
• Put-me-here
• A basic method that simply takes the user to some specified position.
• Orbital viewing
• The world seems to orbit about users depending on which direction they look.
• Constrained travel helps users find their way around
• Wayfinding aids include
• The provision of maps,
• Paths in the world to follow,
• Obvious landmarks by which to site one,
• Virtual compasses.
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55. Conclusion
History of VR
Background of VR
Terminologies associated with
the VR Technologies
VR Applications
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