VIRTUAL REALITYHARSHIT SANKHLA – 7 MINUTE SCIENCE

WHAT IS VIRTUAL REALITYVirtual reality or virtual realities (VR), which can be referred to as immersive multimedia or computer-simulated reality, replicates an environment that simulates a physical presence in places in the real world or an imagined world, allowing the user to interact in that world. Virtual realities artificially create sensory experiences, which can include sight, touch, hearing, and smell.

DEVELOPMENT• VR came about as an idea from a cinematographer named Morton Heilig in 1960• Ivan Sutherland continued when Heilig ran out of money.• Military liked Sutherland’s idea and helped him develop it. (around 1966)• NASA really liked it, poured in tons of money. (late 60’s / early 70’s)• By the 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. In 2010, Palmer Luckey, who later went on to found Oculus VR, designed the first prototype of the Oculus Rift.

• On March 25, 2014, Facebook purchased a company that makes virtual reality headsets, Oculus VR, for $2 billion. Sony announces Project Morpheus (its code name for PlayStation VR), a virtual reality headset for the PlayStation 4. Google announces Cardboard, a do-it-yourself stereoscopic viewer for smartphones.

• In July 2015, OnePlus became the first company to launch a product using virtual reality. They used VR as the platform to launch their second flagship device the OnePlus 2, first viewable using an app on the Google Play Store, then on YouTube

WHATS SO UNIQUE ?Wearable tech make you think you're standing on Mars when you're actually about to bump into the kitchen counter.

Total immersion is what everyone making a VR headset, game or app is aiming towards - making the virtual reality experience so real that we forget the computer, headgear and accessories and act exactly as we would in the real world.

Like Earphones control you audio sense, VR headsets control the vision - immersion is the best part

2 TYPES YOU COME ACROSS - HMD

ACCESSORY ON SMARTPHONE

• GOOGLE CARDBOARD

• SAMSUNG GEAR VR

STANDAONE• OCULUS RIFT

• HTC VIVE

CATEGORIES OF VR• HMD – Integrated: A virtual reality head-mounted display with the screen integrated into the unit. This segment (obviously)

includes Oculus VR, as well as companies such as VRelia, Gameface Labs,Avegant, Sony and ANTVR.

• HMD – With Mobile Device: A virtual reality head-mounted display using a third-party mobile device as the screen. Companies in this segment include Durovis, Seebright, Altergaze, Vrizzmo and Samsung.

• Controller – Hand Device / Glove / Body Unit: An input device using hands and/or body movement for tracking via sensors. PrioVR, STEM, Control VR and Leap Motion are all included in this element of the market.

• Controller – Treadmill / Foot Control: An input device that tracks leg/foot movements. In this category we include Virtuix Omni, InfinAdeck, the Cyberith Virtualizer and Stompz.

• Controller – Haptics: An input device for hands and body that also provides tactile feedback by force or vibration. The KOR-FX Gaming Vest, iMotion and the Reactive Grip are three of the products included here.

• 3D Camera: A video or image recording device that captures 3D stereoscopic views. Jaunt, Giroptic and Matterport are within this grouping.

• End-to-End Platform: A company that provides HMD systems coupled with input devices and motion capture. This category brings together companies that are creating VR experiences encompassing HMDs, input devices, games and other elements. Survios and VRCade are two examples.

• Misc: Products not fitting into other categories. We’ll keep a close eye on this category to see if it’s worth keeping, but in the meantime we’ve allocated Petal, a VR fan into it.

THE BASICS OF WORKINGHEAD TRACKING

Head tracking means that when you wear a VR headset, the picture in front of you shifts as you look up, down and side to side or angle your head. A system called 6DoF (six degrees of freedom) plots your head in terms of your x, y and z axis to measure head movements forward and backwards, side to side and shoulder to shoulder, otherwise known as pitch, yaw and roll.

MOTION TRACKINGBut the big VR players are still working out motion tracking. When you look down with a VR headset on the first thing you want to do is see your hands in a virtual space.

Leap Motion accessory - which uses an infrared sensor to track hand movements - strapped to the front of Oculus dev kits. We've also tried a few experiments with Kinect 2 cameras tracking our flailing bodies. But now we have exciting input options from Oculus, Valve and Sony.

HEAD TRACKINGAn infrared sensor monitor's your eyes inside the headset so FOVE knows where your eyes are looking in virtual reality. The main advantage of this - apart from allowing in-game characters to more precisely react to where you're looking - is to make depth of field more realistic.

The main advantage of this - apart from allowing in-game characters to more precisely react to where you're looking - is to make depth of field more realistic.

ARCHITECTURE OF A VR SYSTEM

Input Processor, Simulation Processor, Rendering Processor and World Database.

InputProcessor

RenderingProcessor

World Database

SimulationProcessor

visual, auditory, haptic, touch…

Position &Orientation

Input Processor– Control the devices used to input information to the

computer. The object is to get the coordinate data to the rest of the system with minimal lag time.

– Keyboard, mouse, 3D position trackers, a voice recognition system, etc.

ARCHITECTURE- COMPONENTS

ARCHITECTURE- COMPONENTSSimulation Processor–Core of a VR system.–Takes the user inputs along with any tasks programmed into the

world and determine the actions that will take place in the virtual world.

ARCHITECTURE- COMPONENTSRendering Processor–Create the sensations that are output to the user. –Separate rendering processes are used for visual, auditory,

haptic and other sensory systems. Each renderer take a description of the world stat from the simulation process or derive it directly from the World Database for each time step.

APPLICATIONS

ENTERTAINMENT

MEDICINE (SURGERY)

EDUCATION & TRAINING

Cybersickness / simulator sicknessLow-fidelityExpensiveLack of integration between application packages

High-fidelity systemCost-savingCollaborativeHigh-level contact between participants in distributed VR

PROBLEMS

FUTURE WORK

AUGMENTED REALITY – MAYBE NEXT TIME