Virtual reality; Special Report: Virtual Reality,  part 1

Computer Graphics World  
March, 1992

by Porter, Stephen

   A control panel in front of me contained at least two dozen
controls--maybe more.  Powerful controls.  Controls that could unleash
a blizzard of death and destruction when put into the hands of a
ruthless master pilot.  Unfortunately, I was not he.

   The first direct hit found me while I was still figuring out how to
work Forward and Reverse.  Several more hits dented my armor as I
mastered the controls for Left, Right, and Fire.  But now I was
moving, and in a flash, a brilliant offensive strategy became clear to
me.  Run and hide behind one of the fuzzy boulders, then wait for the
other robots to wander into my gunsights.  Courageous?  Maybe not.
Effective?  Well, it worked for me.

   But them, in 10 minutes--just as I was perfecting this tactic--it was all
over, and my first trip into virtual warfare ended.

   My first thought as I left the battle behind was that, yes, it had
been fun.  But in all honesty, there was just the slightest tinge of
disappointment because it felt more like a sophisticated video arcade
game than a trip into an alternative world.  That realization brought
me to my second thought: Was this truly virtual reality?

   The question has come up again and again for me as I've tried other
types of "virtual reality" environments.  Among other things, I have
stood on a surfboard and steered myself through an otherworldly
cartoon landscape displayed on a large projection screen, worn a
head-mounted display to play virtual racquetball, piloted a simulated
military helicopter around and between the skyscrapers of a city, and
pranced in front of a video camera as it transferred my image onto a
giant TV screen, where I could watch myself interacting with others in
an artificially created world that responded to our touch.

   But which of these things, I wondered, truly represented virtual reality?

   As Computer Graphics World set out to produce a special report documenting
new trends, uses, and developments in the field of virtual reality, we felt it
might be important to answer that question.  But the more we dug, the more we
realized it's a question whose answer lies in the eyes of the beholder.
 
Many Shades of Gray

   For some, the key defining element of virtual reality is
interactivity.  By this definition, if you can use a mouse to fly
through the rendered model of a house on a computer screen, then you
are dealing with virtual reality.  Others say that's not enough and
maintain that a virtual reality must be a networked environment that
allows several people to enter it at the same time.  Still others
limit virtual reality to those environments that make use of
headmounted devices, which allow users to become more "immersed" in
these artificial worlds.  Yet still others say even that level of
immersion is not enough to qualify as VR; what's needed is full-body
immersion.

   The spectrum of definitions is accompanied by a wide variety of alternative
terms for virtual reality.  These include, among others, artificial reality,
artificial worlds, cyberspace, telepresence, and virtual environments.  Each
term tends to be imbued by its user with a subtly different shade of meaning.

   The lack of a consensus makes it hard to draw a definitive line
between those things that are and are not properly called virtual
reality.  In the end, however, perhaps that's OK.  For maybe the term
should not be conferred on any one vision of what VR ought to look
like.  Perhaps the term is best used to describe the general effort
that's underway to redefine and reinvent the way we interact with
computers.

   Today's different technologies may vary in the degree to which and manner in
which they actually "immerse" us in some computer-generated world, but they all
are part of a similar desire to tighten the bond between humans and computers,
and allow us to more directly enter those digital worlds that, until now, we
could only passively observe through the window of the computer screen.

   So for the moment, perhaps it's just as well to leave the diverse
creative forces that are at work in this area unfettered by any overly
rigid and possibly premature definitions.  After all, this is a
technology whose potential we are only beginning to understand.  Its
final form has not yet even begun to take shape.

   Stephen Porter is the editor of CGW.  Research assistance was provided by
associate editor Gary Pfitzer.