What Exactly is "VR"?

Your adrenaline pumps as you tactically punch, stab, and shoot your way thru an endless map of angry red men with one goal in mind, to annihilate you!

As you swing your controllers, and swivel your headset around, dodging fists, and bullets, you genuinely feel like your fighting for your life. As time shifts from slow motion, to on the go. everything intensifies, a common experience while being immersed in VR. But one might ask, What Exactly Is VR?

In its most technical and simple form, "VR" short for virtual reality, is a simulated 3-D computer-generated experience that can be explored and manipulated by a person, through a headset or HMD {Head Mounted Display}. This can range from the most simple designs, such as the Google Cardboard,

all the way to intense extremely capable designs such as the HTC Vive. Yet, one experience with VR can show you that it is much more complex than this. VR truly takes the individual to a new realm by making us feel as if we're really there. And because of this, breakthroughs of virtual immersion have been achieved.

History Of Vr

To truly understand VR and how far its come, we must take a step back into its humble beginning. The first VR machine was created in 1956 by a cinematographer by the name of Morton Heilig , and it was called "Sensorama". It was a large machine that stimulated all the senses with the combination of 3-D video, audio, motion, wind, aromas, etc. This was the first official attempt at "Virtual Reality". Heilig also patented a Head-Mounted Display device named the Telesphere Mask in 1960.

Another major breakthrough comes many decades later with the "Sword Of Damocles"created by Ivan Sutherland in 1968. Due to technical difficulties, it was never fully developed because it was too heavy for the user to wear, but nevertheless changed the course of VR towards what it is today.

Fast forward to 2010 and we have the release of the Oculus Rift, a major shift that kickstarted the current reign of VR we see today. It was the first VR available to the public with a 90-degree field of view and required the power of a computer to function, which changed the game!

Now that we understand how far VR has come, we can gain a better understanding of it, as well as further appreciate its struggle to make an imprint in the tech world.

Pros And Cons Of VR

To fully understand what VR is, we must know the good, the bad, and the ugly.

The Pros

1. Better connection with people- VR gives us the ability to communicate and build connections with people from all around the globe.

2. Used in various forms of work- The many ways VR is used varies from military training to video games, to healthcare.

The Cons

1.Expensive- The biggest con of VR by far is it can be too expensive to afford, therefore limiting its users.

2. Still In Development- VR has just started making big leaps in development and still has a lot of bugs and problems that need more time to be redefined.

VR has made it so far, but still has so many milestones to achieve, and hopefully, in the future, we can have a full suit and be so immersed that we "Almost" cant tell the difference between Reality and Virtual Reality.