Virtual Reality

VR IS Short for Virtual Reality, VR is a computer-generated artificial environment that allows a user to view, explore, and manipulate the environment and a term popularized by Jaron Lanier. Virtual Reality is a computer generated reality manipulated and explored using various input devices such as goggles, headphones, gloves, or a computer. Using these devices a user can browse throughout a virtual world or pickup and manipulate virtual objects. The picture shows a NASA employee using a VR system.

For those who are wondering what on earth VR is and why you should be getting your knickers or pants in a twist over it, you've come to the right place.

We are about to tell you what virtual reality is, how it works and what devices there are currently out there using this wonderful technology that you should make it your business to know about.

What is virtual reality (VR)?

First things first, you're going to need to know what VR actually is. The clue is in the name - it's the experience of a world that doesn't actually exist. We aren't talking about getting yourself lost in a book or day dreaming about a photo or painting however, even if these technically are also experiencing some sort of virtual reality.

The virtual reality we are talking about is one created by computers that allows you to experience and interact with a 3D world that isn't real by putting on a head-mounted display and some form of input tracking. The display will typically be split between your eyes, creating a stereoscopic 3D effect with stereo sound, and together with the technology and the input tracking, it will create an immersive, believable experience, allowing you to explore the virtual world being generated by the computer.

VR will make you feel like you are there mentally and physically. You turn your head and the world turns with you so the illusion created by whatever world you are in is never lost.

Watch a film in the cinema and the split-second fear you might feel when a devastating earthquake happens on screen will very quickly disappear if you turn your head to see the person next to you munching away on their popcorn. Films and books take you to different fictional worlds, but they are not world's you change based on your actions.

There are various kinds of virtual reality from fully immersive and non-immersive to collaborative and web-based. The VR everyone is excited about is the fully-immersive variation because this is the explorable and interactive 3D computer-created world that can take you to places reality might not allow for, be that walking on Mars or driving around the mountains in a sportscar.

Where did virtual reality come from?

VR as we know it today has been kicking around for decades. To give you an idea, the first head-mounted display wasn't Oculus, even though this is the device that arguably drove the VR renaissance, it was a device called Headsight that was created in the 1960s. But there were non-digital predecessors, all the way from 360 degree paintings that had the same aim: to take your experience to another place. VR is the wise guy in tech and not just because it is old.

The technology has been used for all sorts of things over its 200 years from science and medicine to training pilots and helping architects present their latest skyscraper, allowing people to experience walking through it before a brick has been laid.

Yes, the current focus might be largely on gaming, but that's not all that VR is good for. VR has plenty of applications and this is only likely to expand as the technology develops further.

Audi recently announced it would be putting VR in some of its brand stores for example, allowing customers to experience any of its 50-something models in the colours they want, the extras they might add and in the surroundings they might drive in. Go ahead, take an A1 to the moon to visit the John Lewis advert's man and his balloons.

How does virtual reality work?

The virtual reality we have been referring to in this feature typically requires some form of head-mounted display, a computer, smartphone or console that creates the 3D world and some form of input tracking, which could be hand tracking, voice or head.

There are currently a number of head-mounted displays all using this set-up including Oculus, which is the system Facebook bought in a deal worth $2 billion in 2014, HTC Vive, Sony PlayStation VR, Google Cardboard and Samsung Gear VR, and others.

As we mentioned, some of the VR devices contain a display, splitting the feed for each eye. In these cases, a cable (usually HDMI) will transfer the video from your PC or console to the screen(s) in front of your eyes. For the likes of Google Cardboard and Samsung's Gear VR and some of the more affordable options, a smartphone is slotted into the headset and used as the display with the content already loaded on.