International Encyclopedia of Communication Online

Extract

Virtual reality (VR) has at least three dominant meanings in communications. Though the distinctions blur in some analyses, these largely discrete areas are: (1) immersive audiovisual technologies; (2) technologies that achieve a similar effect through their ubiquity and apparent removal from mundane reality; and (3) technologies, architectures, and social processes that in some degree resemble immersive technologies, and the thesis that social life in the contemporary world is itself virtual. A fourth usage of the term “virtual” to denote a philosophy of becoming is also emergent. Immersive VR emerged from NASA as a scientific tool. During the later 1980s and early 1990s, there was much excitement about the possibility of immersive entertainment, particularly in the arcade games industry and among artists. The typical interface comprised a mask-and-glove wearable device, which provided stereo sound and stereoscopic screens mounted in front of each eye, and a glove whose spatial movement could be tracked to provide navigation and in some cases the ability to manipulate digital objects. Many significant artworks were produced, perhaps the most famous being Char Davies's Osmose , which used a mask that was sensitive to head movements and a chest belt that responded to the expansion of the lungs in order to move up and down in the virtual environment, in an experience analogous to ... log in or subscribe to read full text