What is Virtual Reality?
The definition of virtual reality comes,(1), from the definitions for both ‘virtual’and ‘reality’.The definition of‘virtual’ near and reality is what we experience as human beings.So the term ‘virtual reality’ basically means ‘near-reality’.This could,of course,mean anything but it usually refers to a specific type of reality (2).
We know the world through our senses and (3) systems.In school we all learned that we have five senses:taste,touch,smell,sight and hearing.These are however only our most obvious sense organs.The truth is that humans have many more senses than this,such as a sense of balance for example.These other sensory inputs,plus some special processing of sensory information by our brains ensures that we have a rich flow of information from the environment to our minds.
Everything that we know about our reality comes by way of our senses.In other words,our entire experience of reality is simply a (4) of sensory information and our brains sense-making mechanisms for that information.It stands to reason then,that if you can present your senses with made-up information,your perception of reality would also change in response to it.You would be presented with a version of reality that isn’t really there, but from your perspective it would be perceived as (5).Something we would refer to as a virtual reality.
So,in summary,virtual reality entails presenting our senses with a computer generated virtual environment that we can explore in some fashion.
