What is Virtual Reality?

 Virtual Reality (VR) uses sophisticated computer technology to produce a fake or simulated environment. It is exactly what it sounds like in that it combines the virtual world with the real world to create an online reality.

VR technology has been around for several years but Virtual Reality Development is advancing at a rapid rate. Many large technology companies are adopting VR and using it to improve the user experience.

If you’re not quite sure what VR is and how it can be used in people's day-to-day lives, keep reading! In this article, we are going to cover what virtual reality is and how it is used.

What is Virtual Reality?

Most of your reading this will have heard of Virtual Reality at some point in the past. It’s often shortened to VR.

VR replaces your view of reality and converts it into one that is 100% computer generated. Currently, you need to use specialized goggles or headwear to experience Virtual Reality. However, it’s likely that VR will become even more accessible in the future, and eventually, you may not need goggles to enter a virtual world.

Where is Virtual Reality Used?

VR is mostly used in the gaming, film, events, and sports industries but it’s one of the many technologies that is infiltrating more and more industries by the year.

The healthcare industry is rapidly adopting VR to improve the patient experience and enhance patient outcomes. Virtual Reality can also be used in meetings and presentations to draw viewers in and create a more interactive environment.

How Does Virtual Reality Work?

Humans perceive the world around them using five main senses – sites, hearing, smell, taste, and touch. Each of our senses requires physical stimuli to create signals that are sent to the brain for interpretation.

VR aims to eliminate the need for physical stimuli to create an experience. It bridges the gap between the real world and the digital world, enabling you to experience something that isn’t really there.

When you enter a virtual world, your brain is flooded with the same signals as it is when you are experiencing the real world. As soon as you put the VR goggles or headset on, your brain is flooded with lots of sensory information and it needs to make sense of it all.

It’s difficult for your brain to distinguish between the real world and the computer-generated world when it is receiving very similar sensory signals from both environments. This is what makes VR so effective and why it feels so real when you put on a pair of VR goggles.

Summarising Virtual Reality

To summarise, Virtual Reality uses computed-generated images to activate our senses in a similar way to real-life things. Because our brains can’t distinguish between the different types of stimuli coming from the real world and the virtual world, we perceive them both in a similar fashion

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