1 virtual field trip Your teacher says it is time for a field trip But you and your classmates don’t pile onto a bus Instead you strap on big dark goggles Instantly your classroom disappears You are standing at the edge of a huge crater Below you lava boils and splashes Smoke and gases billow around you A low rumble fills the air Your teacher throws you a rope You are going down into a volcano But you are really sitting safely at your desk This is the power of virtual reality Virtual reality or VR is the use of technology to create a fake world that feels real Virtual reality’s goal is to create telepresence This is the feeling that you have actually been to another world To achieve this goal virtual reality uses immersion Immersion means that you feel like a virtual world is all around you Another part of telepresence is interaction Interaction means you can engage with the virtual world and the world responds 4
It is estimated that 200 million virtual-reality headsets will be sold by 2020 People have been working on virtual reality for a long time And some of the VR devices available today are amazing While a virtual field trip into a volcano isn’t quite possible yet it may be closer than you think 5
2 early immersion The earliest attempts at immersion were in the 1800s Some artists at that time created huge paintings called cycloramas These 360-degree paintings surrounded viewers People felt like they had stepped into the scene of the painting Also in the 1800s the stereoscope was invented British scientist Charles Wheatstone created it in 1838 The stereoscope had two mirrors Each mirror reflected a slightly different version of the same image toward the viewer The viewer’s brain processed the two images as one 3-D picture In 1931 Edward Link patented the Link Trainer flight simulator to train pilots Each simulator was a mock airplane that a pilot sat inside As the pilot moved the controls motors tilted the simulator Later flight simulators included films of scenes pilots tech tidbit A handheld stereoscope A called the View-Master was invented in 1939
Many countries used Link Trainer simulators to train pilots during World War II might see out of airplane windows The pilots viewed films while in the simulator They could practice reacting to different situations Cycloramas stereoscopes and flight simulators didn’t achieve virtual reality But they were steps in the right direction And new developments were right around the corner 7
