Virtual Reality Television

Current television features two-dimensional images and sound, but limited interactivity. The internet features interactivity as well as two-dimensional sight and sound. Virtual Reality Television will feature three-dimensional interactive sight, sound, and touch. Some aspects of computer gaming and television will probably be combined into centrally programmed, multi-participant, interactive, three-dimensional Virtual Reality (VR) television ("virtevision"). Interactive VRTVs may replace non-interactive television like color televisions have largely replaced black-and-white televisions. technical definitions of virtual reality provides additional information on VR.

"Texture mapping" is an effective means to create surfaces for three-dimensional virtual elements by overlaying basically two-dimensional texture shadings on object surfaces. Depth sensation of these surfaces can be then be refined through the application of shading and reflected light. "Ray tracing" takes light reflection to the next level by following individual rays of light as they reflect among objects and eventually bounce from object surfaces to the viewer. Texture mapping, light shading, and ray tracing are computationally intensive, particularly for challenging virtual constructs with moving objects. Conveniently for the sake of computational economy, people do not follow as much vision depth in moving things as in stationary objects. For these reasons, computational effort in virtual reality can be limited absent significant loss in perceptual believability by rendering the surfaces of travelling elements of less detail than the exteriors of stationery elements. Linked page perception of distance in virtual reality environments also provides developments on this.

Computer recognition of hand and facial gestures is, even now, underway and will probably lead the formation of optical human-to-computer interaction. Gesture interpretation is built on computer operating and 3D modeling of the structure and movement of the one's hands and face. This puts together conceptual objects from anatomy, kinesiology, and human sight perception. Human gestures can be recorded through a computer via a mechanical hand device or indirectly via the optical processing of video images. There is a great deal of potential for further development of optical monitoring of lip, facial, eye, head, hand, and body motion. Significant obstacles remain. Computers cannot now monitor objects that are obscured from the line of vision by other objects, poorly illuminated, or too challenging. Future progress concerning methods to translate optical images into virtual 3D things should create opportunities for much more accuracy in optical monitoring of body movement. Also consider alternative methods of motion and touch interaction for related subjects.

Virtual Reality is generally an enveloping, engaging, and intelligent computer-created environment. A multi-dimensional world engages sensory methods with enough breadth and depth to give the person engaged an impression of being encompassed by the created place instead of viewing the simulated components as minor parts of the predominant real-world setting. This does not require that the human thinks that the artificially constructed world is real, but does require that the human behaves to a large degree like the simulated world were real. processing interactions between humans and VR systems provides additional discussion.