A Computer-Based Technology: Virtual Reality

Since human walked into the Information Age, we have seen masses of productive results brought by the Internet and computer, like multimedia and cyberspace, which both are the essential parts of the life of ordinary people. Now it comes to the 18th year of 21st century, with the popularization of smart phone and personal computer, the contents presented on the gleamy screens gradually lose their attraction to people as they did, for at a time where funky things and eyeball-catching pictures are all around you in both the forms of advertisements and electromagnetic waves, people find what they want is slowly leaning to the real feeling of something rather than the words and images.

That is to say, some kind of “reality” is needed, and people can get close to what they are looking for to feel the “real”. Thanks to the rapid development of computer and information technology, this man-made “reality” has already come to public view a few years ago, namely the current Virtual Reality technology, a computer-generated world with infinite possibilities.

Using specially designed headsets and controller, we can receive the real-time visualizations of the contents, at the same time, this artificial world can also give us feedback through the equipment we use, such as the transmission of vibration and haptic force. All of these are only focused on how to make the sensation as real as possible. Here you might can’t help asking a question like this: what if someone is so immersed in the virtual world that he almost ignores the real world when Virtual Reality is highly developed one day?

Well, as we know, technology is a double-edged sword, the side effect resulted from the Internet and computer actually is ubiquitous, but why l put emphasis on the bright sides of this virtual reality technology? Cause people for so long time have overestimated the bad outcomes technology may bring, that they are getting more and more pessimistic about the future of technology, holding the view that the technology is bound to deteriorate into the culprit of human falling. Exactly on the contrary, to my point of view, it depends on the users rather than the bystanders, believing in what we have, taking the advantage of it. Consequently, let us choose to “blindly ignore” the flaws temporarily and see what the virtual reality technology can help us with.

For virtual reality technology reconstructs a new world based on computer, any situation can be simulated without worrying its results, now people have taken advantage of this special feature to do something profound. ?‘ For instance, the department of civil engineering in Tsinghua University have developed a virtual reality system especially designed for emergency evacuation simulations, like fires in building. Due to the numerical fire simulations, the condition of spreading of the flame and smoke can approximately be as accurate as the real life, additionally, the occupants can observe the simulated drill in the whole course without worrying about the danger of getting hurt.

Under these conditions, the normal evacuation drill which takes high cost and has poor repetitiveness is not the only choice for people any longer, moreover, the process of this simulation can be carried out in the virtual world at any time, even repetitive, the scenes of emergency also are flexible as long as the hardware and equipment support, now you see we can use Virtual Reality to choose the best evacuation scheme. Extensions: Terrorism attack countermeasure training via VR, Disaster rescue rehearse.

?‘?The second example is the application of VR in Competitive Sports, to create a virtual training circumstance for the athletes, with the technology support, we can reconstruct various training circumstances to get athletes accustomed to, at least familiar, besides, we can have virtual opponents to compete with, they can be some famous athletes who hold world records, they can also be ourselves, just like Nike’s running playground in Manila, which can record runner’s trace so that he can challenge himself or others later. And since VR is a digital technology, we can collect the data of athletes during VR training in order to analyze for further training plan. These are only small parts of what VR can do with the sports. Extensions: VR training in industrial work.

?‘?Now we should clearly see that one of the advantages of VR is its repetitiveness, with this we even are able to relate VR to modern education like medicine science. The School of Dentistry and Oral Health in Griffith University has published a article which states the need for virtual simulation in dental education, it introduces 5 dental virtual simulators, the finding of they research indicates that VR simulators are effective and instrumental tools for dental education. The reasons are simple, the advance in hardware and software allows students to have more realistic experience, meanwhile, facilitates the access process so that the students can handle more sorts of situations. This is just one of the applications of VR in education. Extension: VR education in other aspects like surgery and anatomy.

Conclusion: Virtual Reality, this technology with huge potential will be one of the leaders that bring us to the prosperity of post Information Age, for its multifunctional application in many useful fields. We see that the simulations in VR can save lives, training in VR gives all-sided results, what VR can do is just based on what we really want, that’s why l say this technology has a bright future, to satisfy our needs without affecting the real world, isn’t it a nice choice?

In the end, what l want to mention is that guys remember to take control of the border of virtual and reality, after all, reality is the true real, it must be recognized in our mind.

Reference List

1. Elby Roy,Mahmoud M Bakr,Roy George. The Need for Virtual Reality Simulators in Dental Education: A Review[J]. The Saudi Dental Journal,2017.
2. Jinzhao Wang. Research on Application of Virtual Reality Technology in Competitive Sports[J]. Procedia Engineering,2012,29.
3. Aizhu Ren,Chi Chen,Yuan Luo. Simulation of Emergency Evacuation in Virtual Reality[J]. Tsinghua Science & Technology,2008,13(5)

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