Advantages and applications
We experienced different virtual/augmented reality applications that span from totally immersive to reality-augmented applications. In terms of VIVE head mounted display, the first advantage is the immersion into a life size virtual environment. The advantage of the total immersion is important in many situations. Virtual reality can be applied to train users in situations where the real situation is dangerous or difficult to achieve. For example, flight and drive training is safer in virtual simulators than in real environments. The total immersion of users into such virtual environments is important for accurate training. The visual and aural perceptions and the interaction with the virtual contents are factors that convince the user of his existence in the virtual world.
Another advantage of virtual reality is the low cost of studying far and difficult-to-reach geographical places. Underwater environments and space data, such as Mars surface data in CAVE2, can be represented using virtual reality in which scientists can easily study these environments at low cost. In addition, as we experienced in CAVE2, the virtual representation of cultural heritage like Luxur enables the virtual visits to such places for those who are not able to do so in person or don’t have the money to travel to these places. That is important especially for learning goals to get students to experience what they can learn in a fast and low cost way. Furthermore, virtual reality helps decision makers in architectural designs to cut down the planning and design costs. The virtual architect walkthrough gives a close-to-real insight of the product development. Designers and customers can reduce a long-term process into a few stages using virtual reality, which can save both time and money.
Virtual reality is beneficial not only to represent situations with safety and at low cost but also to provide a better learning paradigm. Exploring scientific data in the 3rd dimension enhances the learning capability. Scientists and students can navigate through brain neurons for exploring different brain dissections. Many other biological examples apply. Connectome was a good demonstration in CAVE2 for exploring scientific data.
Another popular usage of virtual reality is entertainment. People get excited about living in an imaging world. Therefore, the gaming industry puts more effort towards virtual reality games. On the other hand, virtual reality games are targeted for medical therapy to heal some organic and non-organic diseases.
In another aspect, augmented reality is the augmentation of the real-world environment with computer-generated graphics to enhance it with additional information in real time or just for entertaining as in Quiver application. Unlike virtual reality, augmented reality embeds virtual contents into the real world instead of immersing the user into the virtual world. Therefore, augmented reality is more portable and cheaper than virtual reality. Users can use their own devices for such applications to enhance their experience as we demonstrated in class. Augmented reality can be beneficial in situations in which additional information is required to be added to the real world, for example, adding information virtually to historical places like place description, related news, or any related info. Augmented reality is also advantageous to test prototypes in their real world at low cost. Some furniture or clothes company can produce augmented reality applications in which users can easily test their products virtually by augmenting them in the real world. It would help customers in decision-making and enhance the total experience.
Another advantage of virtual reality is the low cost of studying far and difficult-to-reach geographical places. Underwater environments and space data, such as Mars surface data in CAVE2, can be represented using virtual reality in which scientists can easily study these environments at low cost. In addition, as we experienced in CAVE2, the virtual representation of cultural heritage like Luxur enables the virtual visits to such places for those who are not able to do so in person or don’t have the money to travel to these places. That is important especially for learning goals to get students to experience what they can learn in a fast and low cost way. Furthermore, virtual reality helps decision makers in architectural designs to cut down the planning and design costs. The virtual architect walkthrough gives a close-to-real insight of the product development. Designers and customers can reduce a long-term process into a few stages using virtual reality, which can save both time and money.
Virtual reality is beneficial not only to represent situations with safety and at low cost but also to provide a better learning paradigm. Exploring scientific data in the 3rd dimension enhances the learning capability. Scientists and students can navigate through brain neurons for exploring different brain dissections. Many other biological examples apply. Connectome was a good demonstration in CAVE2 for exploring scientific data.
Another popular usage of virtual reality is entertainment. People get excited about living in an imaging world. Therefore, the gaming industry puts more effort towards virtual reality games. On the other hand, virtual reality games are targeted for medical therapy to heal some organic and non-organic diseases.
In another aspect, augmented reality is the augmentation of the real-world environment with computer-generated graphics to enhance it with additional information in real time or just for entertaining as in Quiver application. Unlike virtual reality, augmented reality embeds virtual contents into the real world instead of immersing the user into the virtual world. Therefore, augmented reality is more portable and cheaper than virtual reality. Users can use their own devices for such applications to enhance their experience as we demonstrated in class. Augmented reality can be beneficial in situations in which additional information is required to be added to the real world, for example, adding information virtually to historical places like place description, related news, or any related info. Augmented reality is also advantageous to test prototypes in their real world at low cost. Some furniture or clothes company can produce augmented reality applications in which users can easily test their products virtually by augmenting them in the real world. It would help customers in decision-making and enhance the total experience.
Disadvantages
Although VR/AR has many advantages to the learning and entertainment fields, they have some drawbacks. Virtual reality equipment is expensive for deployment in a wide range. There are some affordable choices like Google cardboards but some other choices are more expensive. In addition, applying virtual and augmented reality to medicine and healthcare can be critical. The technology is still developing and needs to be quite precise for medical applications. Augmenting surgical process with virtual contents, for example, requires an accurate virtual/real contents registration. Any misalignment can be dangerous and life threatening. As we discussed in the class, motion sickness is also a disadvantage of using virtual reality applications. Another disadvantage that I observed while testing VR/AR applications is the lack of standardized controls. Although designing good application controls is a common problem in different application paradigms, it’s more evident in VR/AR applications. It takes the user some time to figure out the navigation and interaction controls. Additionally, some applications have no start up point that guides the user. The user is expected to know in advance what the application is about and how to get started.