Future of Virtual Reality

There are many applications of VR presently and there will be many more in the future. Jerry Prothero says that entertainment is "an obvious example of an application of VR." It will be used by the average person because new developments such as small, light weight HMD's will be made. Using VR for entertainment will be common in the household, like the Nintendo and Sega Genesis systems are for our generation.

Another form of entertainment will be creating virtual reality museums. Without having to leave your house, you will be able to put on a head mounted display and browse through a museum with paintings and sculptures as if you were really there.

In the field of medicine, VR will make numerous improvements. Currently, a software package is being provided by research facilities that is call Animated Dissection of Anatomy for Medicine, or virtual organs and body parts. There are also animated databases of the muscular and skeletal systems. With the improvements of these, virtual bodies will be used for testing instead of humans or animals. In the future, physicians will be able to perform high-risk surgery on virtual bodies in operating theaters, and they could be miles apart from each other. This will be much safer, because physicians can test the treatment and perfect it so that the real patient will not be subjected to any risk. X- ray vision is another possibility for the future. By wearing a visor, the physician will still see the real world, but have an added vision of seeing through a person's skin for example. It will be like an ultrasound machine, but the ultrasound reading will go directly to the visor, so the doctor will have an advantage while preparing for surgery or while diagnosing a problem.

Tumor/Cyst Detection Medical Training

In the profession of architecture, the next step of designing houses or buildings will be the use of an architectural walk-through. This is where the building is designed first on a computer, and then created into a virtual image. By walking through the buildings as if they were really built, you can easily point out any errors, and improvements to be made that might not be detected on a flat piece of paper.

Learning will become for more advanced and enhanced with virtual reality, and children will find school more interesting. Kids will learn beyond the classroom by visiting virtual places they are studying about. Curiosity will grow to learn more by using virtual environments and creative thinking will be evoked to intensify education.

The Virtual Classroom