Report on Virtual Reality

The upcoming IMMERSION 2015 has a history of successful previous 9 years of Immersive Education, iED, conferences. While Paris has been selected as the official site for IMMERSION 2015, the summit will address the individual and cultural influence of immersive technologies such as Virtual Reality, augmented reality, wearable computing, cybernetics, and etc. For more information on new forms and technologies at summit, this website http://summit.ImmersiveEducation.org should be helpful and accurate.

Virtual Reality, also known as immersive multimedia is a computer simulated environment that can provide the users realistic physical presence of places in real world or unreal world. Virtual reality is able to create similar sensory experiences such as virtual taste, smell, sound, touch and others. These virtual reality environments are usually displayed through computer screens or special stereoscopic displays.

Oculus Rift is referring to the upcoming Rift that will be available sometime this year. The Rift is an upgraded virtual reality head-mounted display developed by Oculus VR. The weight of the Rift headset is about 379g, which is about 90g heavier than the previous headset due to the increased screen size. Some consumer damands on this product include improved head tracking, higher resolution, and wireless operations.

Samsung Gear VR is a similar virtual reality kit developed by Samsung Electronics in collaboration with Oculus VR. Similarly to Google Cardboard, Samsung Gear VR does not have its own display. However, the Gear has Oculus Rift’s head tracking module inside that will be more accurate and lower-latency tracking than normal standard mobile sensor based headsets.

Google Cardboard is a cardboard smartphone mount that affords a virtual reality experience. When the device is combined with lenses, a magnet and a rubber band hold against the face. Stereoscopic display smartphones would well fit into this device and the lenses allow the user to perceive left and right images as a single 3D image. 

Project Morpheus is an upcoming virtual reality headset produced by Sony Computer Entertainment. This device is made to work with Playstation 4 and Playstation Vita game systems. Project Morpheus’s significant features are high FOV, 6DOF head-tracking, and stereoscopic 3D. However, the device is prototype and has no confirmed release date. 

Google Glass is another wearable technology with an optical head-mounted display. Obviously, Google Glass is developed by Google and the whole purpose of the device is to display information in a smartphone format but hands free. The users communicate with the Glass with natural language voice commands.