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Virtual reality technology
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Portable simulation machine at Oxford
Simulation for hire
Specialists in Simulation
Most virtual reality available outside of laboratories today is devoted to entertainment. The experience can be exciting but is not yet easy. One sits in front of a computer and peers through a flat little window into a world presented on the screen. Or one goes into a special room with screens for walls, or sits in an awkward capsule, or dons bulky devices, and then cooperates with software and hardware that produces a passable illusion. But technology improves rapidly, as we can see in the virtual reality effects used in theme parks. It is hard to imagine that virtual reality at a future Epcot could ever replace the experience you get walking outside, surrounded by the exhibit buildings, where your body movement, changes of perspective, the far horizon, the sun angles, the wind, and the surrounding crowd combine in an experience far too rich for current simulations. Full body world-like virtual reality is a long way off. Yet there is no reason to presume it is impossible, and there are plausible-seeming fictional descriptions of what that might be like, most famously in William Gibson's novels about cyberspace. Discussion about whether virtual spaces can be real places should not be limited to the current state of the art and technology.