Communications of the ACM
Virtual Reality Is Coming to Sex, Sports, and Facebook
Technologists predict virtual reality technology will finally take root, thanks to increased computing power and the falling price of the technology required.
Credit: NextVR
Technologists predict virtual reality (VR) technology will evolve to the point that it will be embedded in practically all aspects of human activity.
The University of Southern California Institute for Creative Technologies' Tim Richmond thinks VR will finally take root after decades of niche applications thanks to increased computing power and the falling price of the technology. "You can have Superman powers in the virtual environment, going where you want and accessing information at will," he says.
The mass adoption of VR is likely to be enabled by popular industries such as sports, which can drive market trends.
In addition to virtual enhancement of live events, VR's potential resides in its ability to immerse users in virtual environments that are fantastic and/or inaccessible with conventional methods. An example is the developing Oculus Rift Crescent Bay, which includes dinosaur-era and alien-planet environments.
Institute for the Future researcher Alessandro Voto predicts the massive volumes of code needed to give life to such virtual worlds increasingly will be contributed by citizens worldwide. He is among many who feel VR's ultimate incarnation will be augmented reality, in which a virtual world will be laid over the real one, instead of a goggle device that isolates people from the outside.
From USA Today
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