What is the practical significance of learning virtual reality technology?

Virtual reality (VR); Spiritual realm and fantasy reality is a high-tech rising in recent years. VR is a comprehensive integrated technology, involving computer graphics, human-computer interaction technology, sensing technology, artificial intelligence and other fields. It uses computers to generate realistic three-dimensional vision, hearing and smell, so that people can naturally experience the virtual world and interact with it through appropriate equipment. VR has three meanings: first, virtual reality is a realistic entity generated by computer, and "entity" is the feeling (seeing, hearing, touching and smelling); Second, users can interact with this environment through human natural skills, which refer to other human actions such as head rotation, eye movements and gestures. Thirdly, virtual reality often relies on some three-dimensional devices and sensing devices to complete the interactive operation. In recent years, VR has gradually moved from laboratory research projects to practical applications. At present, it has been widely used in military, aerospace, architectural design, tourism, medical care, culture and entertainment, education and other fields. In China, VR-related projects have been included in the plan, and the research and application of VR are in full swing.

"Virtual reality technology" is a new term for most enterprises in the world, but because of its great application value, it has been widely used in design, marketing, training, customer service and many other fields by large industrial enterprises of Fortune 500 companies such as BMW, ge (General Motors), Boeing (Boeing) and Su Huoyi.

Application prospect of virtual reality technology

VR technology is widely used. 1993, Helsel and Doherty made statistics on 805 VR research projects around the world. The results show that the applications of entertainment, education and art occupy the mainstream at present, reaching 2 1.4%, followed by military and aviation, reaching 12.7% and medicine reaching 6. 18. Let's briefly introduce some of its applications.

(1) medicine

The application of virtual reality in medicine has very important practical significance. In a virtual environment, a virtual human model can be established. With the help of trackball, HMD and sensory gloves, students can easily understand the internal organs of human body, which is much more effective than the existing way of using textbooks.

In the early 1990s, researchers such as Pieper and Satara established a virtual surgery trainer based on two SGI workstations, which was used for leg and abdominal surgery simulation. This virtual environment includes a virtual operating table, operating lights and virtual surgical tools (such as scalpels, syringes, surgical forceps, etc. ), virtual human models and organs. With the help of HMD and sensing gloves, users can operate on the virtual human model. However, the system needs further improvement, such as improving the realism of the environment, adding network functions, so that it can train multiple users at the same time, or work under the guidance of foreign experts.

In addition, VR technology is of great significance in remote control of surgery, planning and arrangement of complex surgery, information guidance of surgical process, prediction of surgical consequences, improvement of living conditions of disabled people, and even development of new drugs.

(2) Entertainment, art and education

Rich sensory ability and 3D display environment make VR an ideal video game tool. Because the requirements for the realism of VR in entertainment are not too high, VR has developed most rapidly in this field in recent years. For example, Chicago opened the world's first large-scale VR entertainment system that can be used by many people, with the theme of a future war in 3025; The VR game system named "Virtual" developed in Britain is equipped with HMD, which greatly enhances the sense of reality. 1992, a system named "LegendQust" added artificial intelligence function, which made the computer have self-learning function, greatly enhanced the interest and difficulty, and won the annual VR product award. In addition, VR also shows good prospects in home entertainment.

As a medium for transmitting and displaying information, the potential application ability of VR in the future art field should not be underestimated. VR can transform static art (such as oil painting and sculpture). ) into dynamic art, and make the audience better appreciate the author's thoughts and art. In addition, VR improves the artistic expression ability. For example, a virtual musician can play all kinds of musical instruments, and people with inconvenient hands and feet or people who are far away from home can go to the virtual concert hall to enjoy concerts in his living room and so on.

The potential application value of art is also applicable to education. For example, VR is a very powerful tool when explaining some abstract concepts of complex systems such as quantum physics. Lofin et al. established a "virtual physics laboratory" in 1993 to explain some physical concepts, such as position and velocity, force and displacement.

(3) Military and aerospace industries

Simulation and training has always been an important topic in military and aerospace industries, which provides a broad application prospect for virtual reality. DARPA, the Advanced Research Projects Agency of the US Department of Defense, has been developing a virtual battlefield system named SIMNET since 1980s, which provides 1 training for tank cooperative training. The system can be connected with more than 200 simulators. In addition, VR technology can also be used to simulate the zero-gravity environment, instead of the current irregular underwater training methods for astronauts.

(4) management engineering

VR also shows unparalleled superiority in management engineering. If a new building is designed, it can be displayed with VR technology before the building starts; When the financial crisis occurs, it can help to analyze a large number of data in stocks, bonds and other aspects to find countermeasures and so on.

These are just some application prospects of virtual reality. It can be predicted that in the near future, virtual reality technology will affect or even change our concepts and habits, and will go deep into people's daily work and life.