Whenever virtual reality (VR) is mentioned, we start to imagine science-fiction films. However, nowadays, this technology completely combines with our daily lives and helps with other fields such as video games, medicine, education, etc virtual reality is here to stay, but what just is it?
The recent appearance of lower-cost virtual reality technologies – like the Oculus Rift, the Google Cardboard, and the Samsung Gear VR– and Mixed Reality Interfaces (MRITF) – like the Microsoft’ Hololens – is enticing the attention of users, researchers suggest that it may be the next major steppingstone in technological advancement.
However, the record of VR technology is lengthier than it may seem: the concept of VR was created in the 1960s and the first viable VR tools emerged in the late 1980s. For this purpose, during the last 20 years, 100s of researchers explored the processes, impacts, and purposes of this technology producing multiple scientific papers.
What according to the research the conclusion should be?
This document wants to deliver an answer to this problem by exploring, using advanced scientific techniques, that exist in the research corpus in the field. We have collected all the present articles and information about VR in the Web of Science Core Collection scientific database, and the resultant dataset contained 25,758 records for VR and 12,984 for augmented reality (AR).
The bibliographical record included various areas, such as author, name, theoretical, nation, and other references (needed for the illustration analysis). The information network and cluster analysis showed a complex panorama symbolized by changes, evolutions, and growth over time. 5 years ago, the publication media on VR concerned both forum proceedings and journals, more recently journals constitute VR as the new main medium of communication.
The current work discusses the growth and changes over the time of the use of VR application with an emphasis on the future anticipated VR’s capabilities, increases, and challenges.
This article presents a systematic and computational analysis of the emerging VR and AR fields in terms of various reference networks to explore the growth of the intellectual formation of this learning domain over time.
Ivan Sutherland in a decisive manuscript describes VR as “a window through which a user perceives the virtual world as if looked, felt, sounded real and I which the user could act realistically”. Fuchs and Bishop defined VR as “real-time interactive graphics with 3D models, combined with a display technology that gives the user the immersion in the model world and direct manipulation”. after that time and in accord with the application area, several explanations have been formulated.
We can notice that three common features of VR systems: immersion, perception to be present in an environment, and interaction with that environment. In Particular, connection affects the number of senses stimulated, communications, and the reality’s resemblance used to simulate environments. This feature can depend on the properties of the technical
system used to separate users from reality.
Augmented reality (AR) is more of new technology as compared to VR which shows an interdisciplinary appliance structure, in which, in our time, education and learning seem to be the most viable field of research. Indeed, AR allows supportive learning, for example, expanding on the content understanding and memory preservation & protection, as well as on learning inspiration. However, if VR aids from clear and more definite fields of product and investigation areas, AR is still rising in the scientific developments.
We conclude by considering the impact that VR/AR/MRITF will be able to push the scientific fields to new heights and help in development and advancements, as well in human connection and interaction, as already happened with the arrival of mobile phones by increasing the use and the development of scientific applications and by modifying the social communication and interface among people.