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Blake Long

Lacee Nisbett

English 102

6 March 2019

The future of Virtual reality

Virtual reality is a relatively new technology that has recently been experiencing rapid

growth in popularity and functionality. Virtual reality (VR) was a concept first brought to light in

the 1960s but it wasn’t until recent improvements in the system’s positional tracking put the

technology in the hands of the average consumer. Positional tracking is the ability for a virtual

reality system to locate the position of your body at all times. This plays one of the most vital

roles when it comes to the immersion of its users who today, are mostly composed of gamers.

The first mainstream virtual reality headsets, the HTC Vive and Oculus Rift, first appeared on

the market in 2016 with gamers as the target audience and since then has continued to improve

and expand in the global gaming community. Many successful efforts have been made to use VR

as a tool to help educate, rehabilitate, and train people around the world, but have failed to

become mainstream practices as the technology is still in its infancy stage. Many people believe

VR will not ever be much more than a gaming system due to its gradual growth. Although virtual

reality tech is still in its early phases, the recent development of more efficient positional

tracking paved the way for improvements in many practices outside of gaming from physical

therapy to education.

To gain a better understanding of what the future of virtual reality has to offer, we first

need to look at how current VR technology functions. Most headsets today use a combination of
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sensor outputs and optical tracking in order to locate the position of its users. Almost all VR

headsets use a device called a head-mounted display (HMD) that contains gyroscopes to detect

the angle of rotation as well as accelerometers to help approximate the speed at which a the

device is traveling. However, optical tracking devices, which are currently the most common,

use infrared light alongside their HMD sensors to gather positional tracking data. Usually,

infrared light is emitted from diodes in wall-mounted devices and picked up by infrared sensors

that are scattered around the HMD or vice versa (​Xu 2017​). When looking at the HTC Vive as an

example, you can see divots covering the front and sides of the headset where the infrared

sensors lie. Having the infrared sensors so spread out allows the device to track the position of

each sensor in relation to each other which provides information on both rotation and position of

the HMD and controllers. This is known as having six degrees of freedom: pitch, roll, and yaw

rotation as well as movement on the x, y, and z planes (​Strickland 2007​).

This ability for optical tracking VR systems to locate the position of its devices in

real-time and give nearly instantaneous feedback set new standards in the virtual reality industry.

When companies like HTC and Facebook, owners of Oculus, found a way to efficiently and

affordably mass produce VR system implemented with this technology, it opened a door for

more than just gamers. Recently, people from all over the world have taken interest in creating

new uses for virtual reality. One example of this was discussed during a conference given by

Jinyu Zheng and ​held in ​Hangzhou, China on August 25, 2018. The purpose of this conference

was to show how virtual reality can significantly aid the process of rehabilitation in victims of a

stroke. One of the first points Zheng brings up is how high the demand is for physical therapists

due to the fact that traditionally, therapists can only do one-on-one sessions with the patients.
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Virtual reality gives these patients the ability to receive repetitive physical training without the

need for a physical therapist. One other issue with traditional rehabilitation practices Zheng

mentions is the boredom experienced by the patients during physical training. This is another

problem that VR solves as the patients become more engaged in the rehabilitation process due to

the variety of different game-like exercises virtual reality systems have to offer (Zheng 2018).

Boredom may not seem like a large issue concerning physical rehabilitation but it actually affects

the outcome of the training due to the attention of the patient being focused on other things

during the exercises.

Aside from physical therapy, virtual reality also serves many practical uses in other

disciplines such as education. One example of VR education currently in-use can be seen in the

medical field. Recently, students have been using VR to help gain a better understanding of the

human anatomy which is a complex set of systems that is traditionally difficult for students to

grasp. Not only does virtual reality aid the learning process through interactive three dimensional

models, but it also helps students become more engaged in the memorization process of the

human anatomy. When medical students at the University of California San Francisco put on the

HTC Vive headset, they are transported to a virtual world where they can interact with a life-size

cadaver and peel away parts of the human anatomy with their own hands as if it were a puzzle.

Each piece of this puzzle not only gives the user information regarding the name of the body

part, but also a description of the part’s function as well as its location on the human body. This

is important because the human anatomy is the basis of all medical knowledge and is one of the

first things every doctor must learn. As Assistant Professor of Anatomy at UCSF, Derek

Harmon, states “Because the better they know the body, the better physicians they will end up
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being for the rest of their careers.” (Mitzi, 2017) The UCSF Anatomy Learning Center is also

planning on taking advantage of VR by putting medical students in an unfamiliar and stressful

environments. Traditionally, it is very difficult to mimic trauma scenarios for students because

there is no real danger nor consequence for failure. UCSF will use VR to familiarize students

with realistic medical environments where they need to make quick decisions and efficiently

communicate with team members (Mitzi, 2017). Never before has it been so easy to create both

safe and stressful setting for students to enhance their skills.

Clearly, there are already many functional uses for VR in today’s society but that list will

continue to grow as the technology improves. In fact, there are three major virtual reality

headsets from both Oculus and HTC that are set to be released this year containing more efficient

technology. One of these headsets, the Oculus Quest, gives its users the ability to use VR

anywhere. The headset is a standalone system which means it does not require a computer to

function. Soon, all you will need to enter the virtual world is two controllers and a headset. This

idea alone is enough to further involve VR in mainstream practices but what’s more is the entire

bundle will only cost consumers $399. That is half the price of the HTC Vive at its initial release.

The Oculus Quest also features a sharper display making it much easier to see details which is

especially important when it comes to reading text.

Virtual reality technology has come a long way since its beginning but even today, it is

still taking its first steps on the long road to perfection. Many people speculate whether or not

virtual reality will have any mainstream uses aside from a gaming device. I myself own a VR

headset and I admittedly have only used it for gaming, but even as a casual user, it is not hard for

me to see what impact VR will have on the world as the technology continues to rapidly grow
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and improve. Due to the fact that people are already finding real world applications for such

primitive virtual reality systems, it is not difficult to see how the uses for VR will improve as the

technology does. I, along with many others, believe that virtual reality will be a part of nearly

everyone’s everyday lives in the near future.

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Works Cited

Baker, Mitzi. “How VR Is Revolutionizing the Way Future Doctors Are Learning About Our

Bodies.” ​UC San Francisco​, 18 Sept. 2017,

www.ucsf.edu/news/2017/09/408301/how-vr-revolutionizing-way-future-doctors-

are-learning-about-our-bodies.

Xu, Wenhui, et al. ​An Introduction to Biometric Recognition - IEEE Journals &

Magazine,​ Wiley-IEEE Press, 2017,

ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/8054273?arnumber=8054273&SID=EBSCO%3Ae

dseee.

Zheng, Jinyu. “A Virtual Reality Rehabilitation Training System.” ​An Introduction to Biometric

Recognition - IEEE Journals & Magazine​, Wiley-IEEE Press, 2018,

ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/8530315?arnumber=8530315&SID=EBSCO%3A

dseee.

Falah, Jannat. “Virtual Reality Medical Training System for Anatomy Education.” ​An

Introduction to Biometric Recognition - IEEE Journals & Magazine,​ Wiley-IEEE

Press, 2014,
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ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/6918271?arnumber=6918271&SID=EBSCO%3Ae

dseee.

Strickland, Jonathan. “How Virtual Reality Gear Works.” ​HowStuffWorks,​ HowStuffWorks, 10

Aug. 2007, electronics.howstuffworks.com/gadgets/other-gadgets/VR-gear6.htm.

Dredge, Stuart. “Three Really Real Questions about the Future of Virtual Reality.” ​The

Guardian,​ Guardian News and Media, 7 Jan. 2016,

www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/jan/07/virtual-reality-future-oculus-rift-v

r.