Virtual Reality - forecast of Dr. Kaku for 2025
Walking in virtual worlds of computers as avatar, simulating the sensation of touch via haptics.
The year 2016 is said to be the 1st year of
Virtual Reality (VR). Since the beginning of this year, a few VR game systems with
headsets have appeared in the market. Among them are Oculus Rift, Sony PlayStationVR, HTC Vive (all 3 tethered) and Google Cardboard, Samsung Gear VR, LG 360 VR (all
3 mobile). On wearing headsets, you can be immersed instantly in another environment.
The recent advancement in technology has made possible: 1)tightly linked
movements of the image and the head; 2)the field of the image of 100 degrees (although
human’s field of vision is 110 degrees, edge areas are blurred); 3)high
resolution of the image; 4)reasonable cost.
In practical applications, VR is used in store layouts, home
designing or industrial designing (combining headset display and touch set).
Starting with vision, VR is now extending into touch sense making use of haptic technology (pressure or wave is converted to electric signals to transmit). The
combinations of two senses can cause other senses such as sense of smell
(olfaction) or hearing (auditory perception) because of cross modal perceptions
of the human.
Along
with VR, Augmented Reality(AR) technology is utilized extensively in a number
areas such as visual art, construction industry and medical applications.
To popularize
AR, Microsoft is offering the HoroLens platform
and
Google
has introduced Tango to run on the most recent version of Android (Nougat) cell
phones.
Now,
Pokemon Go fad, which is a kind of simple AR, is raging the world.
Virtual Reality - forecast of Dr. Kaku for 2050
The real world is superimposed by virtual reality from computer images. Can see 360 degrees and see through objects.
Augmented reality (real + virtual) is used everywhere, in tourism, schools, surgery, games.
I feel confident that the above forecasts will be realized because of the current progresses described above.
