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Virtual Reality (Digital): World
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Virtual reality started with single-player worlds simulated on a local machine (first 3D games and research projects before that). That is, computer games. The next step (late 1990s) was to have multiplayer worlds, where several participants could interact with limited realism. Another important development were persistent worlds - various MMORPGs and "general-purpose" virtual worlds such as ActiveWorlds, Second Life, and There. These persistent worlds are running on clusters of servers (sometimes distributed) and usually allow creation of custom content and programming by users. More than ten million people play MMORPGs as of 2005 and about 100 thousand "play" in general purpose worlds.
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The term 'Virtual Reality' (VR) was initially coined by Jaron Lanier,founder of VPL Research (1989). Other related terms include 'ArtificialReality' (Myron Krueger, 1970s), 'Cyberspace' (William Gibson, 1984), and,more recently, 'Virtual Worlds' and 'Virtual Environments' (1990s).
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Lanier is probably best known for his work in Virtual Reality. He coined the term 'Virtual Reality', and founded the VR industry. He started the first VR company, VPL Research, Inc., which produced most of the world's VR equipment for many years. He is the co-inventor of fundamental VR components such as interface gloves and VR networking. --Lanier's bio
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Julian Dibbell, a prominent commentator on digital culture, chronicled the first known case of sexual assault in cyberspace in 1993, when virtual reality was still in its infancy. A participant in LambdaMOO, a community of users who congregated in a virtual California house, had used a computer program called a "voodoo doll" to force another player's character to act out being raped. Though this virtual world was rudimentary and the assault simulated, Dibbell recounted that the trauma was jarringly real. The woman whose character was attacked later wept -- "post-traumatic tears were streaming down her face" -- as she vented her outrage and demand for revenge in an online posting, he wrote.
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This free, non-commercial demostration requires a Pentium 300+, Internet Explorer 4 +, and this remarkable, small, free, safe, and easy Virtual Reality viewer installed. blaxxun Contact 5. Insert yourself into hundreds of worlds as a fully-rendered 3D VR "avatar" and/or chat in 3D! Borrowable VRML avatars are everywhere! A recent version of Microsoft DirectX will insure optimum performance.
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Graphic above shows a woman in virtual reality during an fMRI brain scan, looking into a custom magnet-friendly virtual reality goggles. VR images from projectors in another room are carried to the participant in the form of light (photons, no electrons) via optic fiber image guides. The participant has the illusion of going inside the virtual world, allowing researchers to measure what happens her brain when she reports reductions in pain during VR.
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