VR/AR — Applications, Limitations and Research in the Industrial Environment

When people are asked about their definition of VR, they might say something like “VR is being within artificial worlds or dreams”, “VR is the technical creation of real experiences” or “VR is interacting naturally with non-real entities”. Those quotes are not very precise, but they already contain the “three I”, introduced by (Burdea and Coiffet 1994) for a definition: immersion, which is the attempt to provide the VR user with feedback that helps to create the feeling of “being there” (presence); interaction, which integrates the user even more into the virtual environment offering him the power to change and use it; imagination, that is the ability of human beings to believe something is real even if its representation is somewhat unreal. Another, more precise and technical definition would be “VR is a human-machine interface, which allows for perceiving an artificially generated environment as a reality with multiple senses involved in that process.”, which is based on (Hennig 1997).