Do you want to know what VR feels like?
You have come to the right place. Let’s find out.
What Does VR Feel Like?
It feels like being in a 3D virtual world. You could be playing a video game or watching a 3D movie.
Being in VR feels just like being transported to another place. Your mind believes that what you’re seeing is real, or at least, right there in front of you.
How Does VR Work?
A VR headset or HMD (Head Mounted Display) is a device you wear on your head that will act as your “goggles” into the virtual world.
Each headset has two screens that you look at, displaying the image.
Tracking
VR headsets use a series of motion-tracking devices to determine where your eyes are relative to the virtual world.
With VR, you can walk, sit, stand, lie down, and even crawl through virtual spaces. You feel like you’re actually there!
A Window into Virtual Reality
Imagine your VR headset as the portal into virtual reality. Whatever direction you turn your head, your headset follows and lets you see whatever is behind you.
Controllers
All modern VR headsets include a pair of VR Controllers that track your hand movements. They allow you to physically interact with virtual realities space.
What Can You Expect When Putting on a VR Headset for the First Time?
Everyone who has tried VR knows what that moment was — the joy you first feel when you discover that VR isn’t just some gimmick. It could be the coolest technology you’ve ever experienced.
Everyone who uses VR experiences an amazing feeling when they use their first headset. It’s something everyone will remember forever.
Can VR be Convincing?
VR is extremely convincing.
There are several factors that contribute to making VR feel so real, including:
- Degrees of Freedom (DoF)
- Tracking
- Haptic Feedback
- Spatial Audio
- Depth and Scale
Degrees of Freedom (DoF)
Most modern VR headsets track your head movements in three dimensions (3D) and keep track of your position in real-time. They also keep track of where you’re pointing your eyes.
Some headsets can track where you’re facing, but they cannot detect whether you’re leaning forward or bending down.
Tracking
There are all kinds of different ways that headsets track your movements.
External Sensors
Some use external devices, like the Valve Index, which uses Valve’s lighthouse sensor.
Inside Out Tracking
With the help of an app called Inside Out Tracking, which uses a series of sensors on the headset to track where you’re located in 3D, like the Meta Quest2 (previously Oculus Quest 2), you can see exactly where you are in VR.
Controllers
With VR headsets, you can interact with the virtual world by using hand controllers. When you want to grab an object in a VR video, for example, you don’t “press A”, you bend down and grab it.
Haptic Feedback
Vibration is the type of haptic (or tactile) input that occurs when an object interacts with something else. Most gamepads use vibration for this purpose.
When interacting with an object in VR, most people experience some kind of feedback from the controller. This gives the object in VR a sense of presence.
When you punch a punching bag in VR, each time you strike the bag, there will be some feedback in your hand, so you’ll get the feeling that you’ve made physical contact.
Developers are using different methods to add haptic feedback to their apps. It gives a sense of touch to VR.
Spatial Audio
To understand spatial audio, imagine yourself walking through a room. You hear sounds coming from different directions, but they’re not just random noises; they actually tell you something about where the source of the noise is located.
If something happens on your right, you know that it happened on your right because spatial audio translates the sound into your ear.
VR does an excellent job of immersing you into a world where you feel like you’re really there. And it definitely adds a whole new level to experiencing horror games.
Depth and Scale
When you’re in VR, you experience a sense of presence unlike anything else. The sense of size and depth changes drastically.
For example, if you’re watching a movie on a television set, the size of the image on the screen is always limited by the size of the screen.
However, if you’re looking at a video game on a computer display, you use your cursor to change where you’re looking. But in virtual reality, you actually turn your head to see things in the distance.
Nowadays, things that can only be seen on a large TV look real when viewed through a headset. VR does an incredible amount of convincing your mind that these laws of physics really exist.
To the point where people who are afraid of heights have a hard time with games like Richie’s Plank Experience.
What Causes VR Motion Sickness?
When you’re playing a VR (virtual reality) video, your eyes register the movement being displayed around you. These can range from comets flying through space to galloping unicorns.
Your inner ear senses that there is a virtual movement happening all around you.
Despite what’s being displayed on your screen, your body senses that you’re not moving at all, and not in motion, so you feel uncomfortable.
Your vision, inner ear, and body send conflicting signals to your mind at once. As a result, your mind gets confused and disoriented, which causes motion sickness to occur.
Conclusion
Virtual Reality (VR) is a powerful technology that can transform how we experience the world. VR isn’t just for entertainment any longer; it has become an essential part of our everyday lives.
We’re hoping that this article has helped you learn more about virtual reality.
If you have any questions feel free to comment below.