Virtual Reality

Virtual Reality: Applications and Explorations provides information pertinent to the fundamental aspects of virtual reality and artificial reality. This book discusses the potential applications of virtual reality. Organized into three parts encompassing 10 chapters, this book begins with an overview of the traditional computer science activities ad discusses how hard problems in computer science can be addressed with virtual reality ideas and technology. This text then explores some applications of virtual reality technology that could potentially touch almost every purposeful activity that humans undertake in a technological civilization. Other chapters consider the use of virtual reality to manage and present to users information that cannot otherwise be comprehended. This book discusses as well the use of artificial worlds in both computer art and virtual reality. The final chapter deals with how the ideas of virtual reality and artificial reality can be of use to anyone who has to manage a business or organization. This book is a valuable resource for computer scientists.

Contributors

Foreword by Pat Cadigan

Preface

Part I Softwhere in Computer Science

Chapter 1 Artificial Realities as Data Visualization Environments: Problems and Prospects

Chapter 2 The Reality of Cooperation: Virtual Reality and CSCW

Chapter 3 Information Management Using Virtual Reality-Based Visualizations

Part II Softwhere in the Arts

Chapter 4 Writing Cyberspace: Literacy in the Age of Simulacra

Chapter 5 The Creator's Toolbox

Chapter 6 Full-Body Unencumbered Immersion in Virtual Worlds

Part III Softwhere in the World

Chapter 7 An Easy Entry Artificial Reality

Chapter 8 Virtual Reality and Planetary Exploration

Chapter 9 Summer Students in Virtual Reality: A Pilot Study on Educational Applications of Virtual Reality Technology

Chapter 10 Visualization of Information Flows: Virtual Reality as an Organizational Modeling Technique

Index