Books about 'virtual reality'

In "an evocative whirlwind tour through 100 years of work" (Wired), Packer and Jordan bring together an "historically significant" (Slashdot) collection of the groundbreaking visions of scientists like Vannevar Bush, Douglas Englebart, and Norbert Wiener, and artists like John Cage, Nam June Paik, and William Gibson. Their insightful explanations of the core concepts behind multimedia provide historical context that "reads like a Western civ of modern media" (Film/Tape World).

Virtual reality techniques are increasingly becoming indispensible in many areas including medicine, entertainment, architecture, education and manufacturing, with VR tools being used for testing and prototyping products at design stages, as well as for creating applications in finished products. This book looks at how to generate advanced virtual reality worlds. It covers principles, techniques, devices and mathematical foundations, beginning with basic definitions, and then moving on to the latest results from current research and exploring the social implications of these.

Very practical in its approach, the book is fully illustrated in colour and contains numerous examples, exercises and case studies. Careful reading of this textbook will allow students and practitioners alike to gain a practical understanding of virtual reality concepts, devices and possible applications.

One possibility is that, instead of being produced by matter, consciousness is a separate element, added to physical systems. This can be modeled using the idea of a virtual reality, in which a human subject enters a computer-simulated world through a sensory interface. In this book, virtual reality is used as a metaphor for our situation as conscious beings. The basic theme is that what we can imagine doing in a virtual reality system may actually be happening in nature on a vastly greater scale. Nature may be like a computer simulation interfaced with conscious observer/participants.

This groundbreaking book shows how conscious beings could interact with a physically realistic virtual world. It shows how paranormal phenomena can be reconciled in a natural way with the laws of physics, and it sheds light on paradoxes of time, on life beyond the body, and on cosmic and terrestrial evolution. In a sweeping synthesis, the ideas and data of modern science are used to illuminate the ancient theme of consciousness in a world of illusion.

Jossey-Bass Guides to Online Teaching and Learning

Learning Online with Games, Simulations, and Virtual Worlds

Strategies for Online Instruction

Clark Aldrich

Learning Online with Games, Simulations, and Virtual Worlds

The infusion of games, simulations, and virtual worlds into online learning can be a transforming experience for both the instructor and the student. This practical guide, written by education game expert Clark Aldrich, shows faculty members and instructional designers how to identify opportunities for building games, simulations, and virtual environments into the curriculum; how to successfully incorporate these interactive environments to enhance student learning; and how to measure the learning outcomes. It also discusses how to build institutional support for using and financing more complex simulations. The book includes frameworks, tips, case studies and other real examples, and resources.

Praise for Learning Online with Games, Simulations, and Virtual Worlds

"Clark Aldrich provides powerful insights into the dynamic arena of games, simulations, and virtual worlds in a simultaneously entertaining and serious manner as only he can. If you are involved with educating anyone, from your own children to classrooms full of students, you need to devour this book."
— Karl Kapp, assistant director, Institute for Interactive Technologies, Bloomsburg University

"At a time when the technologies for e-learning are evolving faster than most people can follow, Aldrich successfully bridges the perceptual gap between virtual worlds, digital games, and educational simulations, and provides educators with all they really need to use this technology to enhance and enrich their e-learning experiences."
— Katrin Becker, instructor, Department of Computer Science and Information Systems, Mount Royal College, and adjunct professor of education, University of Calgary

"I consider this a must-read for anyone engaged in or contemplating using these tools in their classrooms or designing their own tools."
— Rick Van Sant, professor of learning and technology, Ferris State University

• Presents a wide variety of detailed application descriptions across ALL areas of industry, providing you with practical ideas for VR development in ANY area of interest!


• Cross references development techniques between different application areas, supplying you with fundamental best practices across disciplines!


• Includes an online and media-rich companion site with hours of footage from application demonstrations, which puts you in the middle of the action!
  

Understanding Virtual Reality arrives at a time when the technologies behind virtual reality have advanced to the point that it is possible to develop and deploy meaningful, productive virtual reality applications. The aim of this thorough, accessible exploration is to help you take advantage of this moment, equipping you with the understanding needed to identify and prepare for ways VR can be used in your field, whatever your field may be.

By approaching VR as a communications medium, the authors have created a resource that will remain relevant even as the underlying technologies evolve. You get a history of VR, along with a good look at systems currently in use. However, the focus remains squarely on the application of VR and the many issues that arise in the application design and implementation, including hardware requirements, system integration, interaction techniques, and usability. This book also counters both exaggerated claims for VR and the view that would reduce it to entertainment, citing dozens of real-world examples from many different fields and presenting (in a series of appendices) four in-depth application case studies.

* Substantive, illuminating coverage designed for technical and business readers and well-suited to the classroom.
* Examines VR's constituent technologies, drawn from visualization, representation, graphics, human-computer interaction, and other fields, and explains how they are being united in cohesive VR systems.
* Via a companion Web site, provides additional case studies, tutorials, instructional materials, and a link to an open-source VR programming system.

Ryan's analysis encompasses both traditional literary narratives and the new textual genres made possible by the electronic revolution of the past few years, such as hypertext, interactive movies and drama, digital installation art, and computer role-playing games. Interspersed among the book's chapters are several "interludes" that focus exclusively on either key literary texts that foreshadow what we now call "virtual reality," including those of Baudelaire, Huysmans, Ignatius de Loyola, Calvino, and science-fiction author Neal Stephenson, or recent efforts to produce interactive art forms, like the hypertext "novel" Twelve Blue, by Michael Joyce, and I'm Your Man, an interactive movie. As Ryan considers the fate of traditional narrative patterns in digital culture, she revisits one of the central issues in modern literary theory--the opposition between a presumably passive reading that is taken over by the world a text represents and an active, deconstructive reading that imaginatively participates in the text's creation.