importance of virtual reality essay

Virtual Reality Can Help Combat Climate Change

Virtual reality can improve our mental and physical health.

The Covid-19 pandemic made the benefits of virtual reality even clearer. At a time when everyone needed to distance themselves, for community health and wellness, virtual reality stepped in to connect people. It made work and socialization possible from afar. Not only did this help people adhere to social distancing guidelines, stopping the spread of the virus, but it also helped boost mental health for people who were feeling lonely and isolated during this time.

In the future, virtual reality can continue offering these solutions to people in need. If physical or mental health issues force people into limiting contact with others, they don’t have to be alone. The virtual world provides a safe space to meet and interact with loved ones and new friends. As for physical health, VR gaming has already jumped into the fitness world, offering tons of games that make exercise fun and possible from the comfort of home. No gym or fancy fitness equipment needed! Just ask anyone who has played Beat Saber on hard mode; VR games can break a sweat.

Virtual Reality Can Help Us Learn

Essays on Virtual Reality

The importance of writing an essay on virtual reality.

Virtual reality (VR) is an increasingly important and influential technology that is shaping various industries and everyday life. Writing an essay on virtual reality can help to educate others about its potential and impact on society, as well as provide a deeper understanding of its applications and implications.

Here are some reasons why writing an essay on virtual reality is important:

Educational purposes: By researching and writing about virtual reality, you can help to spread awareness and knowledge about this technology. This can help others to understand the potential benefits and risks associated with VR.
Impact on industries: Virtual reality has the potential to transform various industries, including healthcare, education, gaming, and entertainment. By writing about VR, you can explore its impact on these industries and how it is changing the way people work, learn, and play.
Ethical and social implications: Virtual reality raises important ethical and social questions, such as privacy concerns, addiction, and the blurring of virtual and real worlds. Writing an essay on VR can help to explore these implications and provoke critical thinking on these issues.

Writing Tips for an Essay on Virtual Reality

When writing an essay on virtual reality, it's important to consider the following tips:

Research extensively: Start by conducting thorough research on virtual reality, including its history, current applications, and future potential. This will provide you with a solid foundation for your essay.
Organize your ideas: Consider the structure of your essay and how you will present your ideas. You may want to start with an introduction that provides background information on VR, followed by sections that explore its impact on different industries and its ethical implications.
Provide evidence: Back up your points with evidence and examples. This could include case studies, statistics, and expert opinions to support your arguments.
Consider different perspectives: Virtual reality is a complex and multifaceted technology, so it's important to consider different perspectives and viewpoints. This can help to make your essay more balanced and thought-provoking.
Revise and edit: Finally, don't forget to revise and edit your essay. Check for clarity, coherence, and grammar, and make sure your writing is engaging and persuasive.

By writing an essay on virtual reality, you can contribute to the ongoing conversation about this groundbreaking technology and help to shape public understanding and discourse about its impact on society. It's an opportunity to explore a fascinating and rapidly evolving field that has the potential to change the world as we know it.

Best Virtual Reality Essay Topics

The impact of Virtual Reality on mental health treatment
The ethical implications of Virtual Reality in gaming
Virtual Reality and its potential for revolutionizing education
The use of Virtual Reality in architectural design
Virtual Reality and its role in the future of healthcare
Exploring cultural implications of Virtual Reality experiences
The future of Virtual Reality entertainment
Virtual Reality and its influence on marketing and advertising
The use of Virtual Reality in military training
Virtual Reality and its potential for environmental conservation
The psychological effects of Virtual Reality on users
Virtual Reality and its applications in the sports industry
The role of Virtual Reality in simulating historical experiences
Virtual Reality and its impact on workplace training
The intersection of Virtual Reality and art
Virtual Reality and its potential for addressing social issues
The implications of Virtual Reality in travel and tourism
Virtual Reality and its influence on remote collaboration
The future of Virtual Reality in virtual social interactions
The use of Virtual Reality in immersive storytelling experiences

Virtual Reality Essay Topics Prompts

Imagine a world where Virtual Reality has replaced traditional forms of entertainment. How would this impact society and culture?
If you could create a Virtual Reality experience to simulate any historical event, what would it be and why?
Explore the potential ethical dilemmas that may arise from the widespread adoption of Virtual Reality technology.
Create a narrative set in a futuristic world where Virtual Reality has become indistinguishable from reality. How does this impact the characters and their perception of the world?
Write an essay discussing the potential implications of Virtual Reality on the future of work and productivity.

The Transformative Potential of Virtual Reality: Applications and Implications

Ways in which vr can change our lives, made-to-order essay as fast as you need it.

Each essay is customized to cater to your unique preferences

+ experts online

Virtual Reality

Virtual reality in the real world, virtual reality - the technology of the future, how does virtual reality impact society, let us write you an essay from scratch.

450+ experts on 30 subjects ready to help
Custom essay delivered in as few as 3 hours

The Concept of Virtual Reality

Augmented and virtual reality in healthcare industry, research on virtual reality technology in sports field, what is the meaning and utilization of virtual reality, get a personalized essay in under 3 hours.

Expert-written essays crafted with your exact needs in mind

Virtual Reality: Features, Requirements, Applications, Advantages and Disadvantages

What's the difference between augmented reality (ar) and virtual reality (vr), virtual reality in society, applications of virtual reality in different fields of life, a thin line between imagination and reality in "atonement" by ian mcewan, how augmented reality will enhance the customer shopping experience in ecommerce sites, the development of augmented reality, the fundamental idea of a virtual machine, the use of vr technology to treat phobias and other anxiety disorders, the progress of virtual reality technology and the marketing of the product, influence of technology on the society: analysis of ready player one and wall-e, virtual communities using cloud technology, merge made a vr headset suited for kids, weird things you didn't know virtual reality was being used for, the issue of virtual reality in the movie "uncanny valley", marketing research on the new virtual reality service provided by the marriott hotels, review of a vr game experience: oculus first contact, the multifaceted routes to escape from reality, virtual reality: exploring the pros and cons.

Virtual reality (VR) is the use of computer modeling and simulation that enables a person to interact with an artificial three-dimensional (3-D) visual or other sensory environment.

The term virtual reality was coined in 1987 by Jaron Lanier, whose research and engineering contributed a number of products to the nascent VR industry.

Applications of virtual reality include entertainment (particularly video games), education (such as medical or military training) and business (such as virtual meetings).

Simulation-based virtual reality, avatar image-based virtual reality, projector-based virtual reality, desktop-based virtual reality, augmented reality, mixed reality, cyberspace, head-mounted display.

171 million people use VR technology today. The first VR Headset came out in the 1960’s. Seventy-eight of Americans are familiar with virtual reality.

Relevant topics

Digital Era
Computer Science
Cyber Security
Artificial Intelligence
Cell Phones
Disadvantages of Technology
5G Technology

By clicking “Check Writers’ Offers”, you agree to our terms of service and privacy policy . We’ll occasionally send you promo and account related email

No need to pay just yet!

We use cookies to personalyze your web-site experience. By continuing we’ll assume you board with our cookie policy .

Instructions Followed To The Letter
Deadlines Met At Every Stage
Unique And Plagiarism Free

An official website of the United States government

The .gov means it’s official. Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

The site is secure. The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Publications
Account settings

Preview improvements coming to the PMC website in October 2024. Learn More or Try it out now .

Advanced Search
Journal List
Front Psychol

The Past, Present, and Future of Virtual and Augmented Reality Research: A Network and Cluster Analysis of the Literature

Pietro cipresso.

1 Applied Technology for Neuro-Psychology Lab, Istituto Auxologico Italiano, Milan, Italy

2 Department of Psychology, Catholic University of the Sacred Heart, Milan, Italy

Irene Alice Chicchi Giglioli

3 Instituto de Investigación e Innovación en Bioingeniería, Universitat Politècnica de València, Valencia, Spain

Mariano Alcañiz Raya

Giuseppe riva, associated data.

The recent appearance of low cost virtual reality (VR) technologies – like the Oculus Rift, the HTC Vive and the Sony PlayStation VR – and Mixed Reality Interfaces (MRITF) – like the Hololens – is attracting the attention of users and researchers suggesting it may be the next largest stepping stone in technological innovation. However, the history of VR technology is longer than it may seem: the concept of VR was formulated in the 1960s and the first commercial VR tools appeared in the late 1980s. For this reason, during the last 20 years, 100s of researchers explored the processes, effects, and applications of this technology producing 1000s of scientific papers. What is the outcome of this significant research work? This paper wants to provide an answer to this question by exploring, using advanced scientometric techniques, the existing research corpus in the field. We collected all the existent articles about VR in the Web of Science Core Collection scientific database, and the resultant dataset contained 21,667 records for VR and 9,944 for augmented reality (AR). The bibliographic record contained various fields, such as author, title, abstract, country, and all the references (needed for the citation analysis). The network and cluster analysis of the literature showed a composite panorama characterized by changes and evolutions over the time. Indeed, whether until 5 years ago, the main publication media on VR concerned both conference proceeding and journals, more recently journals constitute the main medium of communication. Similarly, if at first computer science was the leading research field, nowadays clinical areas have increased, as well as the number of countries involved in VR research. The present work discusses the evolution and changes over the time of the use of VR in the main areas of application with an emphasis on the future expected VR’s capacities, increases and challenges. We conclude considering the disruptive contribution that VR/AR/MRITF will be able to get in scientific fields, as well in human communication and interaction, as already happened with the advent of mobile phones by increasing the use and the development of scientific applications (e.g., in clinical areas) and by modifying the social communication and interaction among people.

Introduction

In the last 5 years, virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) have attracted the interest of investors and the general public, especially after Mark Zuckerberg bought Oculus for two billion dollars ( Luckerson, 2014 ; Castelvecchi, 2016 ). Currently, many other companies, such as Sony, Samsung, HTC, and Google are making huge investments in VR and AR ( Korolov, 2014 ; Ebert, 2015 ; Castelvecchi, 2016 ). However, if VR has been used in research for more than 25 years, and now there are 1000s of papers and many researchers in the field, comprising a strong, interdisciplinary community, AR has a more recent application history ( Burdea and Coiffet, 2003 ; Kim, 2005 ; Bohil et al., 2011 ; Cipresso and Serino, 2014 ; Wexelblat, 2014 ). The study of VR was initiated in the computer graphics field and has been extended to several disciplines ( Sutherland, 1965 , 1968 ; Mazuryk and Gervautz, 1996 ; Choi et al., 2015 ). Currently, videogames supported by VR tools are more popular than the past, and they represent valuables, work-related tools for neuroscientists, psychologists, biologists, and other researchers as well. Indeed, for example, one of the main research purposes lies from navigation studies that include complex experiments that could be done in a laboratory by using VR, whereas, without VR, the researchers would have to go directly into the field, possibly with limited use of intervention. The importance of navigation studies for the functional understanding of human memory in dementia has been a topic of significant interest for a long time, and, in 2014, the Nobel Prize in “Physiology or Medicine” was awarded to John M. O’Keefe, May-Britt Moser, and Edvard I. Moser for their discoveries of nerve cells in the brain that enable a sense of place and navigation. Journals and magazines have extended this knowledge by writing about “the brain GPS,” which gives a clear idea of the mechanism. A huge number of studies have been conducted in clinical settings by using VR ( Bohil et al., 2011 ; Serino et al., 2014 ), and Nobel Prize winner, Edvard I. Moser commented about the use of VR ( Minderer et al., 2016 ), highlighting its importance for research and clinical practice. Moreover, the availability of free tools for VR experimental and computational use has made it easy to access any field ( Riva et al., 2011 ; Cipresso, 2015 ; Brown and Green, 2016 ; Cipresso et al., 2016 ).

Augmented reality is a more recent technology than VR and shows an interdisciplinary application framework, in which, nowadays, education and learning seem to be the most field of research. Indeed, AR allows supporting learning, for example increasing-on content understanding and memory preservation, as well as on learning motivation. However, if VR benefits from clear and more definite fields of application and research areas, AR is still emerging in the scientific scenarios.

In this article, we present a systematic and computational analysis of the emerging interdisciplinary VR and AR fields in terms of various co-citation networks in order to explore the evolution of the intellectual structure of this knowledge domain over time.

Virtual Reality Concepts and Features

The concept of VR could be traced at the mid of 1960 when Ivan Sutherland in a pivotal manuscript attempted to describe VR as a window through which a user perceives the virtual world as if looked, felt, sounded real and in which the user could act realistically ( Sutherland, 1965 ).

Since that time and in accordance with the application area, several definitions have been formulated: for example, Fuchs and Bishop (1992) defined VR as “real-time interactive graphics with 3D models, combined with a display technology that gives the user the immersion in the model world and direct manipulation” ( Fuchs and Bishop, 1992 ); Gigante (1993) described VR as “The illusion of participation in a synthetic environment rather than external observation of such an environment. VR relies on a 3D, stereoscopic head-tracker displays, hand/body tracking and binaural sound. VR is an immersive, multi-sensory experience” ( Gigante, 1993 ); and “Virtual reality refers to immersive, interactive, multi-sensory, viewer-centered, 3D computer generated environments and the combination of technologies required building environments” ( Cruz-Neira, 1993 ).

As we can notice, these definitions, although different, highlight three common features of VR systems: immersion, perception to be present in an environment, and interaction with that environment ( Biocca, 1997 ; Lombard and Ditton, 1997 ; Loomis et al., 1999 ; Heeter, 2000 ; Biocca et al., 2001 ; Bailenson et al., 2006 ; Skalski and Tamborini, 2007 ; Andersen and Thorpe, 2009 ; Slater, 2009 ; Sundar et al., 2010 ). Specifically, immersion concerns the amount of senses stimulated, interactions, and the reality’s similarity of the stimuli used to simulate environments. This feature can depend on the properties of the technological system used to isolate user from reality ( Slater, 2009 ).

Higher or lower degrees of immersion can depend by three types of VR systems provided to the user:

simple • Non-immersive systems are the simplest and cheapest type of VR applications that use desktops to reproduce images of the world.
simple • Immersive systems provide a complete simulated experience due to the support of several sensory outputs devices such as head mounted displays (HMDs) for enhancing the stereoscopic view of the environment through the movement of the user’s head, as well as audio and haptic devices.
simple • Semi-immersive systems such as Fish Tank VR are between the two above. They provide a stereo image of a three dimensional (3D) scene viewed on a monitor using a perspective projection coupled to the head position of the observer ( Ware et al., 1993 ). Higher technological immersive systems have showed a closest experience to reality, giving to the user the illusion of technological non-mediation and feeling him or her of “being in” or present in the virtual environment ( Lombard and Ditton, 1997 ). Furthermore, higher immersive systems, than the other two systems, can give the possibility to add several sensory outputs allowing that the interaction and actions were perceived as real ( Loomis et al., 1999 ; Heeter, 2000 ; Biocca et al., 2001 ).

Finally, the user’s VR experience could be disclosed by measuring presence, realism, and reality’s levels. Presence is a complex psychological feeling of “being there” in VR that involves the sensation and perception of physical presence, as well as the possibility to interact and react as if the user was in the real world ( Heeter, 1992 ). Similarly, the realism’s level corresponds to the degree of expectation that the user has about of the stimuli and experience ( Baños et al., 2000 , 2009 ). If the presented stimuli are similar to reality, VR user’s expectation will be congruent with reality expectation, enhancing VR experience. In the same way, higher is the degree of reality in interaction with the virtual stimuli, higher would be the level of realism of the user’s behaviors ( Baños et al., 2000 , 2009 ).

From Virtual to Augmented Reality

Looking chronologically on VR and AR developments, we can trace the first 3D immersive simulator in 1962, when Morton Heilig created Sensorama, a simulated experience of a motorcycle running through Brooklyn characterized by several sensory impressions, such as audio, olfactory, and haptic stimuli, including also wind to provide a realist experience ( Heilig, 1962 ). In the same years, Ivan Sutherland developed The Ultimate Display that, more than sound, smell, and haptic feedback, included interactive graphics that Sensorama didn’t provide. Furthermore, Philco developed the first HMD that together with The Sword of Damocles of Sutherland was able to update the virtual images by tracking user’s head position and orientation ( Sutherland, 1965 ). In the 70s, the University of North Carolina realized GROPE, the first system of force-feedback and Myron Krueger created VIDEOPLACE an Artificial Reality in which the users’ body figures were captured by cameras and projected on a screen ( Krueger et al., 1985 ). In this way two or more users could interact in the 2D-virtual space. In 1982, the US’ Air Force created the first flight simulator [Visually Coupled Airbone System Simulator (VCASS)] in which the pilot through an HMD could control the pathway and the targets. Generally, the 80’s were the years in which the first commercial devices began to emerge: for example, in 1985 the VPL company commercialized the DataGlove, glove sensors’ equipped able to measure the flexion of fingers, orientation and position, and identify hand gestures. Another example is the Eyephone, created in 1988 by the VPL Company, an HMD system for completely immerging the user in a virtual world. At the end of 80’s, Fake Space Labs created a Binocular-Omni-Orientational Monitor (BOOM), a complex system composed by a stereoscopic-displaying device, providing a moving and broad virtual environment, and a mechanical arm tracking. Furthermore, BOOM offered a more stable image and giving more quickly responses to movements than the HMD devices. Thanks to BOOM and DataGlove, the NASA Ames Research Center developed the Virtual Wind Tunnel in order to research and manipulate airflow in a virtual airplane or space ship. In 1992, the Electronic Visualization Laboratory of the University of Illinois created the CAVE Automatic Virtual Environment, an immersive VR system composed by projectors directed on three or more walls of a room.

More recently, many videogames companies have improved the development and quality of VR devices, like Oculus Rift, or HTC Vive that provide a wider field of view and lower latency. In addition, the actual HMD’s devices can be now combined with other tracker system as eye-tracking systems (FOVE), and motion and orientation sensors (e.g., Razer Hydra, Oculus Touch, or HTC Vive).

Simultaneously, at the beginning of 90’, the Boing Corporation created the first prototype of AR system for showing to employees how set up a wiring tool ( Carmigniani et al., 2011 ). At the same time, Rosenberg and Feiner developed an AR fixture for maintenance assistance, showing that the operator performance enhanced by added virtual information on the fixture to repair ( Rosenberg, 1993 ). In 1993 Loomis and colleagues produced an AR GPS-based system for helping the blind in the assisted navigation through adding spatial audio information ( Loomis et al., 1998 ). Always in the 1993 Julie Martin developed “Dancing in Cyberspace,” an AR theater in which actors interacted with virtual object in real time ( Cathy, 2011 ). Few years later, Feiner et al. (1997) developed the first Mobile AR System (MARS) able to add virtual information about touristic buildings ( Feiner et al., 1997 ). Since then, several applications have been developed: in Thomas et al. (2000) , created ARQuake, a mobile AR video game; in 2008 was created Wikitude that through the mobile camera, internet, and GPS could add information about the user’s environments ( Perry, 2008 ). In 2009 others AR applications, like AR Toolkit and SiteLens have been developed in order to add virtual information to the physical user’s surroundings. In 2011, Total Immersion developed D’Fusion, and AR system for designing projects ( Maurugeon, 2011 ). Finally, in 2013 and 2015, Google developed Google Glass and Google HoloLens, and their usability have begun to test in several field of application.

Virtual Reality Technologies

Technologically, the devices used in the virtual environments play an important role in the creation of successful virtual experiences. According to the literature, can be distinguished input and output devices ( Burdea et al., 1996 ; Burdea and Coiffet, 2003 ). Input devices are the ones that allow the user to communicate with the virtual environment, which can range from a simple joystick or keyboard to a glove allowing capturing finger movements or a tracker able to capture postures. More in detail, keyboard, mouse, trackball, and joystick represent the desktop input devices easy to use, which allow the user to launch continuous and discrete commands or movements to the environment. Other input devices can be represented by tracking devices as bend-sensing gloves that capture hand movements, postures and gestures, or pinch gloves that detect the fingers movements, and trackers able to follow the user’s movements in the physical world and translate them in the virtual environment.

On the contrary, the output devices allow the user to see, hear, smell, or touch everything that happens in the virtual environment. As mentioned above, among the visual devices can be found a wide range of possibilities, from the simplest or least immersive (monitor of a computer) to the most immersive one such as VR glasses or helmets or HMD or CAVE systems.

Furthermore, auditory, speakers, as well as haptic output devices are able to stimulate body senses providing a more real virtual experience. For example, haptic devices can stimulate the touch feeling and force models in the user.

Virtual Reality Applications

Since its appearance, VR has been used in different fields, as for gaming ( Zyda, 2005 ; Meldrum et al., 2012 ), military training ( Alexander et al., 2017 ), architectural design ( Song et al., 2017 ), education ( Englund et al., 2017 ), learning and social skills training ( Schmidt et al., 2017 ), simulations of surgical procedures ( Gallagher et al., 2005 ), assistance to the elderly or psychological treatments are other fields in which VR is bursting strongly ( Freeman et al., 2017 ; Neri et al., 2017 ). A recent and extensive review of Slater and Sanchez-Vives (2016) reported the main VR application evidences, including weakness and advantages, in several research areas, such as science, education, training, physical training, as well as social phenomena, moral behaviors, and could be used in other fields, like travel, meetings, collaboration, industry, news, and entertainment. Furthermore, another review published this year by Freeman et al. (2017) focused on VR in mental health, showing the efficacy of VR in assessing and treating different psychological disorders as anxiety, schizophrenia, depression, and eating disorders.

There are many possibilities that allow the use of VR as a stimulus, replacing real stimuli, recreating experiences, which in the real world would be impossible, with a high realism. This is why VR is widely used in research on new ways of applying psychological treatment or training, for example, to problems arising from phobias (agoraphobia, phobia to fly, etc.) ( Botella et al., 2017 ). Or, simply, it is used like improvement of the traditional systems of motor rehabilitation ( Llorens et al., 2014 ; Borrego et al., 2016 ), developing games that ameliorate the tasks. More in detail, in psychological treatment, Virtual Reality Exposure Therapy (VRET) has showed its efficacy, allowing to patients to gradually face fear stimuli or stressed situations in a safe environment where the psychological and physiological reactions can be controlled by the therapist ( Botella et al., 2017 ).

Augmented Reality Concept

Milgram and Kishino (1994) , conceptualized the Virtual-Reality Continuum that takes into consideration four systems: real environment, augmented reality (AR), augmented virtuality, and virtual environment. AR can be defined a newer technological system in which virtual objects are added to the real world in real-time during the user’s experience. Per Azuma et al. (2001) an AR system should: (1) combine real and virtual objects in a real environment; (2) run interactively and in real-time; (3) register real and virtual objects with each other. Furthermore, even if the AR experiences could seem different from VRs, the quality of AR experience could be considered similarly. Indeed, like in VR, feeling of presence, level of realism, and the degree of reality represent the main features that can be considered the indicators of the quality of AR experiences. Higher the experience is perceived as realistic, and there is congruence between the user’s expectation and the interaction inside the AR environments, higher would be the perception of “being there” physically, and at cognitive and emotional level. The feeling of presence, both in AR and VR environments, is important in acting behaviors like the real ones ( Botella et al., 2005 ; Juan et al., 2005 ; Bretón-López et al., 2010 ; Wrzesien et al., 2013 ).

Augmented Reality Technologies

Technologically, the AR systems, however various, present three common components, such as a geospatial datum for the virtual object, like a visual marker, a surface to project virtual elements to the user, and an adequate processing power for graphics, animation, and merging of images, like a pc and a monitor ( Carmigniani et al., 2011 ). To run, an AR system must also include a camera able to track the user movement for merging the virtual objects, and a visual display, like glasses through that the user can see the virtual objects overlaying to the physical world. To date, two-display systems exist, a video see-through (VST) and an optical see-though (OST) AR systems ( Botella et al., 2005 ; Juan et al., 2005 , 2007 ). The first one, disclosures virtual objects to the user by capturing the real objects/scenes with a camera and overlaying virtual objects, projecting them on a video or a monitor, while the second one, merges the virtual object on a transparent surface, like glasses, through the user see the added elements. The main difference between the two systems is the latency: an OST system could require more time to display the virtual objects than a VST system, generating a time lag between user’s action and performance and the detection of them by the system.

Augmented Reality Applications

Although AR is a more recent technology than VR, it has been investigated and used in several research areas such as architecture ( Lin and Hsu, 2017 ), maintenance ( Schwald and De Laval, 2003 ), entertainment ( Ozbek et al., 2004 ), education ( Nincarean et al., 2013 ; Bacca et al., 2014 ; Akçayır and Akçayır, 2017 ), medicine ( De Buck et al., 2005 ), and psychological treatments ( Juan et al., 2005 ; Botella et al., 2005 , 2010 ; Bretón-López et al., 2010 ; Wrzesien et al., 2011a , b , 2013 ; see the review Chicchi Giglioli et al., 2015 ). More in detail, in education several AR applications have been developed in the last few years showing the positive effects of this technology in supporting learning, such as an increased-on content understanding and memory preservation, as well as on learning motivation ( Radu, 2012 , 2014 ). For example, Ibáñez et al. (2014) developed a AR application on electromagnetism concepts’ learning, in which students could use AR batteries, magnets, cables on real superficies, and the system gave a real-time feedback to students about the correctness of the performance, improving in this way the academic success and motivation ( Di Serio et al., 2013 ). Deeply, AR system allows the possibility to learn visualizing and acting on composite phenomena that traditionally students study theoretically, without the possibility to see and test in real world ( Chien et al., 2010 ; Chen et al., 2011 ).

As well in psychological health, the number of research about AR is increasing, showing its efficacy above all in the treatment of psychological disorder (see the reviews Baus and Bouchard, 2014 ; Chicchi Giglioli et al., 2015 ). For example, in the treatment of anxiety disorders, like phobias, AR exposure therapy (ARET) showed its efficacy in one-session treatment, maintaining the positive impact in a follow-up at 1 or 3 month after. As VRET, ARET provides a safety and an ecological environment where any kind of stimulus is possible, allowing to keep control over the situation experienced by the patients, gradually generating situations of fear or stress. Indeed, in situations of fear, like the phobias for small animals, AR applications allow, in accordance with the patient’s anxiety, to gradually expose patient to fear animals, adding new animals during the session or enlarging their or increasing the speed. The various studies showed that AR is able, at the beginning of the session, to activate patient’s anxiety, for reducing after 1 h of exposition. After the session, patients even more than to better manage animal’s fear and anxiety, ware able to approach, interact, and kill real feared animals.

Materials and Methods

Data collection.

The input data for the analyses were retrieved from the scientific database Web of Science Core Collection ( Falagas et al., 2008 ) and the search terms used were “Virtual Reality” and “Augmented Reality” regarding papers published during the whole timespan covered.

Web of science core collection is composed of: Citation Indexes, Science Citation Index Expanded (SCI-EXPANDED) –1970-present, Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI) –1970-present, Arts and Humanities Citation Index (A&HCI) –1975-present, Conference Proceedings Citation Index- Science (CPCI-S) –1990-present, Conference Proceedings Citation Index- Social Science & Humanities (CPCI-SSH) –1990-present, Book Citation Index– Science (BKCI-S) –2009-present, Book Citation Index– Social Sciences & Humanities (BKCI-SSH) –2009-present, Emerging Sources Citation Index (ESCI) –2015-present, Chemical Indexes, Current Chemical Reactions (CCR-EXPANDED) –2009-present (Includes Institut National de la Propriete Industrielle structure data back to 1840), Index Chemicus (IC) –2009-present.

The resultant dataset contained a total of 21,667 records for VR and 9,944 records for AR. The bibliographic record contained various fields, such as author, title, abstract, and all of the references (needed for the citation analysis). The research tool to visualize the networks was Cite space v.4.0.R5 SE (32 bit) ( Chen, 2006 ) under Java Runtime v.8 update 91 (build 1.8.0_91-b15). Statistical analyses were conducted using Stata MP-Parallel Edition, Release 14.0, StataCorp LP. Additional information can be found in Supplementary Data Sheet 1 .

The betweenness centrality of a node in a network measures the extent to which the node is part of paths that connect an arbitrary pair of nodes in the network ( Freeman, 1977 ; Brandes, 2001 ; Chen, 2006 ).

Structural metrics include betweenness centrality, modularity, and silhouette. Temporal and hybrid metrics include citation burstness and novelty. All the algorithms are detailed ( Chen et al., 2010 ).

The analysis of the literature on VR shows a complex panorama. At first sight, according to the document-type statistics from the Web of Science (WoS), proceedings papers were used extensively as outcomes of research, comprising almost 48% of the total (10,392 proceedings), with a similar number of articles on the subject amounting to about 47% of the total of 10, 199 articles. However, if we consider only the last 5 years (7,755 articles representing about 36% of the total), the situation changes with about 57% for articles (4,445) and about 33% for proceedings (2,578). Thus, it is clear that VR field has changed in areas other than at the technological level.

About the subject category, nodes and edges are computed as co-occurring subject categories from the Web of Science “Category” field in all the articles.

According to the subject category statistics from the WoS, computer science is the leading category, followed by engineering, and, together, they account for 15,341 articles, which make up about 71% of the total production. However, if we consider just the last 5 years, these categories reach only about 55%, with a total of 4,284 articles (Table (Table1 1 and Figure Figure1 1 ).

Category statistics from the WoS for the entire period and the last 5 years.

An external file that holds a picture, illustration, etc.
Object name is fpsyg-09-02086-g001.jpg

Category from the WoS: network for the last 5 years.

The evidence is very interesting since it highlights that VR is doing very well as new technology with huge interest in hardware and software components. However, with respect to the past, we are witnessing increasing numbers of applications, especially in the medical area. In particular, note its inclusion in the top 10 list of rehabilitation and clinical neurology categories (about 10% of the total production in the last 5 years). It also is interesting that neuroscience and neurology, considered together, have shown an increase from about 12% to about 18.6% over the last 5 years. However, historic areas, such as automation and control systems, imaging science and photographic technology, and robotics, which had accounted for about 14.5% of the total articles ever produced were not even in the top 10 for the last 5 years, with each one accounting for less than 4%.

About the countries, nodes and edges are computed as networks of co-authors countries. Multiple occurrency of a country in the same paper are counted once.

The countries that were very involved in VR research have published for about 47% of the total (10,200 articles altogether). Of the 10,200 articles, the United States, China, England, and Germany published 4921, 2384, 1497, and 1398, respectively. The situation remains the same if we look at the articles published over the last 5 years. However, VR contributions also came from all over the globe, with Japan, Canada, Italy, France, Spain, South Korea, and Netherlands taking positions of prominence, as shown in Figure Figure2 2 .

An external file that holds a picture, illustration, etc.
Object name is fpsyg-09-02086-g002.jpg

Country network (node dimension represents centrality).

Network analysis was conducted to calculate and to represent the centrality index ( Freeman, 1977 ; Brandes, 2001 ), i.e., the dimension of the node in Figure Figure2. 2 . The top-ranked country, with a centrality index of 0.26, was the United States (2011), and England was second, with a centrality index of 0.25. The third, fourth, and fifth countries were Germany, Italy, and Australia, with centrality indices of 0.15, 0.15, and 0.14, respectively.

About the Institutions, nodes and edges are computed as networks of co-authors Institutions (Figure (Figure3 3 ).

An external file that holds a picture, illustration, etc.
Object name is fpsyg-09-02086-g003.jpg

Network of institutions: the dimensions of the nodes represent centrality.

The top-level institutions in VR were in the United States, where three universities were ranked as the top three in the world for published articles; these universities were the University of Illinois (159), the University of South California (147), and the University of Washington (146). The United States also had the eighth-ranked university, which was Iowa State University (116). The second country in the ranking was Canada, with the University of Toronto, which was ranked fifth with 125 articles and McGill University, ranked 10 th with 103 articles.

Other countries in the top-ten list were Netherlands, with the Delft University of Technology ranked fourth with 129 articles; Italy, with IRCCS Istituto Auxologico Italiano, ranked sixth (with the same number of publication of the institution ranked fifth) with 125 published articles; England, which was ranked seventh with 125 articles from the University of London’s Imperial College of Science, Technology, and Medicine; and China with 104 publications, with the Chinese Academy of Science, ranked ninth. Italy’s Istituto Auxologico Italiano, which was ranked fifth, was the only non-university institution ranked in the top-10 list for VR research (Figure (Figure3 3 ).

About the Journals, nodes, and edges are computed as journal co-citation networks among each journals in the corresponding field.

The top-ranked Journals for citations in VR are Presence: Teleoperators & Virtual Environments with 2689 citations and CyberPsychology & Behavior (Cyberpsychol BEHAV) with 1884 citations; however, looking at the last 5 years, the former had increased the citations, but the latter had a far more significant increase, from about 70% to about 90%, i.e., an increase from 1029 to 1147.

Following the top two journals, IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications ( IEEE Comput Graph) and Advanced Health Telematics and Telemedicine ( St HEAL T) were both left out of the top-10 list based on the last 5 years. The data for the last 5 years also resulted in the inclusion of Experimental Brain Research ( Exp BRAIN RES) (625 citations), Archives of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation ( Arch PHYS MED REHAB) (622 citations), and Plos ONE (619 citations) in the top-10 list of three journals, which highlighted the categories of rehabilitation and clinical neurology and neuroscience and neurology. Journal co-citation analysis is reported in Figure Figure4, 4 , which clearly shows four distinct clusters.

An external file that holds a picture, illustration, etc.
Object name is fpsyg-09-02086-g004.jpg

Co-citation network of journals: the dimensions of the nodes represent centrality. Full list of official abbreviations of WoS journals can be found here: https://images.webofknowledge.com/images/help/WOS/A_abrvjt.html .

Network analysis was conducted to calculate and to represent the centrality index, i.e., the dimensions of the nodes in Figure Figure4. 4 . The top-ranked item by centrality was Cyberpsychol BEHAV, with a centrality index of 0.29. The second-ranked item was Arch PHYS MED REHAB, with a centrality index of 0.23. The third was Behaviour Research and Therapy (Behav RES THER), with a centrality index of 0.15. The fourth was BRAIN, with a centrality index of 0.14. The fifth was Exp BRAIN RES, with a centrality index of 0.11.

Who’s Who in VR Research

Authors are the heart and brain of research, and their roles in a field are to define the past, present, and future of disciplines and to make significant breakthroughs to make new ideas arise (Figure (Figure5 5 ).

An external file that holds a picture, illustration, etc.
Object name is fpsyg-09-02086-g005.jpg

Network of authors’ numbers of publications: the dimensions of the nodes represent the centrality index, and the dimensions of the characters represent the author’s rank.

Virtual reality research is very young and changing with time, but the top-10 authors in this field have made fundamentally significant contributions as pioneers in VR and taking it beyond a mere technological development. The purpose of the following highlights is not to rank researchers; rather, the purpose is to identify the most active researchers in order to understand where the field is going and how they plan for it to get there.

The top-ranked author is Riva G, with 180 publications. The second-ranked author is Rizzo A, with 101 publications. The third is Darzi A, with 97 publications. The forth is Aggarwal R, with 94 publications. The six authors following these three are Slater M, Alcaniz M, Botella C, Wiederhold BK, Kim SI, and Gutierrez-Maldonado J with 90, 90, 85, 75, 59, and 54 publications, respectively (Figure (Figure6 6 ).

An external file that holds a picture, illustration, etc.
Object name is fpsyg-09-02086-g006.jpg

Authors’ co-citation network: the dimensions of the nodes represent centrality index, and the dimensions of the characters represent the author’s rank. The 10 authors that appear on the top-10 list are considered to be the pioneers of VR research.

Considering the last 5 years, the situation remains similar, with three new entries in the top-10 list, i.e., Muhlberger A, Cipresso P, and Ahmed K ranked 7th, 8th, and 10th, respectively.

The authors’ publications number network shows the most active authors in VR research. Another relevant analysis for our focus on VR research is to identify the most cited authors in the field.

For this purpose, the authors’ co-citation analysis highlights the authors in term of their impact on the literature considering the entire time span of the field ( White and Griffith, 1981 ; González-Teruel et al., 2015 ; Bu et al., 2016 ). The idea is to focus on the dynamic nature of the community of authors who contribute to the research.

Normally, authors with higher numbers of citations tend to be the scholars who drive the fundamental research and who make the most meaningful impacts on the evolution and development of the field. In the following, we identified the most-cited pioneers in the field of VR Research.

The top-ranked author by citation count is Gallagher (2001), with 694 citations. Second is Seymour (2004), with 668 citations. Third is Slater (1999), with 649 citations. Fourth is Grantcharov (2003), with 563 citations. Fifth is Riva (1999), with 546 citations. Sixth is Aggarwal (2006), with 505 citations. Seventh is Satava (1994), with 477 citations. Eighth is Witmer (2002), with 454 citations. Ninth is Rothbaum (1996), with 448 citations. Tenth is Cruz-neira (1995), with 416 citations.

Citation Network and Cluster Analyses for VR

Another analysis that can be used is the analysis of document co-citation, which allows us to focus on the highly-cited documents that generally are also the most influential in the domain ( Small, 1973 ; González-Teruel et al., 2015 ; Orosz et al., 2016 ).

The top-ranked article by citation counts is Seymour (2002) in Cluster #0, with 317 citations. The second article is Grantcharov (2004) in Cluster #0, with 286 citations. The third is Holden (2005) in Cluster #2, with 179 citations. The 4th is Gallagher et al. (2005) in Cluster #0, with 171 citations. The 5th is Ahlberg (2007) in Cluster #0, with 142 citations. The 6th is Parsons (2008) in Cluster #4, with 136 citations. The 7th is Powers (2008) in Cluster #4, with 134 citations. The 8th is Aggarwal (2007) in Cluster #0, with 121 citations. The 9th is Reznick (2006) in Cluster #0, with 121 citations. The 10th is Munz (2004) in Cluster #0, with 117 citations.

The network of document co-citations is visually complex (Figure (Figure7) 7 ) because it includes 1000s of articles and the links among them. However, this analysis is very important because can be used to identify the possible conglomerate of knowledge in the area, and this is essential for a deep understanding of the area. Thus, for this purpose, a cluster analysis was conducted ( Chen et al., 2010 ; González-Teruel et al., 2015 ; Klavans and Boyack, 2015 ). Figure Figure8 8 shows the clusters, which are identified with the two algorithms in Table Table2 2 .

An external file that holds a picture, illustration, etc.
Object name is fpsyg-09-02086-g007.jpg

Network of document co-citations: the dimensions of the nodes represent centrality, the dimensions of the characters represent the rank of the article rank, and the numbers represent the strengths of the links. It is possible to identify four historical phases (colors: blue, green, yellow, and red) from the past VR research to the current research.

An external file that holds a picture, illustration, etc.
Object name is fpsyg-09-02086-g008.jpg

Document co-citation network by cluster: the dimensions of the nodes represent centrality, the dimensions of the characters represent the rank of the article rank and the red writing reports the name of the cluster with a short description that was produced with the mutual information algorithm; the clusters are identified with colored polygons.

Cluster ID and silhouettes as identified with two algorithms ( Chen et al., 2010 ).

The identified clusters highlight clear parts of the literature of VR research, making clear and visible the interdisciplinary nature of this field. However, the dynamics to identify the past, present, and future of VR research cannot be clear yet. We analysed the relationships between these clusters and the temporal dimensions of each article. The results are synthesized in Figure Figure9. 9 . It is clear that cluster #0 (laparoscopic skill), cluster #2 (gaming and rehabilitation), cluster #4 (therapy), and cluster #14 (surgery) are the most popular areas of VR research. (See Figure Figure9 9 and Table Table2 2 to identify the clusters.) From Figure Figure9, 9 , it also is possible to identify the first phase of laparoscopic skill (cluster #6) and therapy (cluster #7). More generally, it is possible to identify four historical phases (colors: blue, green, yellow, and red) from the past VR research to the current research.

An external file that holds a picture, illustration, etc.
Object name is fpsyg-09-02086-g009.jpg

Network of document co-citation: the dimensions of the nodes represent centrality, the dimensions of the characters represent the rank of the article rank and the red writing on the right hand side reports the number of the cluster, such as in Table Table2, 2 , with a short description that was extracted accordingly.

We were able to identify the top 486 references that had the most citations by using burst citations algorithm. Citation burst is an indicator of a most active area of research. Citation burst is a detection of a burst event, which can last for multiple years as well as a single year. A citation burst provides evidence that a particular publication is associated with a surge of citations. The burst detection was based on Kleinberg’s algorithm ( Kleinberg, 2002 , 2003 ). The top-ranked document by bursts is Seymour (2002) in Cluster #0, with bursts of 88.93. The second is Grantcharov (2004) in Cluster #0, with bursts of 51.40. The third is Saposnik (2010) in Cluster #2, with bursts of 40.84. The fourth is Rothbaum (1995) in Cluster #7, with bursts of 38.94. The fifth is Holden (2005) in Cluster #2, with bursts of 37.52. The sixth is Scott (2000) in Cluster #0, with bursts of 33.39. The seventh is Saposnik (2011) in Cluster #2, with bursts of 33.33. The eighth is Burdea et al. (1996) in Cluster #3, with bursts of 32.42. The ninth is Burdea and Coiffet (2003) in Cluster #22, with bursts of 31.30. The 10th is Taffinder (1998) in Cluster #6, with bursts of 30.96 (Table (Table3 3 ).

Cluster ID and references of burst article.

Citation Network and Cluster Analyses for AR

Looking at Augmented Reality scenario, the top ranked item by citation counts is Azuma (1997) in Cluster #0, with citation counts of 231. The second one is Azuma et al. (2001) in Cluster #0, with citation counts of 220. The third is Van Krevelen (2010) in Cluster #5, with citation counts of 207. The 4th is Lowe (2004) in Cluster #1, with citation counts of 157. The 5th is Wu (2013) in Cluster #4, with citation counts of 144. The 6th is Dunleavy (2009) in Cluster #4, with citation counts of 122. The 7th is Zhou (2008) in Cluster #5, with citation counts of 118. The 8th is Bay (2008) in Cluster #1, with citation counts of 117. The 9th is Newcombe (2011) in Cluster #1, with citation counts of 109. The 10th is Carmigniani et al. (2011) in Cluster #5, with citation counts of 104.

The network of document co-citations is visually complex (Figure (Figure10) 10 ) because it includes 1000s of articles and the links among them. However, this analysis is very important because can be used to identify the possible conglomerate of knowledge in the area, and this is essential for a deep understanding of the area. Thus, for this purpose, a cluster analysis was conducted ( Chen et al., 2010 ; González-Teruel et al., 2015 ; Klavans and Boyack, 2015 ). Figure Figure11 11 shows the clusters, which are identified with the two algorithms in Table Table3 3 .

An external file that holds a picture, illustration, etc.
Object name is fpsyg-09-02086-g010.jpg

An external file that holds a picture, illustration, etc.
Object name is fpsyg-09-02086-g011.jpg

The identified clusters highlight clear parts of the literature of AR research, making clear and visible the interdisciplinary nature of this field. However, the dynamics to identify the past, present, and future of AR research cannot be clear yet. We analysed the relationships between these clusters and the temporal dimensions of each article. The results are synthesized in Figure Figure12. 12 . It is clear that cluster #1 (tracking), cluster #4 (education), and cluster #5 (virtual city environment) are the current areas of AR research. (See Figure Figure12 12 and Table Table3 3 to identify the clusters.) It is possible to identify four historical phases (colors: blue, green, yellow, and red) from the past AR research to the current research.

An external file that holds a picture, illustration, etc.
Object name is fpsyg-09-02086-g012.jpg

We were able to identify the top 394 references that had the most citations by using burst citations algorithm. Citation burst is an indicator of a most active area of research. Citation burst is a detection of a burst event, which can last for multiple years as well as a single year. A citation burst provides evidence that a particular publication is associated with a surge of citations. The burst detection was based on Kleinberg’s algorithm ( Kleinberg, 2002 , 2003 ). The top ranked document by bursts is Azuma (1997) in Cluster #0, with bursts of 101.64. The second one is Azuma et al. (2001) in Cluster #0, with bursts of 84.23. The third is Lowe (2004) in Cluster #1, with bursts of 64.07. The 4th is Van Krevelen (2010) in Cluster #5, with bursts of 50.99. The 5th is Wu (2013) in Cluster #4, with bursts of 47.23. The 6th is Hartley (2000) in Cluster #0, with bursts of 37.71. The 7th is Dunleavy (2009) in Cluster #4, with bursts of 33.22. The 8th is Kato (1999) in Cluster #0, with bursts of 32.16. The 9th is Newcombe (2011) in Cluster #1, with bursts of 29.72. The 10th is Feiner (1993) in Cluster #8, with bursts of 29.46 (Table (Table4 4 ).

Our findings have profound implications for two reasons. At first the present work highlighted the evolution and development of VR and AR research and provided a clear perspective based on solid data and computational analyses. Secondly our findings on VR made it profoundly clear that the clinical dimension is one of the most investigated ever and seems to increase in quantitative and qualitative aspects, but also include technological development and article in computer science, engineer, and allied sciences.

Figure Figure9 9 clarifies the past, present, and future of VR research. The outset of VR research brought a clearly-identifiable development in interfaces for children and medicine, routine use and behavioral-assessment, special effects, systems perspectives, and tutorials. This pioneering era evolved in the period that we can identify as the development era, because it was the period in which VR was used in experiments associated with new technological impulses. Not surprisingly, this was exactly concomitant with the new economy era in which significant investments were made in information technology, and it also was the era of the so-called ‘dot-com bubble’ in the late 1990s. The confluence of pioneering techniques into ergonomic studies within this development era was used to develop the first effective clinical systems for surgery, telemedicine, human spatial navigation, and the first phase of the development of therapy and laparoscopic skills. With the new millennium, VR research switched strongly toward what we can call the clinical-VR era, with its strong emphasis on rehabilitation, neurosurgery, and a new phase of therapy and laparoscopic skills. The number of applications and articles that have been published in the last 5 years are in line with the new technological development that we are experiencing at the hardware level, for example, with so many new, HMDs, and at the software level with an increasing number of independent programmers and VR communities.

Finally, Figure Figure12 12 identifies clusters of the literature of AR research, making clear and visible the interdisciplinary nature of this field. The dynamics to identify the past, present, and future of AR research cannot be clear yet, but analyzing the relationships between these clusters and the temporal dimensions of each article tracking, education, and virtual city environment are the current areas of AR research. AR is a new technology that is showing its efficacy in different research fields, and providing a novel way to gather behavioral data and support learning, training, and clinical treatments.

Looking at scientific literature conducted in the last few years, it might appear that most developments in VR and AR studies have focused on clinical aspects. However, the reality is more complex; thus, this perception should be clarified. Although researchers publish studies on the use of VR in clinical settings, each study depends on the technologies available. Industrial development in VR and AR changed a lot in the last 10 years. In the past, the development involved mainly hardware solutions while nowadays, the main efforts pertain to the software when developing virtual solutions. Hardware became a commodity that is often available at low cost. On the other hand, software needs to be customized each time, per each experiment, and this requires huge efforts in term of development. Researchers in AR and VR today need to be able to adapt software in their labs.

Virtual reality and AR developments in this new clinical era rely on computer science and vice versa. The future of VR and AR is becoming more technological than before, and each day, new solutions and products are coming to the market. Both from software and hardware perspectives, the future of AR and VR depends on huge innovations in all fields. The gap between the past and the future of AR and VR research is about the “realism” that was the key aspect in the past versus the “interaction” that is the key aspect now. First 30 years of VR and AR consisted of a continuous research on better resolution and improved perception. Now, researchers already achieved a great resolution and need to focus on making the VR as realistic as possible, which is not simple. In fact, a real experience implies a realistic interaction and not just great resolution. Interactions can be improved in infinite ways through new developments at hardware and software levels.

Interaction in AR and VR is going to be “embodied,” with implication for neuroscientists that are thinking about new solutions to be implemented into the current systems ( Blanke et al., 2015 ; Riva, 2018 ; Riva et al., 2018 ). For example, the use of hands with contactless device (i.e., without gloves) makes the interaction in virtual environments more natural. The Leap Motion device 1 allows one to use of hands in VR without the use of gloves or markers. This simple and low-cost device allows the VR users to interact with virtual objects and related environments in a naturalistic way. When technology is able to be transparent, users can experience increased sense of being in the virtual environments (the so-called sense of presence).

Other forms of interactions are possible and have been developing continuously. For example, tactile and haptic device able to provide a continuous feedback to the users, intensifying their experience also by adding components, such as the feeling of touch and the physical weight of virtual objects, by using force feedback. Another technology available at low cost that facilitates interaction is the motion tracking system, such as Microsoft Kinect, for example. Such technology allows one to track the users’ bodies, allowing them to interact with the virtual environments using body movements, gestures, and interactions. Most HMDs use an embedded system to track HMD position and rotation as well as controllers that are generally placed into the user’s hands. This tracking allows a great degree of interaction and improves the overall virtual experience.

A final emerging approach is the use of digital technologies to simulate not only the external world but also the internal bodily signals ( Azevedo et al., 2017 ; Riva et al., 2017 ): interoception, proprioception and vestibular input. For example, Riva et al. (2017) recently introduced the concept of “sonoception” ( www.sonoception.com ), a novel non-invasive technological paradigm based on wearable acoustic and vibrotactile transducers able to alter internal bodily signals. This approach allowed the development of an interoceptive stimulator that is both able to assess interoceptive time perception in clinical patients ( Di Lernia et al., 2018b ) and to enhance heart rate variability (the short-term vagally mediated component—rMSSD) through the modulation of the subjects’ parasympathetic system ( Di Lernia et al., 2018a ).

In this scenario, it is clear that the future of VR and AR research is not just in clinical applications, although the implications for the patients are huge. The continuous development of VR and AR technologies is the result of research in computer science, engineering, and allied sciences. The reasons for which from our analyses emerged a “clinical era” are threefold. First, all clinical research on VR and AR includes also technological developments, and new technological discoveries are being published in clinical or technological journals but with clinical samples as main subject. As noted in our research, main journals that publish numerous articles on technological developments tested with both healthy and patients include Presence: Teleoperators & Virtual Environments, Cyberpsychology & Behavior (Cyberpsychol BEHAV), and IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications (IEEE Comput Graph). It is clear that researchers in psychology, neuroscience, medicine, and behavioral sciences in general have been investigating whether the technological developments of VR and AR are effective for users, indicating that clinical behavioral research has been incorporating large parts of computer science and engineering. A second aspect to consider is the industrial development. In fact, once a new technology is envisioned and created it goes for a patent application. Once the patent is sent for registration the new technology may be made available for the market, and eventually for journal submission and publication. Moreover, most VR and AR research that that proposes the development of a technology moves directly from the presenting prototype to receiving the patent and introducing it to the market without publishing the findings in scientific paper. Hence, it is clear that if a new technology has been developed for industrial market or consumer, but not for clinical purpose, the research conducted to develop such technology may never be published in a scientific paper. Although our manuscript considered published researches, we have to acknowledge the existence of several researches that have not been published at all. The third reason for which our analyses highlighted a “clinical era” is that several articles on VR and AR have been considered within the Web of Knowledge database, that is our source of references. In this article, we referred to “research” as the one in the database considered. Of course, this is a limitation of our study, since there are several other databases that are of big value in the scientific community, such as IEEE Xplore Digital Library, ACM Digital Library, and many others. Generally, the most important articles in journals published in these databases are also included in the Web of Knowledge database; hence, we are convinced that our study considered the top-level publications in computer science or engineering. Accordingly, we believe that this limitation can be overcome by considering the large number of articles referenced in our research.

Considering all these aspects, it is clear that clinical applications, behavioral aspects, and technological developments in VR and AR research are parts of a more complex situation compared to the old platforms used before the huge diffusion of HMD and solutions. We think that this work might provide a clearer vision for stakeholders, providing evidence of the current research frontiers and the challenges that are expected in the future, highlighting all the connections and implications of the research in several fields, such as clinical, behavioral, industrial, entertainment, educational, and many others.

Author Contributions

PC and GR conceived the idea. PC made data extraction and the computational analyses and wrote the first draft of the article. IG revised the introduction adding important information for the article. PC, IG, MR, and GR revised the article and approved the last version of the article after important input to the article rationale.

Conflict of Interest Statement

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest. The reviewer GC declared a shared affiliation, with no collaboration, with the authors PC and GR to the handling Editor at the time of the review.

1 https://www.leapmotion.com/

Supplementary Material

The Supplementary Material for this article can be found online at: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2018.02086/full#supplementary-material

Akçayır M., Akçayır G. (2017). Advantages and challenges associated with augmented reality for education: a systematic review of the literature. Educ. Res. Rev. 20 1–11. 10.1016/j.edurev.2016.11.002 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
Alexander T., Westhoven M., Conradi J. (2017). “Virtual environments for competency-oriented education and training,” in Advances in Human Factors, Business Management, Training and Education , (Berlin: Springer International Publishing; ), 23–29. 10.1007/978-3-319-42070-7_3 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
Andersen S. M., Thorpe J. S. (2009). An if–thEN theory of personality: significant others and the relational self. J. Res. Pers. 43 163–170. 10.1016/j.jrp.2008.12.040 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
Azevedo R. T., Bennett N., Bilicki A., Hooper J., Markopoulou F., Tsakiris M. (2017). The calming effect of a new wearable device during the anticipation of public speech. Sci. Rep. 7 : 2285 . 10.1038/s41598-017-02274-2 [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
Azuma R., Baillot Y., Behringer R., Feiner S., Julier S., MacIntyre B. (2001). Recent advances in augmented reality. IEEE Comp. Graph. Appl. 21 34–47. 10.1109/38.963459 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
Bacca J., Baldiris S., Fabregat R., Graf S. (2014). Augmented reality trends in education: a systematic review of research and applications. J. Educ. Technol. Soc. 17 133 . [ Google Scholar ]
Bailenson J. N., Yee N., Merget D., Schroeder R. (2006). The effect of behavioral realism and form realism of real-time avatar faces on verbal disclosure, nonverbal disclosure, emotion recognition, and copresence in dyadic interaction. Presence 15 359–372. 10.1162/pres.15.4.359 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
Baños R. M., Botella C., Garcia-Palacios A., Villa H., Perpiñá C., Alcaniz M. (2000). Presence and reality judgment in virtual environments: a unitary construct? Cyberpsychol. Behav. 3 327–335. 10.1089/10949310050078760 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
Baños R., Botella C., García-Palacios A., Villa H., Perpiñá C., Gallardo M. (2009). Psychological variables and reality judgment in virtual environments: the roles of absorption and dissociation. Cyberpsychol. Behav. 2 143–148. 10.1089/cpb.1999.2.143 [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
Baus O., Bouchard S. (2014). Moving from virtual reality exposure-based therapy to augmented reality exposure-based therapy: a review. Front. Hum. Neurosci. 8 : 112 . 10.3389/fnhum.2014.00112 [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
Biocca F. (1997). The cyborg’s dilemma: progressive embodiment in virtual environments. J. Comput. Mediat. Commun. 3 10.1111/j.1083-6101.1997 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
Biocca F., Harms C., Gregg J. (2001). “The networked minds measure of social presence: pilot test of the factor structure and concurrent validity,” in 4th Annual International Workshop on Presence , Philadelphia, PA, 1–9. [ Google Scholar ]
Blanke O., Slater M., Serino A. (2015). Behavioral, neural, and computational principles of bodily self-consciousness. Neuron 88 145–166. 10.1016/j.neuron.2015.09.029 [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
Bohil C. J., Alicea B., Biocca F. A. (2011). Virtual reality in neuroscience research and therapy. Nat. Rev. Neurosci. 12 : 752 . 10.1038/nrn3122 [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
Borrego A., Latorre J., Llorens R., Alcañiz M., Noé E. (2016). Feasibility of a walking virtual reality system for rehabilitation: objective and subjective parameters. J. Neuroeng. Rehabil. 13 : 68 . 10.1186/s12984-016-0174-171 [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
Botella C., Bretón-López J., Quero S., Baños R. M., García-Palacios A. (2010). Treating cockroach phobia with augmented reality. Behav. Ther. 41 401–413. 10.1016/j.beth.2009.07.002 [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
Botella C., Fernández-Álvarez J., Guillén V., García-Palacios A., Baños R. (2017). Recent progress in virtual reality exposure therapy for phobias: a systematic review. Curr. Psychiatry Rep. 19 : 42 . 10.1007/s11920-017-0788-4 [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
Botella C. M., Juan M. C., Baños R. M., Alcañiz M., Guillén V., Rey B. (2005). Mixing realities? An application of augmented reality for the treatment of cockroach phobia. Cyberpsychol. Behav. 8 162–171. 10.1089/cpb.2005.8.162 [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
Brandes U. (2001). A faster algorithm for betweenness centrality. J. Math. Sociol. 25 163–177. 10.1080/0022250X.2001.9990249 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
Bretón-López J., Quero S., Botella C., García-Palacios A., Baños R. M., Alcañiz M. (2010). An augmented reality system validation for the treatment of cockroach phobia. Cyberpsychol. Behav. Soc. Netw. 13 705–710. 10.1089/cyber.2009.0170 [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
Brown A., Green T. (2016). Virtual reality: low-cost tools and resources for the classroom. TechTrends 60 517–519. 10.1007/s11528-016-0102-z [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
Bu Y., Liu T. Y., Huang W. B. (2016). MACA: a modified author co-citation analysis method combined with general descriptive metadata of citations. Scientometrics 108 143–166. 10.1007/s11192-016-1959-5 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
Burdea G., Richard P., Coiffet P. (1996). Multimodal virtual reality: input-output devices, system integration, and human factors. Int. J. Hum. Compu. Interact. 8 5–24. 10.1080/10447319609526138 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
Burdea G. C., Coiffet P. (2003). Virtual Reality Technology Vol. 1 Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons. [ Google Scholar ]
Carmigniani J., Furht B., Anisetti M., Ceravolo P., Damiani E., Ivkovic M. (2011). Augmented reality technologies, systems and applications. Multimed. Tools Appl. 51 341–377. 10.1007/s11042-010-0660-6 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
Castelvecchi D. (2016). Low-cost headsets boost virtual reality’s lab appeal. Nature 533 153–154. 10.1038/533153a [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
Cathy (2011). The History of Augmented Reality. The Optical Vision Site. Available at: http://www.theopticalvisionsite.com/history-of-eyewear/the-history-of-augmented-reality/#.UelAUmeAOyA [ Google Scholar ]
Chen C. (2006). CiteSpace II: detecting and visualizing emerging trends and transient patterns in scientific literature. J. Assoc. Inform. Sci. Technol. 57 359–377. 10.1002/asi.20317 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
Chen C., Ibekwe-SanJuan F., Hou J. (2010). The structure and dynamics of cocitation clusters: a multipleperspective cocitation analysis. J. Assoc. Inform. Sci. Technol. 61 1386–1409. 10.1002/jez.b.22741 [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
Chen Y. C., Chi H. L., Hung W. H., Kang S. C. (2011). Use of tangible and augmented reality models in engineering graphics courses. J. Prof. Issues Eng. Educ. Pract. 137 267–276. 10.1061/(ASCE)EI.1943-5541.0000078 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
Chicchi Giglioli I. A., Pallavicini F., Pedroli E., Serino S., Riva G. (2015). Augmented reality: a brand new challenge for the assessment and treatment of psychological disorders. Comput. Math. Methods Med. 2015 : 862942 . 10.1155/2015/862942 [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
Chien C. H., Chen C. H., Jeng T. S. (2010). “An interactive augmented reality system for learning anatomy structure,” in Proceedings of the International Multiconference of Engineers and Computer Scientists , Vol. 1 (Hong Kong: International Association of Engineers; ), 17–19. [ Google Scholar ]
Choi S., Jung K., Noh S. D. (2015). Virtual reality applications in manufacturing industries: past research, present findings, and future directions. Concurr. Eng. 23 40–63. 10.1177/1063293X14568814 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
Cipresso P. (2015). Modeling behavior dynamics using computational psychometrics within virtual worlds. Front. Psychol. 6 : 1725 . 10.3389/fpsyg.2015.01725 [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
Cipresso P., Serino S. (2014). Virtual Reality: Technologies, Medical Applications and Challenges. Hauppauge, NY: Nova Science Publishers, Inc. [ Google Scholar ]
Cipresso P., Serino S., Riva G. (2016). Psychometric assessment and behavioral experiments using a free virtual reality platform and computational science. BMC Med. Inform. Decis. Mak. 16 : 37 . 10.1186/s12911-016-0276-5 [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
Cruz-Neira C. (1993). “Virtual reality overview,” in SIGGRAPH 93 Course Notes 21st International Conference on Computer Graphics and Interactive Techniques, Orange County Convention Center , Orlando, FL. [ Google Scholar ]
De Buck S., Maes F., Ector J., Bogaert J., Dymarkowski S., Heidbuchel H., et al. (2005). An augmented reality system for patient-specific guidance of cardiac catheter ablation procedures. IEEE Trans. Med. Imaging 24 1512–1524. 10.1109/TMI.2005.857661 [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
Di Lernia D., Cipresso P., Pedroli E., Riva G. (2018a). Toward an embodied medicine: a portable device with programmable interoceptive stimulation for heart rate variability enhancement. Sensors (Basel) 18 : 2469 . 10.3390/s18082469 [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
Di Lernia D., Serino S., Pezzulo G., Pedroli E., Cipresso P., Riva G. (2018b). Feel the time. Time perception as a function of interoceptive processing. Front. Hum. Neurosci. 12 : 74 . 10.3389/fnhum.2018.00074 [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
Di Serio Á., Ibáñez M. B., Kloos C. D. (2013). Impact of an augmented reality system on students’ motivation for a visual art course. Comput. Educ. 68 586–596. 10.1016/j.compedu.2012.03.002 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
Ebert C. (2015). Looking into the future. IEEE Softw. 32 92–97. 10.1109/MS.2015.142 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
Englund C., Olofsson A. D., Price L. (2017). Teaching with technology in higher education: understanding conceptual change and development in practice. High. Educ. Res. Dev. 36 73–87. 10.1080/07294360.2016.1171300 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
Falagas M. E., Pitsouni E. I., Malietzis G. A., Pappas G. (2008). Comparison of pubmed, scopus, web of science, and Google scholar: strengths and weaknesses. FASEB J. 22 338–342. 10.1096/fj.07-9492LSF [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
Feiner S., MacIntyre B., Hollerer T., Webster A. (1997). “A touring machine: prototyping 3D mobile augmented reality systems for exploring the urban environment,” in Digest of Papers. First International Symposium on Wearable Computers , (Cambridge, MA: IEEE; ), 74–81. 10.1109/ISWC.1997.629922 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
Freeman D., Reeve S., Robinson A., Ehlers A., Clark D., Spanlang B., et al. (2017). Virtual reality in the assessment, understanding, and treatment of mental health disorders. Psychol. Med. 47 2393–2400. 10.1017/S003329171700040X [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
Freeman L. C. (1977). A set of measures of centrality based on betweenness. Sociometry 40 35–41. 10.2307/3033543 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
Fuchs H., Bishop G. (1992). Research Directions in Virtual Environments. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. [ Google Scholar ]
Gallagher A. G., Ritter E. M., Champion H., Higgins G., Fried M. P., Moses G., et al. (2005). Virtual reality simulation for the operating room: proficiency-based training as a paradigm shift in surgical skills training. Ann. Surg. 241 : 364 . 10.1097/01.sla.0000151982.85062.80 [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
Gigante M. A. (1993). Virtual reality: definitions, history and applications. Virtual Real. Syst. 3–14. 10.1016/B978-0-12-227748-1.50009-3 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
González-Teruel A., González-Alcaide G., Barrios M., Abad-García M. F. (2015). Mapping recent information behavior research: an analysis of co-authorship and co-citation networks. Scientometrics 103 687–705. 10.1007/s11192-015-1548-z [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
Heeter C. (1992). Being there: the subjective experience of presence. Presence 1 262–271. 10.1162/pres.1992.1.2.262 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
Heeter C. (2000). Interactivity in the context of designed experiences. J. Interact. Adv. 1 3–14. 10.1080/15252019.2000.10722040 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
Heilig M. (1962). Sensorama simulator . U.S. Patent No - 3, 870. Virginia: United States Patent and Trade Office. [ Google Scholar ]
Ibáñez M. B., Di Serio Á., Villarán D., Kloos C. D. (2014). Experimenting with electromagnetism using augmented reality: impact on flow student experience and educational effectiveness. Comput. Educ. 71 1–13. 10.1016/j.compedu.2013.09.004 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
Juan M. C., Alcañiz M., Calatrava J., Zaragozá I., Baños R., Botella C. (2007). “An optical see-through augmented reality system for the treatment of phobia to small animals,” in Virtual Reality, HCII 2007 Lecture Notes in Computer Science Vol. 4563 ed. Schumaker R. (Berlin: Springer; ), 651–659. [ Google Scholar ]
Juan M. C., Alcaniz M., Monserrat C., Botella C., Baños R. M., Guerrero B. (2005). Using augmented reality to treat phobias. IEEE Comput. Graph. Appl. 25 31–37. 10.1109/MCG.2005.143 [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
Kim G. J. (2005). A SWOT analysis of the field of virtual reality rehabilitation and therapy. Presence 14 119–146. 10.1162/1054746053967094 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
Klavans R., Boyack K. W. (2015). Which type of citation analysis generates the most accurate taxonomy of scientific and technical knowledge? J. Assoc. Inform. Sci. Technol. 68 984–998. 10.1002/asi.23734 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
Kleinberg J. (2002). “Bursty and hierarchical structure in streams,” in Paper Presented at the Proceedings of the 8th ACM SIGKDD International Conference on Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining; 2002; Edmonton , Alberta, NT: 10.1145/775047.775061 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
Kleinberg J. (2003). Bursty and hierarchical structure in streams. Data Min. Knowl. Discov. 7 373–397. 10.1023/A:1024940629314 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
Korolov M. (2014). The real risks of virtual reality. Risk Manag. 61 20–24. [ Google Scholar ]
Krueger M. W., Gionfriddo T., Hinrichsen K. (1985). “Videoplace—an artificial reality,” in Proceedings of the ACM SIGCHI Bulletin Vol. 16 New York, NY: ACM, 35–40. 10.1145/317456.317463 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
Lin C. H., Hsu P. H. (2017). “Integrating procedural modelling process and immersive VR environment for architectural design education,” in MATEC Web of Conferences Vol. 104 Les Ulis: EDP Sciences; 10.1051/matecconf/201710403007 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
Llorens R., Noé E., Ferri J., Alcañiz M. (2014). Virtual reality-based telerehabilitation program for balance recovery. A pilot study in hemiparetic individuals with acquired brain injury. Brain Inj. 28 : 169 . [ Google Scholar ]
Lombard M., Ditton T. (1997). At the heart of it all: the concept of presence. J. Comput. Mediat. Commun. 3 10.1111/j.1083-6101.1997.tb00072.x [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
Loomis J. M., Blascovich J. J., Beall A. C. (1999). Immersive virtual environment technology as a basic research tool in psychology. Behav. Res. Methods Instr. Comput. 31 557–564. 10.3758/BF03200735 [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
Loomis J. M., Golledge R. G., Klatzky R. L. (1998). Navigation system for the blind: auditory display modes and guidance. Presence 7 193–203. 10.1162/105474698565677 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
Luckerson V. (2014). Facebook Buying Oculus Virtual-Reality Company for $2 Billion. Available at: http://time.com/37842/facebook-oculus-rift [ Google Scholar ]
Maurugeon G. (2011). New D’Fusion Supports iPhone4S and 3DSMax 2012. Available at: http://www.t-immersion.com/blog/2011-12-07/augmented-reality-dfusion-iphone-3dsmax [ Google Scholar ]
Mazuryk T., Gervautz M. (1996). Virtual Reality-History, Applications, Technology and Future. Vienna: Institute of Computer Graphics Vienna University of Technology. [ Google Scholar ]
Meldrum D., Glennon A., Herdman S., Murray D., McConn-Walsh R. (2012). Virtual reality rehabilitation of balance: assessment of the usability of the nintendo Wii ® fit plus. Disabil. Rehabil. 7 205–210. 10.3109/17483107.2011.616922 [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
Milgram P., Kishino F. (1994). A taxonomy of mixed reality visual displays. IEICE Trans. Inform. Syst. 77 1321–1329. [ Google Scholar ]
Minderer M., Harvey C. D., Donato F., Moser E. I. (2016). Neuroscience: virtual reality explored. Nature 533 324–325. 10.1038/nature17899 [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
Neri S. G., Cardoso J. R., Cruz L., Lima R. M., de Oliveira R. J., Iversen M. D., et al. (2017). Do virtual reality games improve mobility skills and balance measurements in community-dwelling older adults? Systematic review and meta-analysis. Clin. Rehabil. 31 1292–1304. 10.1177/0269215517694677 [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
Nincarean D., Alia M. B., Halim N. D. A., Rahman M. H. A. (2013). Mobile augmented reality: the potential for education. Procedia Soc. Behav. Sci. 103 657–664. 10.1016/j.sbspro.2013.10.385 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
Orosz K., Farkas I. J., Pollner P. (2016). Quantifying the changing role of past publications. Scientometrics 108 829–853. 10.1007/s11192-016-1971-9 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
Ozbek C. S., Giesler B., Dillmann R. (2004). “Jedi training: playful evaluation of head-mounted augmented reality display systems,” in Proceedings of SPIE. The International Society for Optical Engineering Vol. 5291 eds Norwood R. A., Eich M., Kuzyk M. G. (Denver, CO: ), 454–463. [ Google Scholar ]
Perry S. (2008). Wikitude: Android App with Augmented Reality: Mind Blow-Ing. Digital Lifestyles. [ Google Scholar ]
Radu I. (2012). “Why should my students use AR? A comparative review of the educational impacts of augmented-reality,” in Mixed and Augmented Reality (ISMAR), 2012 IEEE International Symposium on , (IEEE) , 313–314. 10.1109/ISMAR.2012.6402590 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
Radu I. (2014). Augmented reality in education: a meta-review and cross-media analysis. Pers. Ubiquitous Comput. 18 1533–1543. 10.1007/s00779-013-0747-y [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
Riva G. (2018). The neuroscience of body memory: From the self through the space to the others. Cortex 104 241–260. 10.1016/j.cortex.2017.07.013 [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
Riva G., Gaggioli A., Grassi A., Raspelli S., Cipresso P., Pallavicini F., et al. (2011). NeuroVR 2-A free virtual reality platform for the assessment and treatment in behavioral health care. Stud. Health Technol. Inform. 163 493–495. [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
Riva G., Serino S., Di Lernia D., Pavone E. F., Dakanalis A. (2017). Embodied medicine: mens sana in corpore virtuale sano. Front. Hum. Neurosci. 11 : 120 . 10.3389/fnhum.2017.00120 [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
Riva G., Wiederhold B. K., Mantovani F. (2018). Neuroscience of virtual reality: from virtual exposure to embodied medicine. Cyberpsychol. Behav. Soc. Netw. 10.1089/cyber.2017.29099.gri [Epub ahead of print]. [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
Rosenberg L. (1993). “The use of virtual fixtures to enhance telemanipulation with time delay,” in Proceedings of the ASME Winter Anual Meeting on Advances in Robotics, Mechatronics, and Haptic Interfaces Vol. 49 (New Orleans, LA: ), 29–36. [ Google Scholar ]
Schmidt M., Beck D., Glaser N., Schmidt C. (2017). “A prototype immersive, multi-user 3D virtual learning environment for individuals with autism to learn social and life skills: a virtuoso DBR update,” in International Conference on Immersive Learning , Cham: Springer, 185–188. 10.1007/978-3-319-60633-0_15 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
Schwald B., De Laval B. (2003). An augmented reality system for training and assistance to maintenance in the industrial context. J. WSCG 11 . [ Google Scholar ]
Serino S., Cipresso P., Morganti F., Riva G. (2014). The role of egocentric and allocentric abilities in Alzheimer’s disease: a systematic review. Ageing Res. Rev. 16 32–44. 10.1016/j.arr.2014.04.004 [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
Skalski P., Tamborini R. (2007). The role of social presence in interactive agent-based persuasion. Media Psychol. 10 385–413. 10.1080/15213260701533102 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
Slater M. (2009). Place illusion and plausibility can lead to realistic behaviour in immersive virtual environments. Philos. Trans. R. Soc. Lond. B Biol. Sci. 364 3549–3557. 10.1098/rstb.2009.0138 [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
Slater M., Sanchez-Vives M. V. (2016). Enhancing our lives with immersive virtual reality. Front. Robot. AI 3 : 74 10.3389/frobt.2016.00074 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
Small H. (1973). Co-citation in the scientific literature: a new measure of the relationship between two documents. J. Assoc. Inform. Sci. Technol. 24 265–269. 10.1002/asi.4630240406 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
Song H., Chen F., Peng Q., Zhang J., Gu P. (2017). Improvement of user experience using virtual reality in open-architecture product design. Proc. Inst. Mech. Eng. B J. Eng. Manufact. 232 . [ Google Scholar ]
Sundar S. S., Xu Q., Bellur S. (2010). “Designing interactivity in media interfaces: a communications perspective,” in Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems , (Boston, MA: ACM; ), 2247–2256. 10.1145/1753326.1753666 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
Sutherland I. E. (1965). The Ultimate Display. Multimedia: From Wagner to Virtual Reality. New York, NY: Norton. [ Google Scholar ]
Sutherland I. E. (1968). “A head-mounted three dimensional display,” in Proceedings of the December 9-11, 1968, Fall Joint Computer Conference, Part I , (ACM) , 757–764. 10.1145/1476589.1476686 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
Thomas B., Close B., Donoghue J., Squires J., De Bondi P., Morris M., et al. (2000). “ARQuake: an outdoor/indoor augmented reality first person application,” in Digest of Papers. Fourth International Symposium on Wearable Computers , (Atlanta, GA: IEEE; ), 139–146. 10.1109/ISWC.2000.888480 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
Ware C., Arthur K., Booth K. S. (1993). “Fish tank virtual reality,” in Proceedings of the INTERACT’93 and CHI’93 Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems , (Amsterdam: ACM; ), 37–42. 10.1145/169059.169066 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
Wexelblat A. (ed.) (2014). Virtual Reality: Applications and Explorations. Cambridge, MA: Academic Press. [ Google Scholar ]
White H. D., Griffith B. C. (1981). Author cocitation: a literature measure of intellectual structure. J. Assoc. Inform. Sci. Technol. 32 163–171. 10.1002/asi.4630320302 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
Wrzesien M., Alcañiz M., Botella C., Burkhardt J. M., Bretón-López J., Ortega M., et al. (2013). The therapeutic lamp: treating small-animal phobias. IEEE Comput. Graph. Appl. 33 80–86. 10.1109/MCG.2013.12 [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
Wrzesien M., Burkhardt J. M., Alcañiz M., Botella C. (2011a). How technology influences the therapeutic process: a comparative field evaluation of augmented reality and in vivo exposure therapy for phobia of small animals. Hum. Comput. Interact. 2011 523–540. [ Google Scholar ]
Wrzesien M., Burkhardt J. M., Alcañiz Raya M., Botella C. (2011b). “Mixing psychology and HCI in evaluation of augmented reality mental health technology,” in CHI’11 Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems , (Vancouver, BC: ACM; ), 2119–2124. [ Google Scholar ]
Zyda M. (2005). From visual simulation to virtual reality to games. Computer 38 25–32. 10.1109/MC.2005.297 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]

Random article
Teaching guide
Privacy & cookies

Virtual reality

by Chris Woodford . Last updated: August 14, 2023.

Y ou'll probably never go to Mars, swim with dolphins, run an Olympic 100 meters, or sing onstage with the Rolling Stones. But if virtual reality ever lives up to its promise, you might be able to do all these things—and many more—without even leaving your home. Unlike real reality (the actual world in which we live), virtual reality means simulating bits of our world (or completely imaginary worlds) using high-performance computers and sensory equipment, like headsets and gloves. Apart from games and entertainment, it's long been used for training airline pilots and surgeons and for helping scientists to figure out complex problems such as the structure of protein molecules. How does it work? Let's take a closer look! Photo: Virtual pilot. This US Air Force student is learning to fly a giant C-17 Globemaster plane using a virtual reality simulator. Picture by Trenton Jancze courtesy of US Air Force .

A believable, interactive 3D computer-created world that you can explore so you feel you really are there, both mentally and physically.

Photo: The view from inside. A typical HMD has two tiny screens that show different pictures to each of your eyes, so your brain produces a combined 3D (stereoscopic) image. Picture by courtesy of US Air Force.

Photos: EXOS datagloves produced by NASA in the 1990s had very intricate external sensors to detect finger movements with high precision. Picture courtesy of NASA Ames Research Center and Internet Archive .

Photo: This more elaborate EXOS glove had separate sensors on each finger segment, wired up to a single ribbon cable connected up to the main VR computer. Picture by Wade Sisler courtesy of NASA Ames Research Center .

Artwork: How a fiber-optic dataglove works. Each finger has a fiber-optic cable stretched along its length. (1) At one end of the finger, a light-emitting diode (LED) shines light into the cable. (2) Light rays shoot down the cable, bouncing off the sides. (3) There are tiny abrasions in the top of each fiber through which some of the rays escape. The more you flex your fingers, the more light escapes. (4) The amount of light arriving at a photocell at the end gives a rough indication of how much you're flexing your finger. (5) A cable carries this signal off to the VR computer. This is a simplified version of the kind of dataglove VPL patented in 1992, and you'll find the idea described in much more detail in US Patent 5,097,252 .

Photo: A typical handheld virtual reality controller (complete with elastic bands), looking not so different from a video game controller. Photo courtesy of NASA Ames Research Center and Internet Archive .

If you liked this article...

Find out more, on this website.

3D-television
Augmented reality
Computer graphics

News and popular science

Apple Is Stepping Into the Metaverse. Will Anyone Care? by Kellen Browning and Mike Isaac. The New York Times, June 2, 2023. Can Apple succeed with the Metaverse where Facebook has (so far) failed?
Everybody Into the Metaverse! Virtual Reality Beckons Big Tech by Cade Metz. The New York Times, December 30, 2021. The Times welcomes the latest push to an ambitious new vision of the virtual world.
Facebook gives a glimpse of metaverse, its planned virtual reality world by Mike Isaac. The Guardian, October 29, 2021. Facebook rebrands itself "Meta" as it announces ambitious plans to build a virtual metaverse.
Military trials training for missions in virtual reality by Zoe Kleinman. BBC News, 1 March 2020. How Oculus Rift and Unreal Engine software are being deployed in military training.
What went wrong with virtual reality? by Eleanor Lawrie. BBC News, 10 January 2020. Despite all the hype, VR still isn't a mainstream technology.
FedEx Ground Uses Virtual Reality to Train and Retain Package Handlers by Michelle Rafter. IEEE Spectrum, 8 November 2019. How VR could help reduce staff turnover by weeding out unsuitable people before they start work.
VR Therapy Makes Arachnophobes Braver Around Real Spiders by Emily Waltz. IEEE Spectrum, 24 January 2019. Can VR cure your fear of spiders?
Touching the Virtual: How Microsoft Research is Making Virtual Reality Tangible : Microsoft Blog, 8 March 2018. A fascinating look at Microsoft's research into haptic (touch-based) VR controllers.
Want to Know What Virtual Reality Might Become? Look to the Past by Steven Johnson. The New York Times, November 3, 2016. What can the history of 19th-century stereoscopic toys tell us about the likely future of VR?
A Virtual Reality Revolution, Coming to a Headset Near You by Lorne Manly. The New York Times, November 19, 2015. Musicians, filmmakers, and games programmers try to second-guess the future of VR.
Virtual Reality Pioneer Looks Beyond Entertainment by Jeremy Hsu. IEEE Spectrum, April 30, 2015. Where does Stanford VR guru Jeremy Bailenson see VR going in the future?
Whatever happened to ... Virtual Reality? by Science@NASA, June 21, 2004. Why NASA decided to revisit virtual reality 20 years after the technology first drew attention in the 1980s.
Virtual Reality: Oxymoron or Pleonasm? by Nicholas Negroponte, Wired, Issue 1.06, December 1993. Early thoughts on virtual worlds from the influential MIT Media Lab pioneer

Scholarly articles

The Past, Present, and Future of Virtual and Augmented Reality Research: A Network and Cluster Analysis of the Literature by Pietro Cipresso et al, Front Psychol. 2018; 9: 2086.
Virtual Reality as a Tool for Scientific Research by Jeremy Swan, NICHD Newsletter, September 2016.
Virtual Heritage: Researching and Visualizing the Past in 3D by Donald H. Sanders, Journal of Eastern Mediterranean Archaeology & Heritage Studies, Vol. 2, No. 1 (2014), pp. 30–47.

For older readers

Virtual Reality by Samuel Greengard. MIT Press, 2019. A short introduction that explains why VR and AR matter, looks at the different technologies available, considers social issues that they raise, and explores the likely shape of our virtual future.
Virtual Reality Technology by Grigore Burdea and Philippe Coiffet. Wiley-IEEE, 2017/2024. Popular VR textbook covering history, programming, and applications.
Learning Virtual Reality: Developing Immersive Experiences and Applications for Desktop, Web, and Mobile by Tony Parisi. O'Reilly, 2015. An up-to-date introduction for VR developers that covers everything from the basics of VR to cutting-edge products like the Oculus Rift and Google Cardboard.
Developing Virtual Reality Applications by Alan B. Craig, William R. Sherman, and Jeffrey D. Will. Morgan Kaufmann, 2009. More detail of the applications of VR in science, education, medicine, the military, and elsewhere.
Virtual Reality by Howard Rheingold. Secker & Warburg, 1991. The classic (though now somewhat dated) introduction to VR.

For younger readers

All About Virtual Reality by Jack Challoner. DK, 2017. A 32-page introduction for ages 7–9.

Current research

Advanced VR Research Centre, Loughborough University
Virtual Reality and Visualization Research: Bauhaus-Universität Weimar
Institute of Software Technology and Interactive Systems: Vienna University of Technology
Microsoft Research: Human-Computer Interaction
MIT Media Lab
Virtual Human Interaction Lab (VHIL) at Stanford University
WO 1992009963: System for creating a virtual world by Dan D Browning, Ethan D Joffe, Jaron Z Lanier, VPL Research, Inc., published June 11, 1992. Outlines a method of creating and editing a virtual world using a pictorial database.
US Patent 5,798,739: Virtual image display device by Michael A. Teitel, VPL Research, Inc., published August 25, 1998. A typical head-mounted display designed for VR systems.
US Patent 5,798,739: Motion sensor which produces an asymmetrical signal in response to symmetrical movement by Young L. Harvill et al, VPL Research, Inc., published March 17, 1992. Describes a dataglove that users fiber-optic sensors to detect finger movements.

Rate this page

Tell your friends, cite this page, more to explore on our website....

Get the book
Send feedback

Virtual Reality Technology Essay

Technology is important in the daily lives of human beings since it positively impacts various sectors. It has made it possible for human beings to perform complex procedures that could not be possible without it.

One of the most recent technology advancements that have been developed is virtual reality. It has led to drastic changes in commercial design and expectations are high that it will change the daily lives of individuals. It is applied in different areas such normal communication and recreation.

Despite the fact that it is in its early stages of development, virtual reality is expected to impact human life greatly in the future. Due to this important role that it plays in human lives, technological advancements continue emerging (Walter 5). Use of virtual reality in different sectors has both negative and positive impacts on the society.

Virtual reality impacts societies positively by ensuring that mistakes and errors made in certain professions are avoided. For example, it is used in the medical field to offer training. The training involves use of simulated surgery by doctors to train new doctors and medical students who do not have experience in the medical field.

Such simulated training produces qualified doctors by equipping them with the necessary skills before they get into the field fully. The other positive impact of virtual reality is that it makes it possible for doctors to conduct experiments on procedures that are being tested. In addition, it is beneficial in the military sector since it is used to provide complex and advanced training for military personnel.

This is possible through the use of flight simulators which cannot be used in its absence. Finally, the technology is used in the business world where companies improve their communication strategies and accessibility of information. For example, users are not required to search for files on computers because with virtual reality, it is possible for them to access the files by opening the drawers containing them (Biocca 5).

Although virtual reality can impact societies positively, it could also impact the society negatively. The first negative impact of this technological advancement is that it is a costly undertaking and scientists grapple with the huge costs. The technology is also complicated to use.

For instance, the users experience problems when using the head set since there are disturbances caused by body movements. The second negative impact of virtual reality is that it causes dehumanization. It is important for human beings to remain natural and maintain their dignity instead of being influenced by technology.

The third negative impact of virtual reality is that it causes human beings to start living in the world of fantasy. Fantasy intrinsically exists in the minds of human beings and virtual reality reinforces it. As a result, human beings spend more time in the world of fantasy than in the real world.

Research has shown spending a lot of time in the world of fantasy affects human beings negatively by destroying their social nature (Dasgupta 562). Uncertainty engulfs human life if human beings are deprived the ability to differentiate between fantasy and reality. Virtual reality is an important achievement in the world of technology but its use in our society should be controlled.

Technology is important in the daily lives of human beings. Virtual reality is one of the latest technologies capable of performing procedures that would not have been possible without it.

Although it has positive impacts on human lives, it is also capable of causing negative implications. For instance, it has the capacity to remove human beings from the real world and take them to a world of fantasy. It is important to control its use to avoid depriving human beings of their capacity to interact with others.

Works Cited

Biocca, Frank. Communicating Within Virtual Reality:Creating a Space for Research. Journal for comunication (1992): 5-22.

Dasgupta, Subhasish. Encyclopedia of virtual communities and technologies. Washngton: Idea Group Inc, 2006.Print

Walter, Ong. Writing is a Technology that Restructures Thought: from the written word-literacy in Transition. New York: university Press, 2000.Print

Chicago (A-D)
Chicago (N-B)

IvyPanda. (2019, March 28). Virtual Reality Technology. https://ivypanda.com/essays/virtual-reality-technology/

"Virtual Reality Technology." IvyPanda , 28 Mar. 2019, ivypanda.com/essays/virtual-reality-technology/.

IvyPanda . (2019) 'Virtual Reality Technology'. 28 March.

IvyPanda . 2019. "Virtual Reality Technology." March 28, 2019. https://ivypanda.com/essays/virtual-reality-technology/.

1. IvyPanda . "Virtual Reality Technology." March 28, 2019. https://ivypanda.com/essays/virtual-reality-technology/.

Bibliography

IvyPanda . "Virtual Reality Technology." March 28, 2019. https://ivypanda.com/essays/virtual-reality-technology/.

Simulated Company’s Performance and Development
Drug Delivery. Simulated Intestinal Fluids Development
Virtual Reality Ride Experience at Disneyland Florida
Real-Life vs. Simulated Prison: Stanford Experiment
Use of Simulation in Military
Human Life: Video Game, Simulation, or Reality?
Facilitating Learning in the 21st Century
The "Dream Argument" by Descartes
Philosophy: How to Know One Is (Not) a Simulation
"The Role of Virtual Reality in Criminal Justice Pedagogy" by Smith
Television as a Domestic Technology
Analysis of Sony PS3
The Diskless PC System in the Ashley Company
Security Planning and Assessment: Emerging Technologies in Physical Security
Kinetic Xbox 360 by the Microsoft

Importance of virtual reality

Seven reasons why virtual reality is important in modern society.

Virtual reality, also called immersive multimedia by some, may well look futuristic, an effective predecessor to the ‘feelies’ described by Aldous Huxley in Brave New World. Indeed, the science fiction feel of this piece of modern technology cannot be shaken off; virtual reality or VR simulates real or imaginary environments. Once you have the headset on, it becomes hard to believe that what you are watching is completely computer simulated; the images are real, and immersive in every sense of the term. Some time back, Facebook spent a whopping $2 billion on obtaining the Oculus Rift, the first time virtual reality was formally introduced to the world. Let’s explore the reasons why the social media giant felt virtual reality was worth investing on that much money .

VR can make education more real thing: Think what studying history would be like if you could actually be where the events happened and saw things with your own eyes. And engineering would be easy of you saw how structures are built from all angles. It effectively has the potential of making education a more entertaining experience; the student will be seeing and experiencing things, something that mere textbooks and images will be unable to impart. Not just that, education will no longer be confined to the classroom; the student will be able to study everywhere with a VR headset and a mobile device.

Military training: Today, military training in many countries around the world has started to incorporate virtual reality. As a result, soldiers in training no longer have to rely on mock wars; they are immersed into real wars and face the situations they will find themselves in the actual war.

Pilot training: With virtual reality, flight simulators have come a long way. Pilots in training are given the experience of having actually being up in the air and learn how to handle the controls. They can experience air turbulences and see what it is like to be actually up in the air with a very real airplane.

Shopping will be a whole new ball game: Online stores are all set to become highly interesting with the advent of virtual reality. Why set up the same old boring stores with product images when you can actually place those products against the best possible, most ideal location? Set your camping gear in the wilderness, and let the custom check out how it would feel to be protected by your products away from civilization. Besides, virtual reality has the potential of making shopping a far easier experience;

Social media might become really personal: As virtual reality takes over, people will routinely use it to consumer content from the internet. More and more websites will become VR-friendly, and social media cannot be too far away. It can be safely assumed, therefore, that social media will take huge strides in making online interactions a lot more personal than they are today.

Virtual reality can relieve pain: According to some recent research, it has been theorized that virtual reality can help patients cope with pain. This is because thoughts and feelings play a huge role on how our brain perceives pain; for instance, feeling very happy about something can momentarily distract us from the pain we feel due to a chronic illness or an injury. The study suggests that patients undergoing painful or uncomfortable procedures, such as dental treatment, can get a certain amount of relief if they are involved in something completely different and preferably interactive, like a video game. Games in virtual reality provide a more enhanced experience to the player, thanks to the immersive nature of the technology, and patients can benefit from it by pulling their minds away altogether from the unpleasantness of the situation and into something actually enjoyable.

Also read: Importance of artificial intelligence

Immersive entertainment: Let us not forget how entertaining virtual reality can be. Imagine watching a magic show on your VR headset. Or maybe a trip to Disneyland, but only virtually, or playing a video game. Virtual reality will make each of these experiences a lot more real and a lot more fun. Movie watching experiences will be taken up quite a few notches too, and trips to places you’ve never seen will be just short of visiting the place in person. Virtual Reality is here to stay, no doubt about that. It is convenient, entertaining, and capable of taking groundbreaking strides in human advancement- throughout fields ranging from archaeology to engineering. And the good news is that with more and more technology giants catching on to this trend, VR headset are likely to become much more inexpensive than they are today.

Virtual, mixed, and augmented reality: a systematic review for immersive systems research

Original Article
Published: 03 January 2021
Volume 25 , pages 773–799, ( 2021 )

Cite this article

Matthew J. Liberatore ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-5741-6723 1 &
William P. Wagner 2

7469 Accesses

55 Citations

1 Altmetric

Explore all metrics

Immersive systems can be used to capture new data, create new experiences, and provide new insights by generating virtual elements of physical and imagined worlds. Immersive systems are seeing increased application across a broad array of fields. However, in many situations it is unknown if an immersive application performs as well or better than the existing application in accomplishing a specific task. The purpose of this study is to conduct a systematic review of the literature that addresses the performance of immersive systems. This review assesses those applications where experiments, tests, or clinical trials have been performed to evaluate the proposed application. This research addresses a broad range of application areas and considers studies that compared one or more immersive systems with a control group or evaluated performance data for the immersive system pre- and post-test. The results identify those applications that have been successfully tested and also delineate areas of future research where more data may be needed to assess the effectiveness of proposed applications.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Price includes VAT (Russian Federation)

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Rent this article via DeepDyve

Institutional subscriptions

The Cognitive Affective Model of Immersive Learning (CAMIL): a Theoretical Research-Based Model of Learning in Immersive Virtual Reality

Augmented Reality: A Comprehensive Review

Inclusive AR/VR: accessibility barriers for immersive technologies

Availability of data and material.

Results of systematic literature search are available.

Code availability

Code used for literature search included as “ Appendix .”

Abdullah M, Shaikh ZA (2018) An effective virtual reality based remedy for acrophobia. Int J Adv Comput Sci Appl 9(6):162–167

Google Scholar

Anstadt S, Bradley S, Burnett A (2013) Virtual worlds: relationship between real life and experience in second life. Int Rev Res Open Distance Learn 14(4):160–190

Article Google Scholar

Azuma R (1997) A survey of augmented reality. Presence: Teleoper Virtual Environ 6(4):355–385

Azuma R, Baillot Y, Behringer R, Feiner S, Julier S, Macintyre B (2001) Recent advances in augmented reality. IEEE Comput Graphics Appl 21:34–47

Blum J, Rockstroh C, Göritz AS (2019) Heart rate variability biofeedback based on slow-paced breathing with immersive virtual reality nature scenery. Front Psychol 10:2172

Boas Y (2013) Overview of virtual reality technologies. School of Electronics and Computer Science, University of Southampton, Southampton, UK. http://static1.squarespace.com/static/537bd8c9e4b0c89881877356/t/5383bc16e4b0bc0d91a758a6/1401142294892/yavb1g12_25879847_finalpaper.pdf . Accessed 1 Aug 2020

Boell S, Cecez-Kecmanovic D (2015) On being ‘systematic’ in literature reviews in IS. J Inf Technol 30(2):161–173

Bogicevica V, Seob S, Kandampullyc J, Liuc S, Rudd N (2019) Virtual reality presence as a preamble of tourism experience: the role of mental imagery. Tour Manag 74:55–64

Bordnick PS, Traylor AC, Carter BL, Graap KM (2012) A feasibility study of virtual reality-based coping skills training for nicotine dependence. Res Soc Work Pract 22(3):293–300

Borsci S, Lawson G, Jha B, Burges M, Salanitri D (2016) Effectiveness of a multidevice 3D virtual environment application to train car service maintenance procedures. Virtual Real 20(1):41–55

Bouzit M, Popescu G, Burdea G, Boian R (2002) The Rutgers master II-ND force feedback glove. In: Proceedings of IEEE VR 2002 haptics symposium, Orlando FL, March, pp 256–263

Bowman D, McMahan R (2007) Virtual reality: how much immersion is enough? Computer 40:36–43

Bramley I, Goode A, Anderson L, Mary E (2018) Researching in-store, at home: using virtual reality within quantitative surveys. Int J Mark Res 60(4):344–351

Cardoş RA, David OA, David DO (2017) Virtual reality exposure therapy in flight anxiety: a quantitative meta-analysis. Comput Hum Behav 72:371–380

Carlson P, Peters A, Gilbert SB, Vance JM, Luse A (2015) Virtual training: learning transfer of assembly tasks. IEEE Trans Visual Comput Gr 21(6):770–782

Carmigniani J, Furht B, Anisetti M, Ceravolo P, Damiani E, Ivkovic M (2011) Augmented reality technologies, systems and applications. Multimedia Tools Appl 51(1):341–377

Carù A, Cova B (2006) Expériences de marque: comment favoriser l’immersion du consommateur? Décis Mark 41:43–52

Choi S, Cheung H (2008) A versatile virtual prototyping system for rapid product development. Comput Ind 59(5):477–488

Corbetta D, Imeri F, Gatti R (2015) Rehabilitation that incorporates virtual reality is more effective than standard rehabilitation for improving walking speed, balance and mobility after stroke: a systematic review. J Physiother 61(3):117–124

Cruz-Neira C, Sandlikn D, DeFanti T, Kenyon R, Hart J (1992) The CAVE: audio visual experience automatic virtual environment. Commun ACM 35(6):65–72

Cummings J, Bailenson J (2016) How immersive is Enough? A meta-analysis of the effects of immersive technology on user preference. Media Psychol 19:272–309

CyberGlove Systems (2020) CyberGrasp. http://www.cyberglovesystems.com/cybergrasp . Accessed 11 Nov 2020

Czub M, Piskorz J (2018) Body movement reduces pain intensity in virtual reality–based analgesia. Int J Hum-Comput Interact 34(11):1045–1051

de Rooij IJ, van de Port IG, Meijer JWG (2016) Effect of virtual reality training on balance and gait ability in patients with stroke: systematic review and meta-analysis. Phys Ther 96(12):1905–1918

Dobrowolski P, Pochwatko G, Skorko M, Bielecki M (2014) The effects of virtual experience on attitudes toward real brands. Cyberpsychol Behav Soc Netw 17(2):125–128

Dunn J (2017) A visual history of Nintendo’s video game consoles. http://www.businessinsider.com/nintendo-consoles-in-history-photos-switch-2017-1/#before-there-was-the-nes-there-was-the-color-tv-game-nintendo-first-dipped-its-toes-into-console-gaming-by-launching-five-of-these-rectangles-between-1977-and-1980-all-in-its-native-japan-1. Accessed 1 Aug 2020

Ferrer-Garcia M, Pla-Sanjuanelo J, Dakanalis A, Vilalta-Abella F, Riva G, Fernandez-Aranda F, Ribas-Sabaté J (2019) A randomized trial of virtual reality-based cue exposure second-level therapy and cognitive behavior second-level therapy for bulimia nervosa and binge-eating disorder: outcome at six-month follow up. Cyberpsychol Behav Soc Netw 22(1):60–68

Fink A (2005) Conducting research literature reviews: From the Internet to paper. Sage Publications, Thousand Oaks

Flavián C, Ibáñez-Sánchez S, Orús C (2019) Integrating virtual reality devices into the body: effects of technological embodiment on customer engagement and behavioral intentions toward the destination. J Travel Tour Mark 36(7):12. https://doi.org/10.1080/10548408.2019.1618781

Fodor L, Coteț C, Cuijpers P, Szamoskozi Ș, David D, Cristea I (2018) The effectiveness of virtual reality based interventions for symptoms of anxiety and depression: a meta-analysis. Sci Rep 8(1):10323. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-018-28113-6

Gerçeker G, Binay Ş, Bilsin E, Kahraman A, Yılmaz H (2018) Effects of virtual reality and external cold and vibration on pain in 7-to 12-year-old children during phlebotomy: a randomized controlled trial. J PeriAnesthesia Nurs 33(6):981–989

Gleasure R, Feller J (2015) A rift in the ground: theorizing the evolution of anchor values in crowdfunding communities through the oculus rift case study. J Assoc Comput Syst 17(1):708–736

Glennon C, McElroy S, Connelly L, Lawson L, Bretches A, Gard A, Newcomer L (2018) Use of virtual reality to distract from pain and anxiety. Oncol Nurs Forum 45(4):545–552. https://doi.org/10.1188/18.ONF.545-552

Glueck A, Han D (2020) Improvement potentials in balance and visuo-motor reaction time after mixed reality action game play: a pilot study. Virt Real 24(2):223–229. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10055-019-00392-y

Gonzalez-Franco M, Pizarro R, Cermeron J, Li K, Thorn J, Hutabarat W, Bermell-Garcia P (2017) Immersive mixed reality for manufacturing training. Frontiers in Robotics and AI, 4. http://journal.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/frobt.2017.00003/full . Accessed 1 Aug 2020

Gordon NS, Merchant J, Zanbaka C, Hodges LF, Goolkasian P (2011) Interactive gaming reduces experimental pain with or without a head mounted display. Comput Hum Behav 27(6):2123–2128

Gumaa M, Rehan Youssef A (2019) Is virtual reality effective in orthopedic rehabilitation? A systematic review and meta-analysis. Phys Ther 99(10):1304–1325

Guo C, Deng H, Yang J (2015) Effect of virtual reality distraction on pain among patients with hand injury undergoing dressing change. J Clin Nurs 24(1–2):115–120

Huang TL (2019) Psychological mechanisms of brand love and information technology identity in virtual retail environments. J Retail Consum Serv 47:251–264

Igna R, Stefan S, Onac I, Ungur RA, Tatar AS (2014) Mindfulness-based cognitive-behavior therapy (MCBT) versus virtual reality (VR) enhanced CBT, versus treatment as usual for chronic back pain. A clinical trial. J Evid-Based Psychother 14(2):229

igroup.org (2016) igroup presence questionnaire (IPQ) overview. http://www.igroup.org/pq/ipq/index.php Accessed 1 Aug 2020

Israel K, Zerres C, Tscheulin DK (2019) Presenting hotels in virtual reality: does it influence the booking intention? J Hosp Tour Technol 10(3):473–493

Javornik A (2016) Augmented reality: research agenda for studying the impact of its media characteristics on consumer behavior. J Retail Consumer Serv 30:252–261

Jennett C, Cox A, Cairns P, Dhoparee S, Epps A, Tijs T, Walton A (2008) Measuring and defining the experience of immersion in games. Int J Hum Comput Stud 66(9):641–661

Jo D, Kim GJ (2019) IoT + AR: pervasive and augmented environments for “digi-log” shopping experience. Hum-Centric Comput Inf Sci. https://doi.org/10.1186/s13673-018-0162-5

Juan MC, Calatrava J (2011) An augmented reality system for the treatment of phobia to small animals viewed via an optical see-through HMD: comparison with a similar system viewed via a video see-through HMD. Int J Hum–Comput Interact 27(5):436–449

Kalawsky RS (1996) AGOCG Report. Exploiting virtual reality techniques in education and training: technological issues. http://www.agocg.ac.uk/reports/virtual/vrtech/toc.htm Accessed 1 Aug 2020

Karafotias G, Korres G, Teranishi A, Park W, Eid M (2017) Mid-air tactile stimulation for pain distraction. IEEE Trans Haptics 11(2):185–191

Kawulich B, D’Alba A (2019) Teaching qualitative research methods with second life: a 3-dimensional online virtual environment. Virtual Real 23(4):375–384

Kim IC, Lee BH (2012) Effects of augmented reality with functional electric stimulation on muscle strength, balance and gait of stroke patients. J Phys Ther Sci 24(8):755–762

Krumins A (2017) Haptic bodysuits and the strange new landscape of immersive VR. Jan 4, blog entry at https://www.extremetech.com/extreme/241917-haptic-bodysuits-strange-new-landscape-immersive-virtual-reality . Accessed 1 Aug 2020

Ku J, Kim YJ, Cho S, Lim T, Lee HS, Kang YJ (2019) Three-dimensional augmented reality system for balance and mobility rehabilitation in the elderly: a randomized controlled trial. Cyberpsychol Behav Soc Netw 22(2):132–141

Kumar R, Oskiper T, Naroditsky O, Samarasekera S, Zhu Z, Kim J (2017) System and method for generating a mixed reality environment. US Patent No. 9,600,067 B2

Laha B, Sensharma K, Schiffbauer JD, Bowman DA (2012) Effects of immersion on visual analysis of volume data. IEEE Trans Visual Comput Gr 19(4):597–606

Latif U, Shin S (2019) OP-MR: the implementation of order picking based on mixed reality in a smart warehouse. Vis Comput. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00371-019-01745-z

Lau K (2015) Organizational learning goes virtual? A study of employees’ learning achievement in stereoscopic 3D virtual reality. Learn Organ 22(5):289–303

Lee C, Kim Y, Lee B (2014) Augmented reality-based postural control training improves gait function in patients with stroke: randomized controlled trial. Hong Kong Physiother J 32(2):51–57

Lee J, Yoo H, Lee B (2017) Effects of augmented reality-based Otago exercise on balance, gait, and physical factors in elderly women to prevent falls: a randomized controlled trial. J Phys Ther Sci 29(9):1586–1589

Lessiter J, Freeman J, Keogh E, Davidoff J (2001) A cross-media presence questionnaire: the ITC sense of presence inventory. Presence: Teleoper Virtual Environ 10(3):282–297

Li C, Liang W, Quigley C, Zhao Y, Yu L (2017) Earthquake safety training through virtual drills. IEEE Trans Vis Comput Gr 23(4):1275–1284

Liberati N (2013) Improving the embodiment relations by means of phenomenological analysis on the “reality” of ARs. In: 2013 IEEE international symposium on mixed and augmented reality-arts, media, and humanities (ISMAR-AMH) 0, 13–17, 2013. http://doi.ieeecomputersociety.org/10.1109/ISMAR-AMH.2012.6483983

Liberati N (2016) Augmented reality and ubiquitous computing: the hidden potentialities of augmented reality. AI Soc 31(1):17–28

Lima J, McCabe-Bennett H, Antony M (2018) Treatment of storm fears using virtual reality and progressive muscle relaxation. Behav Cognit Psychother 46(2):251–256

Lombard M, Ditton T (1997) At the heart of it all: the concept of presence. J Comput-Med Commun 3(2):1083–6101

Lombard M, Ditton T, Weinstein L (2013) Measuring presence: the temple presence inventory (TPI). Updated September, 15 . http://matthewlombard.com/research/p2_ab.html . Accessed 1 Aug 2020

Loreto-Quijada D, Gutiérrez-Maldonado J, Nieto R, Gutiérrez-Martínez O, Ferrer-García M, Saldana C, Liutsko L (2014) Differential effects of two virtual reality interventions: distraction versus pain control. Cyberpsychol Behav Soc Netw 17(6):353–358

Manzoni GM, Cesa GL, Bacchetta M, Castelnuovo G, Conti S, Gaggioli A, Riva G (2016) Virtual reality–enhanced cognitive–behavioral therapy for morbid obesity: a randomized controlled study with 1 year follow-up. Cyberpsychol Behav Soc Netw 19(2):134–140

Martínez-Navarro J, Bigné E, Guixeres J, Alcañiz M, Torrecilla C (2019) The influence of virtual reality in e-commerce. J Bus Res 100:475–482

Maskey M, Rodgers J, Grahame V, Glod M, Honey E, Kinnear J, Parr J (2019) A randomised controlled feasibility trial of immersive virtual reality treatment with cognitive behaviour therapy for specific phobias in young people with autism spectrum disorder. J Autism Dev Disord 49(5):1912–1927

McLay R, Wood D, Webb-Murphy J, Spira J, Wiederhold M, Pyne J, Wiederhold B (2011) A randomized, controlled trial of virtual reality-graded exposure therapy for post-traumatic stress disorder in active duty service members with combat-related post-traumatic stress disorder. Cyberpsychol Behav Soc Netw 14(4):223–229

McLay R, Baird A, Webb-Murphy J, Deal W, Tran L, Anson H, Klam W, Johnston S (2017) A randomized, head-to-head study of virtual reality exposure therapy for posttraumatic stress disorder. Cyberpsychol Behav Soc Netw 20(4):218–224

McMahan A (2003) Immersion, engagement and presence: a method for analyzing 3-D video games. In: Wolf M, Perron B (eds) The video game theory reader, chap 3. Routledge, New York, pp 67–86

Meng F, Zhang W, Yang R (2014) The development of a panorama manifestation virtual reality system for navigation and a usability comparison with a desktop system. Behav Inf Technol 33(2):133–143

Merel T (2017) The reality of VR/AR growth. Tech Crunch. https://techcrunch.com/2017/01/11/the-reality-of-vrar-growth/ . Accessed 1 Aug 2020

Michaliszyn D, Marchand A, Bouchard S, Martel M, Poirier-Bisson J (2010) A randomized, controlled clinical trial of in virtuo and in vivo exposure for spider phobia. Cyberpsychol Behav Soc Netw 13(6):689–695

Milgram P, Kishino F (1994) A taxonomy of mixed reality visual displays. IEICE Trans Inf Syst E77-D(12):1321–1329

Montero-López E, Santos-Ruiz A, García-Ríos M, Rodríguez-Blázquez R, Pérez-García M, Peralta-Ramírez M (2016) A virtual reality approach to the Trier Social Stress Test: contrasting two distinct protocols. Behav Res Methods 48(1):223–232

Motraghi T, Seim R, Meyer E, Morissette S (2014) Virtual reality exposure therapy for the treatment of posttraumatic stress disorder: a methodological review using CONSORT guidelines. J Clin Psychol 70(3):197–208

Muhanna M (2015) Virtual reality and the CAVE: taxonomy, interaction challenges and research directions. J King Saud Univ—Comput Inf Sci 27(3):344–361

Murcia-Lopez M, Steed A (2018) A comparison of virtual and physical training transfer of bimanual assembly tasks. IEEE Trans Vis Comput Gr 24(4):1574–1583

Narayan M, Waugh L, Zhang X, Bafna P, Bowman D (2005) Quantifying the benefits of immersion for collaboration in virtual environments. In: Proceedings of the ACM symposium on virtual reality software and technology, Monterey, California, USA, 7–9 November

Neguţ A, Matu S, Sava F, David D (2016) Task difficulty of virtual reality-based assessment tools compared to classical paper-and-pencil or computerized measures: a meta-analytic approach. Comput Hum Behav 54:414–424

Ng Y-L, Ma F, Ho F, Ip P, Fu K-W (2019) Effectiveness of virtual and augmented reality-enhanced exercise on physical activity, psychological outcomes, and physical performance: a systematic review and meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials. Comput Hum Behav 99:278–291

Nilsson S, Johansson B, Jonsson A (2010) Cross-organizational collaboration supported by augmented reality. IEEE Trans Visual Comput Graphics 17(10):1380–1392

Nilsson N, Nordahl R, Serafin S (2016) Immersion revisited: a review of existing definitions of immersion and their relation to different theories of presence. Hum Technol 12(2):108–134

Okoli C, Schabram K (2010) A guide to conducting a systematic literature review of information systems research. Sprouts: working papers on information systems, vol 10, no. 26. https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1954824 . Accessed 1 Aug 2020

Oleksy T, Wnuk A (2016) Augmented places: an impact of embodied historical experience on attitudes towards places. Comput Hum Behav 57:11–16

Paré G, Jaana M, Sicotte C (2007) Systematic review of home telemonitoring for chronic diseases: the evidence base. J Am Med Inform Assoc 14(3):269–277. https://doi.org/10.1197/jamia.M2270

Paré G, Trudel M-C, Jaana M, Kitsiou S (2015) Synthesizing information systems knowledge: a typology of literature reviews. Inf Manag 52(2):183–199

Paré G, Tate M, Johnstone D, Kitsiou S (2016) Contextualizing the twin concepts of systematicity and transparency in information systems literature reviews. Eur J Inf Syst 25(6):493–508

Parsons T, Gaggioli A, Riva G (2017) Virtual reality research in social neuroscience. Brain Sci 7(4):42

Parveau M, Adda M (2018) 3iVClass: a new classification method for virtual, augmented and mixed realities. Procedia Comput Sci 141:263–270. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.procs.2018.10.180

Perret J, Vander Poorten E (2018) Touching virtual reality: a review of haptic gloves. In: ACTUATOR 2018: 16th international conference on new actuators, June 25–27, pp 270–274

Pickering C, Byrne J (2013) The benefits of publishing systematic quantitative literature reviews for PhD candidates and other early-career researchers. High Educ Res Dev 33(3):534–548. https://doi.org/10.1080/07294360.2013.841651

Pickering C, Grignon J, Steven R, Guitart D, Byrne J (2015) Publishing not perishing: how research students transition from novice to knowledgeable using systematic quantitative literature reviews. Stud High Educ 40(10):1756–1769. https://doi.org/10.1080/03075079.2014.914907

Piskorz J, Czub M (2014) Distraction of attention with the use of virtual reality. Influence of the level of game complexity on the level of experienced pain. Pol Psychol Bull 45(4):480–487

Regenbrecht H, Schubert T (2002) Real and illusory interactions enhance presence in virtual environments. Presence: Teleoper Virtual Environ 11(4):425–434

Reger G, Koenen-Woods P, Zetocha K, Smolenski D, Holloway K, Rothbaum B, Gahm G (2016) Randomized controlled trial of prolonged exposure using imaginal exposure vs. virtual reality exposure in active duty soldiers with deployment-related posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). J Consul Clin Psychol 84(11):946–959

Rehman U, Cao S (2019) Comparative evaluation of augmented reality-based assistance for procedural tasks: a simulated control room study. Behav Inf Technol. https://doi.org/10.1080/0144929X.2019.1660805

Repetto C, Gaggioli A, Pallavicini F, Cipresso P, Raspelli S, Riva G (2013) Virtual reality and mobile phones in the treatment of generalized anxiety disorders: a phase-2 clinical trial. Pers Ubiquit Comput 17(2):253–260

Riva G, Waterworth JA (2003) Presence and the self: a cognitive neuroscience approach. Presence-Connect, 3(3)

Rodríguez C, Areces D, Garcia T, Cueli M, González Castro P (2018) Comparison between two continuous performance tests for identifying ADHD: traditional vs. virtual reality. Int J Clin Health Psychol 18:254–263

Ronchi E, Mayorga D, Lovreglio R, Wahlqvist J, Nilsson D (2019) Mobile-powered head-mounted displays versus cave automatic virtual environment experiments for evacuation research. Comput Anim Virtual Worlds 30(6):e1873. https://doi.org/10.1002/cav.1873

Rowe F (2014) What literature review is not: diversity, boundaries, and recommendations. Eur J Inf Syst 23(3):241–255

Sacks R, Perlman A, Barak R (2013) Construction safety training using immersive virtual reality. Constr Manag Econ 31(9):1005–1017. https://doi.org/10.1080/01446193.2013.828844

Sadowsky W, Stanney K (2002) Measuring and managing presence in virtual environments. In: Stanney K (ed) Handbook of virtual environments technology. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Mahway, pp 791–806

Schoonheim M, Heyden R, Wiecha JM, Henden T (2014) Use of a virtual world computer environment for international distance education: lessons from a pilot project using second life. BMC Med Educ. https://doi.org/10.1186/1472-6920-14-36

Schroeder R (1996) Possible worlds: the social dynamic of virtual reality technologies. Westview Press, Boulder

Schryen G (2015) Writing qualitative IS literature reviews—guidelines for synthesis, interpretation and guidance of research. Commun Assoc Inf Syst 37:286–325

MathSciNet Google Scholar

Schryen G, Benlian A, Rowe F, Shirley G, Larsen K, Petter S, Wagner G, Haag S, Yasasin E (2017) Literature reviews in IS research: what can be learnt from the past and other fields? Commun Assoc Inf Syst. https://doi.org/10.17705/1CAIS.04130

Schubert T, Friedmann F, Regenbrecht H (2001) The experience of presence: factor analytic insights. Teleoper Virtual Environ 10(3):266–281

Shu Y, Huang YZ, Chang SH, Chen MY (2019) Do virtual reality head-mounted displays make a difference? A comparison of presence and self-efficacy between head-mounted displays and desktop computer-facilitated virtual environments. Virtual Real 23(4):437–446

Slater M (2003) A note on presence terminology. Presence Connect 3(3):1–5

Slater M, Wilbur S (1997) A framework for immersive virtual environments (FIVE): speculations on the role of presence in virtual environments. Presence: Teleoper Virtual Environ 6(6):603–616

Slater M, Usoh M, Steed A (1994) Depth of presence in virtual environments. Presence: Teleoper Virtual Environ 3(2):130–144

Smink A, Frowijn S, van Reijmersdal E, van Noort G, Neijens P (2019) Try online before you buy: how does shopping with augmented reality affect brand responses and personal data disclosure. Electron Commer Res Appl 35:100854

Solomon B (2014) Facebook buys oculus, virtual reality gaming startup, for $2 billion. https://www.forbes.com/sites/briansolomon/2014/03/25/facebook-buys-oculus-virtual-reality-gaming-startup-for-2-billion/#d8d8b7024984 . Accessed 1 Aug 2020

Suh A, Prophet J (2018) The state of immersive technology research: a literature analysis. Comput Hum Behav 86:77–90

Suso-Ribera C, Fernández-Álvarez J, García-Palacios A, Hoffman HG, Bretón-López J, Banos RM, Botella C (2019) Virtual reality, augmented reality, and in vivo exposure therapy: a preliminary comparison of treatment efficacy in small animal phobia. Cyberpsychol Behav Soc Netw 22(1):31–38

Tang Y, Au K, Lau H, Ho G, Wu G (2020) Evaluating the effectiveness of learning design with mixed reality (MR) in higher education. Virtual Real. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10055-020-00427-9

Teel E, Gay M, Johnson B, Slobounov S (2016) Determining sensitivity/specificity of virtual reality-based neuropsychological tool for detecting residual abnormalities following sport-related concussion. Neuropsychology 30(4):474–483

Templier M, Paré G (2018) Transparency in literature reviews: an assessment of reporting practices across review types and genres in top IS journals. Eur J Inf Syst 27(5):503–550. https://doi.org/10.1080/0960085X.2017.1398880

Thompson C (2017) Stereographs were the original virtual reality. Smithsonian Magazine . https://www.smithsonianmag.com/innovation/sterographs-original-virtual-reality-180964771/ . Accessed 1 Aug 2020

Thompson T, Steffert T, Steed A, Gruzelier J (2011) A randomized controlled trial of the effects of hypnosis with 3-d virtual reality animation on tiredness, mood, and salivary cortisol. Int J Clin Exp Hypn 59(1):122–142

Turk V (2016) Face electrodes let you taste and chew in virtual reality. https://www.newscientist.com/article/2111371-face-electrodes-let-you-taste-and-chew-in-virtual-reality/ . Accessed 1 Aug 2020

UQO Cyberpsychology Lab. Presence Questionnaire. (2002). http://w3.uqo.ca/cyberpsy/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/QEP_vf.pdf . Accessed August 1, 2020

Valtchanov D, Barton KR, Ellard C (2010) Restorative effects of virtual nature settings. Cyberpsychol Behav Soc Netw 13(5):503–512

Van Baren J, IJsselsteijn W (2004) Measuring presence: a guide to current measurement approaches. http://www8.informatik.umu.se/~jwworth/PresenceMeasurement.pdf . Accessed 1 Aug 2020

Van Kerrebroeck H, Brengman M, Willems K (2017) When brands come to life: experimental research on the vividness effect of virtual reality in transformational marketing communications. Virtual Real 21(4):177–191

vom Brocke J, Simons A, Riemer K, Niehaves B, Plattfaut R, Cleven A (2015) Standing on the shoulders of giants: challenges and recommendations of literature search in information systems research. Commun Assoc Inf Syst 37:205–224

Webster J, Watson RT (2002) Analyzing the past to prepare for the future: writing a literature review. MIS Q 26(2):xiii–xxiii

Wechsler TF, Mühlberger A, Kümpers F (2019) Inferiority or even superiority of virtual reality exposure therapy in phobias?—A systematic review and quantitative meta-analysis on randomized controlled trials specifically comparing the efficacy of virtual reality exposure to gold standard in vivo exposure in agoraphobia, specific phobia and social phobia. Front Psychol 10:1758. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2019.01758

Westerfield G, Mitrovic A, Billinghurst M (2015) Intelligent augmented reality training for motherboard assembly. Int J Artif Intell Educ 25(1):157–172

Wiederhold M, Crisci M, Patel V, Nonaka M, Wiederhold B (2019) Physiological monitoring during augmented reality exercise confirms advantages to health and well-being. Cyberpsychol Behav Soc Netw 22(2):122–126

Wilkerson W, Avstreih D, Gruppen L, Beier K-P, Woolliscroft J (2008) Using immersive simulation for training first responders for mass casualty incidents. Acad Emerg Med 15(11):1152–1159. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1553-2712.2008.00223.x

Wissmath B, Weibel D, Mast F (2010) Measuring presence with verbal versus pictorial scales: a comparison between online- and ex post- ratings. Virtual Real 14(1):43–53

Witmer B, Singer M (1998) Measuring presence in virtual environments: a presence questionnaire. Presence: Teleoper Virtual Environ 7(3):225–240

Witmer B, Jerome C, Singer M (2005) The factor structure of the presence questionnaire. Presence 14(3):298–312

Yang S, Xiong G (2019) Try it on! Contingency effects of virtual fitting rooms. J Manag Inf Syst 36(3):789–822

Yang Z, Shi J, Jiang W, Sui Y, Wu Y, Ma S, Li H (2019) Influences of augmented reality assistance on performance and cognitive loads in different stages of assembly task. Front Psychol 10:1703. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2019.01703

Yoo SC, Drumwright M (2018) Nonprofit fundraising with virtual reality. Nonprofit Manag Leadersh 29(1):11–27

Download references

Not applicable.

Author information

Authors and affiliations.

Department of Management and Operations, Villanova School of Business, Villanova University, Villanova, PA, 19085, USA

Matthew J. Liberatore

Department of Accounting and Information Systems, Villanova School of Business, Villanova University, Villanova, PA, 19085, USA

William P. Wagner

You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Contributions

Both authors contributed equally to this research.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Matthew J. Liberatore .

Ethics declarations

Conflicts of interest.

The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

Additional information

Publisher's note.

Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Appendix: Keywords used in Scopus literature search

((TITLE (“immersive system” OR “virtual reality” OR “mixed reality” OR “augmented reality”) OR ABS (“immersive system” OR “virtual reality” OR “mixed reality” OR “augmented reality”))) AND ((TITLE (“experiment” OR “trial” OR “test”) OR ABS (“experiment” OR “trial” OR “test”))) AND (LIMIT-TO (SRCTYPE, “j”)) AND (EXCLUDE (SUBJAREA, “MEDI”) OR EXCLUDE (SUBJAREA, “MATH”) OR EXCLUDE (SUBJAREA, “PHYS”) OR EXCLUDE (SUBJAREA, “NEUR”) OR EXCLUDE (SUBJAREA, “MATE”) OR EXCLUDE (SUBJAREA, “BIOC”) OR EXCLUDE (SUBJAREA, “AGRI”) OR EXCLUDE (SUBJAREA, “EART”) OR EXCLUDE (SUBJAREA, “ENVI”) OR EXCLUDE (SUBJAREA, “CENG”) OR EXCLUDE (SUBJAREA, “IMMU”) OR EXCLUDE (SUBJAREA, “DENT”) OR EXCLUDE (SUBJAREA, “PHAR”) OR EXCLUDE (SUBJAREA, “VETE”) OR EXCLUDE (SUBJAREA, “Undefined”) OR EXCLUDE (SUBJAREA, “ENER”) OR EXCLUDE (SUBJAREA, “CHEM”) OR EXCLUDE (SUBJAREA, “ENGI”)) AND (EXCLUDE (PUBYEAR, 2009) OR EXCLUDE (PUBYEAR, 2008) OR EXCLUDE (PUBYEAR, 2007) OR EXCLUDE (PUBYEAR, 2006) OR EXCLUDE (PUBYEAR, 2005) OR EXCLUDE (PUBYEAR, 2004) OR EXCLUDE (PUBYEAR, 2003) OR EXCLUDE (PUBYEAR, 2002) OR EXCLUDE (PUBYEAR, 2001) OR EXCLUDE (PUBYEAR, 2000) OR EXCLUDE (PUBYEAR, 1999) OR EXCLUDE (PUBYEAR, 1998) OR EXCLUDE (PUBYEAR, 1997) OR EXCLUDE (PUBYEAR, 1996) OR EXCLUDE (PUBYEAR, 1995) OR EXCLUDE (PUBYEAR, 1994) OR EXCLUDE (PUBYEAR, 1993) OR EXCLUDE (PUBYEAR, 1992) OR EXCLUDE (PUBYEAR, 1991) OR EXCLUDE (PUBYEAR, 1984)) AND (EXCLUDE (EXACTSRCTITLE, “Computers And Education”) OR EXCLUDE (EXACTSRCTITLE, “Journal Of Advanced Oxidation Technologies”) OR EXCLUDE (EXACTSRCTITLE, “Computer Applications In Engineering Education”) OR EXCLUDE (EXACTSRCTITLE, “International Journal Of Online Engineering”) OR EXCLUDE (EXACTSRCTITLE, “Journal Of Computing In Civil Engineering”) OR EXCLUDE (EXACTSRCTITLE, “Turkish Online Journal Of Educational Technology”) OR EXCLUDE (EXACTSRCTITLE, “International Journal Of recent Technology And Engineering”) OR EXCLUDE (EXACTSRCTITLE, “Advanced Engineering Informatics”) OR EXCLUDE (EXACTSRCTITLE, “Computers In Education Journal”) OR EXCLUDE (EXACTSRCTITLE, “Journal Of Computing And Information Science In Engineering”) OR EXCLUDE (EXACTSRCTITLE, “AES Journal Of The Audio Engineering Society”) OR EXCLUDE (EXACTSRCTITLE, “Advances In Mechanical Engineering”) OR EXCLUDE (EXACTSRCTITLE, “IEEE Transactions On Biomedical Engineering”) OR EXCLUDE (EXACTSRCTITLE, “International Journal Of Multimedia And Ubiquitous Engineering”) OR EXCLUDE (EXACTSRCTITLE, “Journal Of Telecommunication Electronic And Computer Engineering”) OR EXCLUDE (EXACTSRCTITLE, “British Journal Of Educational Technology”) OR EXCLUDE (EXACTSRCTITLE, “Educational Technology And Society”) OR EXCLUDE (EXACTSRCTITLE, “Journal Of Advanced Research In Dynamical And Control Systems”) OR EXCLUDE (EXACTSRCTITLE, “Journal Of Medical And Biological Engineering”) OR EXCLUDE (EXACTSRCTITLE, “Journal Of Professional Issues In Engineering Education And Practice”) OR EXCLUDE (EXACTSRCTITLE, “Journal Of Science Education And Technology”) OR EXCLUDE (EXACTSRCTITLE, “IEEE Journal On Emerging And Selected Topics In Circuits And Systems”) OR EXCLUDE (EXACTSRCTITLE, “International Journal Of Innovative Technology And Exploring Engineering”) OR EXCLUDE (EXACTSRCTITLE, “Journal Of Educational Computing Research”) OR EXCLUDE (EXACTSRCTITLE, “Annals Of Biomedical Engineering”) OR EXCLUDE (EXACTSRCTITLE, “IEEE Transactions On Circuits And Systems For Video Technology”) OR EXCLUDE (EXACTSRCTITLE, “Interactive Technology And Smart Education”) OR EXCLUDE (EXACTSRCTITLE, “International Journal Of Applied Engineering Research”) OR EXCLUDE (EXACTSRCTITLE, “Asia Pacific Education Researcher”)) AND (LIMIT-TO (LANGUAGE, “English”)) AND (LIMIT-TO (DOCTYPE, “ar”) OR LIMIT-TO (DOCTYPE, “re”)).

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Liberatore, M.J., Wagner, W.P. Virtual, mixed, and augmented reality: a systematic review for immersive systems research. Virtual Reality 25 , 773–799 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10055-020-00492-0

Download citation

Received : 02 August 2020

Accepted : 27 November 2020

Published : 03 January 2021

Issue Date : September 2021

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1007/s10055-020-00492-0

Share this article

Anyone you share the following link with will be able to read this content:

Sorry, a shareable link is not currently available for this article.

Provided by the Springer Nature SharedIt content-sharing initiative

Immersive systems
Virtual reality
Augmented reality
Mixed reality
Empirical research
Systematic review
Find a journal
Publish with us
Track your research

Essay on Virtual Reality

Students are often asked to write an essay on Virtual Reality in their schools and colleges. And if you’re also looking for the same, we have created 100-word, 250-word, and 500-word essays on the topic.

Let’s take a look…

100 Words Essay on Virtual Reality

Introduction to virtual reality.

Virtual Reality (VR) is a technology that transports us to a simulated world. It uses a headset to provide a 3D, computer-generated environment.

VR in Entertainment

VR is popular in entertainment. It is used in games and movies to give a realistic and immersive experience.

VR in Education

In education, VR is used to create interactive lessons. It helps students understand complex concepts easily.

VR in Training

VR is also used in training, like pilot training or medical simulations. It provides a risk-free learning environment.

VR is a revolutionary technology, making our experiences more immersive and learning more effective.

250 Words Essay on Virtual Reality

Virtual Reality (VR) is a simulated experience that can be similar or completely different from the real world. It is a technology that creates an immersive, three-dimensional environment, providing a sense of presence and the ability to interact with the environment.

The Science Behind VR

Virtual Reality operates on the premise of creating a sensory experience for the user. It achieves this through stereoscopic display, parallax, and tracking movements. The display is split between the eyes, creating a 3D perspective. Parallax provides depth cues, and tracking movements adjust the user’s view in real-time.

Applications of VR

The potential applications of VR are vast and varied. In gaming, VR creates immersive experiences that transport players into the game’s world. In medicine, VR is used for therapeutic purposes and surgical training. In education, it provides an interactive learning environment, enabling students to understand complex concepts more easily.

The Future of VR

The future of VR is promising. With advancements in technology, the line between the virtual and real world will blur. It could lead to a new era of communication, with VR meetings and conferences becoming commonplace. Furthermore, the integration of artificial intelligence with VR could result in even more immersive and personalized experiences.

Virtual Reality is a groundbreaking technology that has the potential to revolutionize many aspects of our lives. As the technology continues to evolve, the possibilities are limitless. It is an exciting field that holds immense promise for the future.

500 Words Essay on Virtual Reality

Virtual Reality (VR) is a computer-based technology that provides an immersive, interactive experience taking place within a simulated environment. It is an artificial realm, constructed by software, which can either replicate the real world or create an entirely new one.

The Mechanics of Virtual Reality

VR operates by stimulating our senses in such a way that we are deceived into believing that we are in a different setting. This is achieved through a VR headset that provides a stereoscopic display, creating a 3D world by presenting slightly different images to each eye. Additionally, head-tracking sensors monitor the user’s movements and adjust the images accordingly, maintaining the illusion of reality.

Applications of Virtual Reality

The applications of VR are vast and extend beyond entertainment and gaming. In the medical field, VR is used for therapy and rehabilitation, surgical training, and to visualize complex medical data. In education, VR provides immersive learning experiences, making abstract concepts tangible. In the realm of architecture, VR allows for the exploration of virtual building designs before their physical construction.

The Impact of Virtual Reality on Society

VR has the potential to profoundly impact society. It alters the way we interact with digital media, transforming it from a passive experience to an active, immersive one. However, it also raises ethical considerations. As VR becomes more immersive, the line between virtual and physical reality could blur, leading to potential issues around cyber addiction and the devaluation of real-world experiences.

The Future of Virtual Reality

The future of VR is promising, with advancements in technology continually pushing the boundaries of what is possible. Future VR systems may include additional sensory feedback, like touch or smell, to further enhance the immersive experience. Also, the integration of AI with VR could lead to more personalized and adaptive virtual experiences.

In conclusion, VR is a powerful technology with the potential to revolutionize many sectors. Its immersive nature offers unique opportunities for learning, exploration, and experiences. However, as with any technology, it comes with its own set of challenges and ethical considerations. As we continue to develop and integrate VR into our lives, it is crucial to navigate these issues responsibly to harness its benefits fully.

That’s it! I hope the essay helped you.

If you’re looking for more, here are essays on other interesting topics:

Essay on Vikram Batra
Essay on Urbanization
Essay on United Nations

Apart from these, you can look at all the essays by clicking here .

Happy studying!

ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

The past, present, and future of virtual and augmented reality research: a network and cluster analysis of the literature.

$\r\nPietro Cipresso,*$

1 Applied Technology for Neuro-Psychology Lab, Istituto Auxologico Italiano, Milan, Italy
2 Department of Psychology, Catholic University of the Sacred Heart, Milan, Italy
3 Instituto de Investigación e Innovación en Bioingeniería, Universitat Politècnica de València, Valencia, Spain

Introduction

Virtual Reality Concepts and Features

Higher or lower degrees of immersion can depend by three types of VR systems provided to the user:

• Non-immersive systems are the simplest and cheapest type of VR applications that use desktops to reproduce images of the world.

• Immersive systems provide a complete simulated experience due to the support of several sensory outputs devices such as head mounted displays (HMDs) for enhancing the stereoscopic view of the environment through the movement of the user’s head, as well as audio and haptic devices.

• Semi-immersive systems such as Fish Tank VR are between the two above. They provide a stereo image of a three dimensional (3D) scene viewed on a monitor using a perspective projection coupled to the head position of the observer ( Ware et al., 1993 ). Higher technological immersive systems have showed a closest experience to reality, giving to the user the illusion of technological non-mediation and feeling him or her of “being in” or present in the virtual environment ( Lombard and Ditton, 1997 ). Furthermore, higher immersive systems, than the other two systems, can give the possibility to add several sensory outputs allowing that the interaction and actions were perceived as real ( Loomis et al., 1999 ; Heeter, 2000 ; Biocca et al., 2001 ).

From Virtual to Augmented Reality

Virtual Reality Technologies

Virtual Reality Applications

Augmented Reality Concept

Augmented Reality Technologies

Augmented Reality Applications

Materials and Methods

Data collection.

About the subject category, nodes and edges are computed as co-occurring subject categories from the Web of Science “Category” field in all the articles.

TABLE 1. Category statistics from the WoS for the entire period and the last 5 years.

FIGURE 1. Category from the WoS: network for the last 5 years.

About the countries, nodes and edges are computed as networks of co-authors countries. Multiple occurrency of a country in the same paper are counted once.

FIGURE 2. Country network (node dimension represents centrality).

Network analysis was conducted to calculate and to represent the centrality index ( Freeman, 1977 ; Brandes, 2001 ), i.e., the dimension of the node in Figure 2 . The top-ranked country, with a centrality index of 0.26, was the United States (2011), and England was second, with a centrality index of 0.25. The third, fourth, and fifth countries were Germany, Italy, and Australia, with centrality indices of 0.15, 0.15, and 0.14, respectively.

About the Institutions, nodes and edges are computed as networks of co-authors Institutions (Figure 3 ).

FIGURE 3. Network of institutions: the dimensions of the nodes represent centrality.

About the Journals, nodes, and edges are computed as journal co-citation networks among each journals in the corresponding field.

FIGURE 4. Co-citation network of journals: the dimensions of the nodes represent centrality. Full list of official abbreviations of WoS journals can be found here: https://images.webofknowledge.com/images/help/WOS/A_abrvjt.html .

Network analysis was conducted to calculate and to represent the centrality index, i.e., the dimensions of the nodes in Figure 4 . The top-ranked item by centrality was Cyberpsychol BEHAV, with a centrality index of 0.29. The second-ranked item was Arch PHYS MED REHAB, with a centrality index of 0.23. The third was Behaviour Research and Therapy (Behav RES THER), with a centrality index of 0.15. The fourth was BRAIN, with a centrality index of 0.14. The fifth was Exp BRAIN RES, with a centrality index of 0.11.

Who’s Who in VR Research

FIGURE 5. Network of authors’ numbers of publications: the dimensions of the nodes represent the centrality index, and the dimensions of the characters represent the author’s rank.

FIGURE 6. Authors’ co-citation network: the dimensions of the nodes represent centrality index, and the dimensions of the characters represent the author’s rank. The 10 authors that appear on the top-10 list are considered to be the pioneers of VR research.

Considering the last 5 years, the situation remains similar, with three new entries in the top-10 list, i.e., Muhlberger A, Cipresso P, and Ahmed K ranked 7th, 8th, and 10th, respectively.

The authors’ publications number network shows the most active authors in VR research. Another relevant analysis for our focus on VR research is to identify the most cited authors in the field.

Citation Network and Cluster Analyses for VR

The network of document co-citations is visually complex (Figure 7 ) because it includes 1000s of articles and the links among them. However, this analysis is very important because can be used to identify the possible conglomerate of knowledge in the area, and this is essential for a deep understanding of the area. Thus, for this purpose, a cluster analysis was conducted ( Chen et al., 2010 ; González-Teruel et al., 2015 ; Klavans and Boyack, 2015 ). Figure 8 shows the clusters, which are identified with the two algorithms in Table 2 .

FIGURE 7. Network of document co-citations: the dimensions of the nodes represent centrality, the dimensions of the characters represent the rank of the article rank, and the numbers represent the strengths of the links. It is possible to identify four historical phases (colors: blue, green, yellow, and red) from the past VR research to the current research.

FIGURE 8. Document co-citation network by cluster: the dimensions of the nodes represent centrality, the dimensions of the characters represent the rank of the article rank and the red writing reports the name of the cluster with a short description that was produced with the mutual information algorithm; the clusters are identified with colored polygons.

TABLE 2. Cluster ID and silhouettes as identified with two algorithms ( Chen et al., 2010 ).

The identified clusters highlight clear parts of the literature of VR research, making clear and visible the interdisciplinary nature of this field. However, the dynamics to identify the past, present, and future of VR research cannot be clear yet. We analysed the relationships between these clusters and the temporal dimensions of each article. The results are synthesized in Figure 9 . It is clear that cluster #0 (laparoscopic skill), cluster #2 (gaming and rehabilitation), cluster #4 (therapy), and cluster #14 (surgery) are the most popular areas of VR research. (See Figure 9 and Table 2 to identify the clusters.) From Figure 9 , it also is possible to identify the first phase of laparoscopic skill (cluster #6) and therapy (cluster #7). More generally, it is possible to identify four historical phases (colors: blue, green, yellow, and red) from the past VR research to the current research.

FIGURE 9. Network of document co-citation: the dimensions of the nodes represent centrality, the dimensions of the characters represent the rank of the article rank and the red writing on the right hand side reports the number of the cluster, such as in Table 2 , with a short description that was extracted accordingly.

TABLE 3. Cluster ID and references of burst article.

Citation Network and Cluster Analyses for AR

The network of document co-citations is visually complex (Figure 10 ) because it includes 1000s of articles and the links among them. However, this analysis is very important because can be used to identify the possible conglomerate of knowledge in the area, and this is essential for a deep understanding of the area. Thus, for this purpose, a cluster analysis was conducted ( Chen et al., 2010 ; González-Teruel et al., 2015 ; Klavans and Boyack, 2015 ). Figure 11 shows the clusters, which are identified with the two algorithms in Table 3 .

FIGURE 10. Network of document co-citations: the dimensions of the nodes represent centrality, the dimensions of the characters represent the rank of the article rank, and the numbers represent the strengths of the links. It is possible to identify four historical phases (colors: blue, green, yellow, and red) from the past AR research to the current research.

FIGURE 11. Document co-citation network by cluster: the dimensions of the nodes represent centrality, the dimensions of the characters represent the rank of the article rank and the red writing reports the name of the cluster with a short description that was produced with the mutual information algorithm; the clusters are identified with colored polygons.

The identified clusters highlight clear parts of the literature of AR research, making clear and visible the interdisciplinary nature of this field. However, the dynamics to identify the past, present, and future of AR research cannot be clear yet. We analysed the relationships between these clusters and the temporal dimensions of each article. The results are synthesized in Figure 12 . It is clear that cluster #1 (tracking), cluster #4 (education), and cluster #5 (virtual city environment) are the current areas of AR research. (See Figure 12 and Table 3 to identify the clusters.) It is possible to identify four historical phases (colors: blue, green, yellow, and red) from the past AR research to the current research.

FIGURE 12. Network of document co-citation: the dimensions of the nodes represent centrality, the dimensions of the characters represent the rank of the article rank and the red writing on the right hand side reports the number of the cluster, such as in Table 2 , with a short description that was extracted accordingly.

TABLE 4. Cluster ID and silhouettes as identified with two algorithms ( Chen et al., 2010 ).

Figure 9 clarifies the past, present, and future of VR research. The outset of VR research brought a clearly-identifiable development in interfaces for children and medicine, routine use and behavioral-assessment, special effects, systems perspectives, and tutorials. This pioneering era evolved in the period that we can identify as the development era, because it was the period in which VR was used in experiments associated with new technological impulses. Not surprisingly, this was exactly concomitant with the new economy era in which significant investments were made in information technology, and it also was the era of the so-called ‘dot-com bubble’ in the late 1990s. The confluence of pioneering techniques into ergonomic studies within this development era was used to develop the first effective clinical systems for surgery, telemedicine, human spatial navigation, and the first phase of the development of therapy and laparoscopic skills. With the new millennium, VR research switched strongly toward what we can call the clinical-VR era, with its strong emphasis on rehabilitation, neurosurgery, and a new phase of therapy and laparoscopic skills. The number of applications and articles that have been published in the last 5 years are in line with the new technological development that we are experiencing at the hardware level, for example, with so many new, HMDs, and at the software level with an increasing number of independent programmers and VR communities.

Finally, Figure 12 identifies clusters of the literature of AR research, making clear and visible the interdisciplinary nature of this field. The dynamics to identify the past, present, and future of AR research cannot be clear yet, but analyzing the relationships between these clusters and the temporal dimensions of each article tracking, education, and virtual city environment are the current areas of AR research. AR is a new technology that is showing its efficacy in different research fields, and providing a novel way to gather behavioral data and support learning, training, and clinical treatments.

Author Contributions

Conflict of Interest Statement

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

The reviewer GC declared a shared affiliation, with no collaboration, with the authors PC and GR to the handling Editor at the time of the review.

Supplementary Material

The Supplementary Material for this article can be found online at: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2018.02086/full#supplementary-material

^ https://www.leapmotion.com/

Akçayır, M., and Akçayır, G. (2017). Advantages and challenges associated with augmented reality for education: a systematic review of the literature. Educ. Res. Rev. 20, 1–11. doi: 10.1016/j.edurev.2016.11.002

CrossRef Full Text | Google Scholar

Alexander, T., Westhoven, M., and Conradi, J. (2017). “Virtual environments for competency-oriented education and training,” in Advances in Human Factors, Business Management, Training and Education , (Berlin: Springer International Publishing), 23–29. doi: 10.1007/978-3-319-42070-7_3

Andersen, S. M., and Thorpe, J. S. (2009). An if–thEN theory of personality: significant others and the relational self. J. Res. Pers. 43, 163–170. doi: 10.1016/j.jrp.2008.12.040

Azevedo, R. T., Bennett, N., Bilicki, A., Hooper, J., Markopoulou, F., and Tsakiris, M. (2017). The calming effect of a new wearable device during the anticipation of public speech. Sci. Rep. 7:2285. doi: 10.1038/s41598-017-02274-2

PubMed Abstract | CrossRef Full Text | Google Scholar

Azuma, R., Baillot, Y., Behringer, R., Feiner, S., Julier, S., and MacIntyre, B. (2001). Recent advances in augmented reality. IEEE Comp. Graph. Appl. 21, 34–47. doi: 10.1109/38.963459

Bacca, J., Baldiris, S., Fabregat, R., and Graf, S. (2014). Augmented reality trends in education: a systematic review of research and applications. J. Educ. Technol. Soc. 17, 133.

Google Scholar

Bailenson, J. N., Yee, N., Merget, D., and Schroeder, R. (2006). The effect of behavioral realism and form realism of real-time avatar faces on verbal disclosure, nonverbal disclosure, emotion recognition, and copresence in dyadic interaction. Presence 15, 359–372. doi: 10.1162/pres.15.4.359

Baños, R. M., Botella, C., Garcia-Palacios, A., Villa, H., Perpiñá, C., and Alcaniz, M. (2000). Presence and reality judgment in virtual environments: a unitary construct? Cyberpsychol. Behav. 3, 327–335. doi: 10.1089/10949310050078760

Baños, R., Botella, C., García-Palacios, A., Villa, H., Perpiñá, C., and Gallardo, M. (2009). Psychological variables and reality judgment in virtual environments: the roles of absorption and dissociation. Cyberpsychol. Behav. 2, 143–148. doi: 10.1089/cpb.1999.2.143

Baus, O., and Bouchard, S. (2014). Moving from virtual reality exposure-based therapy to augmented reality exposure-based therapy: a review. Front. Hum. Neurosci. 8:112. doi: 10.3389/fnhum.2014.00112

Biocca, F. (1997). The cyborg’s dilemma: progressive embodiment in virtual environments. J. Comput. Mediat. Commun. 3. doi: 10.1111/j.1083-6101.1997

Biocca, F., Harms, C., and Gregg, J. (2001). “The networked minds measure of social presence: pilot test of the factor structure and concurrent validity,” in 4th Annual International Workshop on Presence , Philadelphia, PA, 1–9.

Blanke, O., Slater, M., and Serino, A. (2015). Behavioral, neural, and computational principles of bodily self-consciousness. Neuron 88, 145–166. doi: 10.1016/j.neuron.2015.09.029

Bohil, C. J., Alicea, B., and Biocca, F. A. (2011). Virtual reality in neuroscience research and therapy. Nat. Rev. Neurosci. 12:752. doi: 10.1038/nrn3122

Borrego, A., Latorre, J., Llorens, R., Alcañiz, M., and Noé, E. (2016). Feasibility of a walking virtual reality system for rehabilitation: objective and subjective parameters. J. Neuroeng. Rehabil. 13:68. doi: 10.1186/s12984-016-0174-171

Botella, C., Bretón-López, J., Quero, S., Baños, R. M., and García-Palacios, A. (2010). Treating cockroach phobia with augmented reality. Behav. Ther. 41, 401–413. doi: 10.1016/j.beth.2009.07.002

Botella, C., Fernández-Álvarez, J., Guillén, V., García-Palacios, A., and Baños, R. (2017). Recent progress in virtual reality exposure therapy for phobias: a systematic review. Curr. Psychiatry Rep. 19:42. doi: 10.1007/s11920-017-0788-4

Botella, C. M., Juan, M. C., Baños, R. M., Alcañiz, M., Guillén, V., and Rey, B. (2005). Mixing realities? An application of augmented reality for the treatment of cockroach phobia. Cyberpsychol. Behav. 8, 162–171. doi: 10.1089/cpb.2005.8.162

Brandes, U. (2001). A faster algorithm for betweenness centrality. J. Math. Sociol. 25, 163–177. doi: 10.1080/0022250X.2001.9990249

Bretón-López, J., Quero, S., Botella, C., García-Palacios, A., Baños, R. M., and Alcañiz, M. (2010). An augmented reality system validation for the treatment of cockroach phobia. Cyberpsychol. Behav. Soc. Netw. 13, 705–710. doi: 10.1089/cyber.2009.0170

Brown, A., and Green, T. (2016). Virtual reality: low-cost tools and resources for the classroom. TechTrends 60, 517–519. doi: 10.1007/s11528-016-0102-z

Bu, Y., Liu, T. Y., and Huang, W. B. (2016). MACA: a modified author co-citation analysis method combined with general descriptive metadata of citations. Scientometrics 108, 143–166. doi: 10.1007/s11192-016-1959-5

Burdea, G., Richard, P., and Coiffet, P. (1996). Multimodal virtual reality: input-output devices, system integration, and human factors. Int. J. Hum. Compu. Interact. 8, 5–24. doi: 10.1080/10447319609526138

Burdea, G. C., and Coiffet, P. (2003). Virtual Reality Technology , Vol. 1, Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons.

Carmigniani, J., Furht, B., Anisetti, M., Ceravolo, P., Damiani, E., and Ivkovic, M. (2011). Augmented reality technologies, systems and applications. Multimed. Tools Appl. 51, 341–377. doi: 10.1007/s11042-010-0660-6

Castelvecchi, D. (2016). Low-cost headsets boost virtual reality’s lab appeal. Nature 533, 153–154. doi: 10.1038/533153a

Cathy (2011). The History of Augmented Reality. The Optical Vision Site. Available at: http://www.theopticalvisionsite.com/history-of-eyewear/the-history-of-augmented-reality/#.UelAUmeAOyA

Chen, C. (2006). CiteSpace II: detecting and visualizing emerging trends and transient patterns in scientific literature. J. Assoc. Inform. Sci. Technol. 57, 359–377. doi: 10.1002/asi.20317

Chen, C., Ibekwe-SanJuan, F., and Hou, J. (2010). The structure and dynamics of cocitation clusters: a multipleperspective cocitation analysis. J. Assoc. Inform. Sci. Technol. 61, 1386–1409. doi: 10.1002/jez.b.22741

Chen, Y. C., Chi, H. L., Hung, W. H., and Kang, S. C. (2011). Use of tangible and augmented reality models in engineering graphics courses. J. Prof. Issues Eng. Educ. Pract. 137, 267–276. doi: 10.1061/(ASCE)EI.1943-5541.0000078

Chicchi Giglioli, I. A., Pallavicini, F., Pedroli, E., Serino, S., and Riva, G. (2015). Augmented reality: a brand new challenge for the assessment and treatment of psychological disorders. Comput. Math. Methods Med. 2015:862942. doi: 10.1155/2015/862942

Chien, C. H., Chen, C. H., and Jeng, T. S. (2010). “An interactive augmented reality system for learning anatomy structure,” in Proceedings of the International Multiconference of Engineers and Computer Scientists , Vol. 1, (Hong Kong: International Association of Engineers), 17–19.

Choi, S., Jung, K., and Noh, S. D. (2015). Virtual reality applications in manufacturing industries: past research, present findings, and future directions. Concurr. Eng. 23, 40–63. doi: 10.1177/1063293X14568814

Cipresso, P. (2015). Modeling behavior dynamics using computational psychometrics within virtual worlds. Front. Psychol. 6:1725. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2015.01725

Cipresso, P., and Serino, S. (2014). Virtual Reality: Technologies, Medical Applications and Challenges. Hauppauge, NY: Nova Science Publishers, Inc.

Cipresso, P., Serino, S., and Riva, G. (2016). Psychometric assessment and behavioral experiments using a free virtual reality platform and computational science. BMC Med. Inform. Decis. Mak. 16:37. doi: 10.1186/s12911-016-0276-5

Cruz-Neira, C. (1993). “Virtual reality overview,” in SIGGRAPH 93 Course Notes 21st International Conference on Computer Graphics and Interactive Techniques, Orange County Convention Center , Orlando, FL.

De Buck, S., Maes, F., Ector, J., Bogaert, J., Dymarkowski, S., Heidbuchel, H., et al. (2005). An augmented reality system for patient-specific guidance of cardiac catheter ablation procedures. IEEE Trans. Med. Imaging 24, 1512–1524. doi: 10.1109/TMI.2005.857661

Di Lernia, D., Cipresso, P., Pedroli, E., and Riva, G. (2018a). Toward an embodied medicine: a portable device with programmable interoceptive stimulation for heart rate variability enhancement. Sensors (Basel) 18:2469. doi: 10.3390/s18082469

Di Lernia, D., Serino, S., Pezzulo, G., Pedroli, E., Cipresso, P., and Riva, G. (2018b). Feel the time. Time perception as a function of interoceptive processing. Front. Hum. Neurosci. 12:74. doi: 10.3389/fnhum.2018.00074

Di Serio,Á., Ibáñez, M. B., and Kloos, C. D. (2013). Impact of an augmented reality system on students’ motivation for a visual art course. Comput. Educ. 68, 586–596. doi: 10.1016/j.compedu.2012.03.002

Ebert, C. (2015). Looking into the future. IEEE Softw. 32, 92–97. doi: 10.1109/MS.2015.142

Englund, C., Olofsson, A. D., and Price, L. (2017). Teaching with technology in higher education: understanding conceptual change and development in practice. High. Educ. Res. Dev. 36, 73–87. doi: 10.1080/07294360.2016.1171300

Falagas, M. E., Pitsouni, E. I., Malietzis, G. A., and Pappas, G. (2008). Comparison of pubmed, scopus, web of science, and Google scholar: strengths and weaknesses. FASEB J. 22, 338–342. doi: 10.1096/fj.07-9492LSF

Feiner, S., MacIntyre, B., Hollerer, T., and Webster, A. (1997). “A touring machine: prototyping 3D mobile augmented reality systems for exploring the urban environment,” in Digest of Papers. First International Symposium on Wearable Computers , (Cambridge, MA: IEEE), 74–81. doi: 10.1109/ISWC.1997.629922

Freeman, D., Reeve, S., Robinson, A., Ehlers, A., Clark, D., Spanlang, B., et al. (2017). Virtual reality in the assessment, understanding, and treatment of mental health disorders. Psychol. Med. 47, 2393–2400. doi: 10.1017/S003329171700040X

Freeman, L. C. (1977). A set of measures of centrality based on betweenness. Sociometry 40, 35–41. doi: 10.2307/3033543

Fuchs, H., and Bishop, G. (1992). Research Directions in Virtual Environments. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Gallagher, A. G., Ritter, E. M., Champion, H., Higgins, G., Fried, M. P., Moses, G., et al. (2005). Virtual reality simulation for the operating room: proficiency-based training as a paradigm shift in surgical skills training. Ann. Surg. 241:364. doi: 10.1097/01.sla.0000151982.85062.80

Gigante, M. A. (1993). Virtual reality: definitions, history and applications. Virtual Real. Syst. 3–14. doi: 10.1016/B978-0-12-227748-1.50009-3

González-Teruel, A., González-Alcaide, G., Barrios, M., and Abad-García, M. F. (2015). Mapping recent information behavior research: an analysis of co-authorship and co-citation networks. Scientometrics 103, 687–705. doi: 10.1007/s11192-015-1548-z

Heeter, C. (1992). Being there: the subjective experience of presence. Presence 1, 262–271. doi: 10.1162/pres.1992.1.2.262

Heeter, C. (2000). Interactivity in the context of designed experiences. J. Interact. Adv. 1, 3–14. doi: 10.1080/15252019.2000.10722040

Heilig, M. (1962). Sensorama simulator. U.S. Patent No - 3, 870. Virginia: United States Patent and Trade Office.

Ibáñez, M. B., Di Serio,Á., Villarán, D., and Kloos, C. D. (2014). Experimenting with electromagnetism using augmented reality: impact on flow student experience and educational effectiveness. Comput. Educ. 71, 1–13. doi: 10.1016/j.compedu.2013.09.004

Juan, M. C., Alcañiz, M., Calatrava, J., Zaragozá, I., Baños, R., and Botella, C. (2007). “An optical see-through augmented reality system for the treatment of phobia to small animals,” in Virtual Reality, HCII 2007 Lecture Notes in Computer Science , Vol. 4563, ed. R. Schumaker (Berlin: Springer), 651–659.

Juan, M. C., Alcaniz, M., Monserrat, C., Botella, C., Baños, R. M., and Guerrero, B. (2005). Using augmented reality to treat phobias. IEEE Comput. Graph. Appl. 25, 31–37. doi: 10.1109/MCG.2005.143

Kim, G. J. (2005). A SWOT analysis of the field of virtual reality rehabilitation and therapy. Presence 14, 119–146. doi: 10.1162/1054746053967094

Klavans, R., and Boyack, K. W. (2015). Which type of citation analysis generates the most accurate taxonomy of scientific and technical knowledge? J. Assoc. Inform. Sci. Technol. 68, 984–998. doi: 10.1002/asi.23734

Kleinberg, J. (2002). “Bursty and hierarchical structure in streams,” in Paper Presented at the Proceedings of the 8th ACM SIGKDD International Conference on Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining; 2002; Edmonton , Alberta, NT. doi: 10.1145/775047.775061

Kleinberg, J. (2003). Bursty and hierarchical structure in streams. Data Min. Knowl. Discov. 7, 373–397. doi: 10.1023/A:1024940629314

Korolov, M. (2014). The real risks of virtual reality. Risk Manag. 61, 20–24.

Krueger, M. W., Gionfriddo, T., and Hinrichsen, K. (1985). “Videoplace—an artificial reality,” in Proceedings of the ACM SIGCHI Bulletin , Vol. 16, New York, NY: ACM, 35–40. doi: 10.1145/317456.317463

Lin, C. H., and Hsu, P. H. (2017). “Integrating procedural modelling process and immersive VR environment for architectural design education,” in MATEC Web of Conferences , Vol. 104, Les Ulis: EDP Sciences. doi: 10.1051/matecconf/201710403007

Llorens, R., Noé, E., Ferri, J., and Alcañiz, M. (2014). Virtual reality-based telerehabilitation program for balance recovery. A pilot study in hemiparetic individuals with acquired brain injury. Brain Inj. 28:169.

Lombard, M., and Ditton, T. (1997). At the heart of it all: the concept of presence. J. Comput. Mediat. Commun. 3. doi: 10.1111/j.1083-6101.1997.tb00072.x

Loomis, J. M., Blascovich, J. J., and Beall, A. C. (1999). Immersive virtual environment technology as a basic research tool in psychology. Behav. Res. Methods Instr. Comput. 31, 557–564. doi: 10.3758/BF03200735

Loomis, J. M., Golledge, R. G., and Klatzky, R. L. (1998). Navigation system for the blind: auditory display modes and guidance. Presence 7, 193–203. doi: 10.1162/105474698565677

Luckerson, V. (2014). Facebook Buying Oculus Virtual-Reality Company for $2 Billion. Available at: http://time.com/37842/facebook-oculus-rift

Maurugeon, G. (2011). New D’Fusion Supports iPhone4S and 3xDSMax 2012. Available at: http://www.t-immersion.com/blog/2011-12-07/augmented-reality-dfusion-iphone-3dsmax

Mazuryk, T., and Gervautz, M. (1996). Virtual Reality-History, Applications, Technology and Future. Vienna: Institute of Computer Graphics Vienna University of Technology.

Meldrum, D., Glennon, A., Herdman, S., Murray, D., and McConn-Walsh, R. (2012). Virtual reality rehabilitation of balance: assessment of the usability of the nintendo Wii ® fit plus. Disabil. Rehabil. 7, 205–210. doi: 10.3109/17483107.2011.616922

Milgram, P., and Kishino, F. (1994). A taxonomy of mixed reality visual displays. IEICE Trans. Inform. Syst. 77, 1321–1329.

Minderer, M., Harvey, C. D., Donato, F., and Moser, E. I. (2016). Neuroscience: virtual reality explored. Nature 533, 324–325. doi: 10.1038/nature17899

Neri, S. G., Cardoso, J. R., Cruz, L., Lima, R. M., de Oliveira, R. J., Iversen, M. D., et al. (2017). Do virtual reality games improve mobility skills and balance measurements in community-dwelling older adults? Systematic review and meta-analysis. Clin. Rehabil. 31, 1292–1304. doi: 10.1177/0269215517694677

Nincarean, D., Alia, M. B., Halim, N. D. A., and Rahman, M. H. A. (2013). Mobile augmented reality: the potential for education. Procedia Soc. Behav. Sci. 103, 657–664. doi: 10.1016/j.sbspro.2013.10.385

Orosz, K., Farkas, I. J., and Pollner, P. (2016). Quantifying the changing role of past publications. Scientometrics 108, 829–853. doi: 10.1007/s11192-016-1971-9

Ozbek, C. S., Giesler, B., and Dillmann, R. (2004). “Jedi training: playful evaluation of head-mounted augmented reality display systems,” in Proceedings of SPIE. The International Society for Optical Engineering , Vol. 5291, eds R. A. Norwood, M. Eich, and M. G. Kuzyk (Denver, CO), 454–463.

Perry, S. (2008). Wikitude: Android App with Augmented Reality: Mind Blow-Ing. Digital Lifestyles.

Radu, I. (2012). “Why should my students use AR? A comparative review of the educational impacts of augmented-reality,” in Mixed and Augmented Reality (ISMAR), 2012 IEEE International Symposium on , (IEEE), 313–314. doi: 10.1109/ISMAR.2012.6402590

Radu, I. (2014). Augmented reality in education: a meta-review and cross-media analysis. Pers. Ubiquitous Comput. 18, 1533–1543. doi: 10.1007/s00779-013-0747-y

Riva, G. (2018). The neuroscience of body memory: From the self through the space to the others. Cortex 104, 241–260. doi: 10.1016/j.cortex.2017.07.013

Riva, G., Gaggioli, A., Grassi, A., Raspelli, S., Cipresso, P., Pallavicini, F., et al. (2011). NeuroVR 2-A free virtual reality platform for the assessment and treatment in behavioral health care. Stud. Health Technol. Inform. 163, 493–495.

PubMed Abstract | Google Scholar

Riva, G., Serino, S., Di Lernia, D., Pavone, E. F., and Dakanalis, A. (2017). Embodied medicine: mens sana in corpore virtuale sano. Front. Hum. Neurosci. 11:120. doi: 10.3389/fnhum.2017.00120

Riva, G., Wiederhold, B. K., and Mantovani, F. (2018). Neuroscience of virtual reality: from virtual exposure to embodied medicine. Cyberpsychol. Behav. Soc. Netw. doi: 10.1089/cyber.2017.29099.gri [Epub ahead of print].

Rosenberg, L. (1993). “The use of virtual fixtures to enhance telemanipulation with time delay,” in Proceedings of the ASME Winter Anual Meeting on Advances in Robotics, Mechatronics, and Haptic Interfaces , Vol. 49, (New Orleans, LA), 29–36.

Schmidt, M., Beck, D., Glaser, N., and Schmidt, C. (2017). “A prototype immersive, multi-user 3D virtual learning environment for individuals with autism to learn social and life skills: a virtuoso DBR update,” in International Conference on Immersive Learning , Cham: Springer, 185–188. doi: 10.1007/978-3-319-60633-0_15

Schwald, B., and De Laval, B. (2003). An augmented reality system for training and assistance to maintenance in the industrial context. J. WSCG 11.

Serino, S., Cipresso, P., Morganti, F., and Riva, G. (2014). The role of egocentric and allocentric abilities in Alzheimer’s disease: a systematic review. Ageing Res. Rev. 16, 32–44. doi: 10.1016/j.arr.2014.04.004

Skalski, P., and Tamborini, R. (2007). The role of social presence in interactive agent-based persuasion. Media Psychol. 10, 385–413. doi: 10.1080/15213260701533102

Slater, M. (2009). Place illusion and plausibility can lead to realistic behaviour in immersive virtual environments. Philos. Trans. R. Soc. Lond. B Biol. Sci. 364, 3549–3557. doi: 10.1098/rstb.2009.0138

Slater, M., and Sanchez-Vives, M. V. (2016). Enhancing our lives with immersive virtual reality. Front. Robot. AI 3:74. doi: 10.3389/frobt.2016.00074

Small, H. (1973). Co-citation in the scientific literature: a new measure of the relationship between two documents. J. Assoc. Inform. Sci. Technol. 24, 265–269. doi: 10.1002/asi.4630240406

Song, H., Chen, F., Peng, Q., Zhang, J., and Gu, P. (2017). Improvement of user experience using virtual reality in open-architecture product design. Proc. Inst. Mech. Eng. B J. Eng. Manufact. 232.

Sundar, S. S., Xu, Q., and Bellur, S. (2010). “Designing interactivity in media interfaces: a communications perspective,” in Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems , (Boston, MA: ACM), 2247–2256. doi: 10.1145/1753326.1753666

Sutherland, I. E. (1965). The Ultimate Display. Multimedia: From Wagner to Virtual Reality. New York, NY: Norton.

Sutherland, I. E. (1968). “A head-mounted three dimensional display,” in Proceedings of the December 9-11, 1968, Fall Joint Computer Conference, Part I , (ACM), 757–764. doi: 10.1145/1476589.1476686

Thomas, B., Close, B., Donoghue, J., Squires, J., De Bondi, P., Morris, M., et al. (2000). “ARQuake: an outdoor/indoor augmented reality first person application,” in Digest of Papers. Fourth International Symposium on Wearable Computers , (Atlanta, GA: IEEE), 139–146. doi: 10.1109/ISWC.2000.888480

Ware, C., Arthur, K., and Booth, K. S. (1993). “Fish tank virtual reality,” in Proceedings of the INTERACT’93 and CHI’93 Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems , (Amsterdam: ACM), 37–42. doi: 10.1145/169059.169066

Wexelblat, A. (ed.) (2014). Virtual Reality: Applications and Explorations. Cambridge, MA: Academic Press.

White, H. D., and Griffith, B. C. (1981). Author cocitation: a literature measure of intellectual structure. J. Assoc. Inform. Sci. Technol. 32, 163–171. doi: 10.1002/asi.4630320302

Wrzesien, M., Alcañiz, M., Botella, C., Burkhardt, J. M., Bretón-López, J., Ortega, M., et al. (2013). The therapeutic lamp: treating small-animal phobias. IEEE Comput. Graph. Appl. 33, 80–86. doi: 10.1109/MCG.2013.12

Wrzesien, M., Burkhardt, J. M., Alcañiz, M., and Botella, C. (2011a). How technology influences the therapeutic process: a comparative field evaluation of augmented reality and in vivo exposure therapy for phobia of small animals. Hum. Comput. Interact. 2011, 523–540.

Wrzesien, M., Burkhardt, J. M., Alcañiz Raya, M., and Botella, C. (2011b). “Mixing psychology and HCI in evaluation of augmented reality mental health technology,” in CHI’11 Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems , (Vancouver, BC: ACM), 2119–2124.

Zyda, M. (2005). From visual simulation to virtual reality to games. Computer 38, 25–32. doi: 10.1109/MC.2005.297

Keywords : virtual reality, augmented reality, quantitative psychology, measurement, psychometrics, scientometrics, computational psychometrics, mathematical psychology

Citation: Cipresso P, Giglioli IAC, Raya MA and Riva G (2018) The Past, Present, and Future of Virtual and Augmented Reality Research: A Network and Cluster Analysis of the Literature. Front. Psychol. 9:2086. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2018.02086

Received: 14 December 2017; Accepted: 10 October 2018; Published: 06 November 2018.

Reviewed by:

Copyright © 2018 Cipresso, Giglioli, Raya and Riva. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY) . The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

*Correspondence: Pietro Cipresso, [email protected]

Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.

Home Essay Examples Technology Computer Science

Essays on Virtual Reality

Virtual reality: my personal opinion, virtual reality: past, present and future application, virtual reality: main purposes of creating, pros and cons, importance of virtual reality in education: analytical essay, top similar topics.

Graphic Design
Net Neutrality
Computer Software
Network Security
Digital Era

We use cookies to give you the best experience possible. By continuing we’ll assume you board with our cookie policy .

Compititive exams CTET, State TET, KVS, DSSSB, CUCET

Essay on Virtual reality importance 1000, 500, 300 words

Essay on virtual reality.

Essay on virtual reality: Virtual reality (VR) technology has advanced significantly in recent years and is increasingly being used in a variety of fields, including gaming, education, health care, and military training. While virtual reality offers many advantages, it also has some disadvantages. In this article we will explore both the advantages and disadvantages of virtual reality.

what is virtual reality

Advantages of virtual reality:, disadvantages of virtual reality:, importance of virtual reality, the evolution of virtual reality, applications of virtual reality, the impact of virtual reality, short essay on virtual reality revolution 300 words.

Virtual reality (VR) refers to a technology that allows users to experience and interact with computer-generated environments in a way that feels immersive and real. VR typically involves the use of input devices such as a headset or goggles as well as hand-held controllers with a display screen or screens to create the illusion of being present in a virtual environment.

The technology works by tracking the user’s movements and adjusting the VR environment accordingly, allowing them to move and interact within the virtual space. VR can also incorporate other sensory inputs such as sound and touch to enhance the realism of the experience.

Virtual reality has a wide range of applications, including gaming, education and training, product design and prototyping, scientific research and medicine and rehabilitation. It is a rapidly evolving technology that is becoming increasingly accessible and affordable with an increasing number of devices and platforms available for consumers and businesses alike.

1. Enhanced learning experience

VR can provide a highly immersive and interactive learning experience, which can help learners retain information better. For example, students can explore historical sites, scientific events and cultural events in simulated environments. It makes learning more engaging and enjoyable thereby increasing the motivation to learn.

2. Realistic training

Virtual reality can be used to simulate dangerous situations or complex procedures, such as surgical operations, military combat or emergency response. This allows trainees to gain practical experience in a safe and controlled environment without risking their lives or the lives of others. It can also help reduce the cost of training and the need for physical resources.

3. Enhanced Engagement

VR can provide an immersive and immersive experience that can increase engagement and motivation. This can be particularly beneficial in areas such as advertising, where VR can be used to create interactive and memorable experiences that can leave a lasting impression on customers.

4. Improved accessibility

Virtual reality can provide access to places and experiences that might otherwise be impossible, such as exploring a distant planet or experiencing life from the perspective of a person with a physical disability. This can help increase empathy and understanding and promote inclusivity.

5. Entertainment

Virtual reality can provide an exciting and entertaining experience for users, whether through gaming, movies or other forms of media. It can help provide a form of escapism or relaxation and can be a welcome distraction from the stresses of everyday life.

6. Advanced Product Development

Virtual reality can be used to design and test products in simulated environments before they are physically manufactured. It can help reduce the cost of prototyping, increase design accuracy and improve product quality.

7. Remote Collaboration

VR can enable remote collaboration and communication, especially in fields such as architecture, engineering and design. This can help reduce travel costs, increase productivity and improve teamwork.

8. Therapy and rehabilitation

Virtual reality can be used to provide therapy and rehabilitation for individuals with physical or mental health conditions. For example, virtual reality can assist individuals with anxiety or phobias to face their fears in a safe and controlled environment.

9. Environmental Protection

Virtual reality can be used to promote environmental protection by providing immersive and educational experiences that raise awareness of environmental issues. For example, virtual reality can be used to simulate the effects of climate change or to show the beauty of endangered habitats.

10. Improved access to cultural heritage

VR can be used to provide access to cultural heritage sites that may be difficult or impossible to visit in person, such as ancient ruins, historical sites or museums. This can help in preserving cultural heritage and promoting tourism.

1. Health Risks

VR can cause motion sickness, headache, eye strain and other health issues. This is especially true when the VR experience is poorly designed or when users spend too much time in VR. This may limit the adoption of VR technology and make it difficult to use for extended periods.

2. High cost

VR technology can be expensive to produce, maintain and purchase, which may make it difficult for some businesses or individuals to afford. This may limit the availability and accessibility of VR technology, especially in developing countries.

3. Addiction

Virtual reality can be addictive, especially in gaming, where users can spend hours immersed in the virtual world. This can lead to social isolation, reduced physical activity and other negative consequences.

4. Privacy concerns

VR can collect sensitive data about users, such as their movements, behavior and preferences, which can be used for commercial or surveillance purposes. This raises concerns about privacy and data protection, especially as VR technology becomes more widespread.

5. Limited physical contact

VR can provide a highly immersive and interactive experience but it can also limit physical interaction and socialization. This can be especially problematic for children, who need real-world interactions to develop social skills and emotional intelligence.

6. Social isolation

VR can lead to social isolation, especially if users spend too much time in virtual environments at the expense of real-world interactions. This can be especially problematic for individuals who already struggle with poor social skills or social anxiety.

7. Ethical concerns

VR can raise ethical concerns, particularly in areas such as military training, where the use of VR technology to simulate combat raises questions about soldiers’ desensitization to violence.

8. Cyber security risks

VR can pose cyber security risks, especially if VR systems are connected to the Internet. This can make them vulnerable to hacking or data breaches, which can compromise sensitive information.

9. Technical Limitations

VR technology is still developing and there are technical limitations that can affect the quality and performance of VR experiences. For example, a VR system may have a limited field of view, low resolution, or slow refresh rate, which can affect immersion and user experience.

10. Health and safety risks

VR can pose health and safety risks if the VR experience is poorly designed or if users are not properly trained to use the technology. For example, VR systems can cause users to bump, fall or collide with objects in the real world if they are not aware of their surroundings.

conclusion: Virtual reality technology offers many benefits, such as enhanced learning experiences, realistic training, increased engagement, improved accessibility and entertainment. However, it comes with several disadvantages, such as health risks, high cost, addiction, privacy concerns and limited physical contact. While the benefits of virtual reality are undeniable, it is important to carefully consider the risks and limitations of the technology and use it responsibly and ethically.

Virtual reality has become increasingly important in today’s world due to its wide range of applications and potential benefits. Some of the key reasons why virtual reality is important include:

1.Enhanced learning and training: Virtual reality can provide immersive and interactive learning experiences that can enhance understanding and retention of complex concepts. It can also be used to simulate real-world scenarios for training purposes such as medical procedures or hazardous work environments.

2. Improved product design and prototyping: Virtual reality can be used to create and test product designs in simulated environments, which can reduce the cost and time required for prototyping and help identify potential issues in the design process does.

3. Enhanced accessibility: Virtual reality can provide access to experiences and environments that may be difficult or impossible to access in real life, such as travel to remote or dangerous locations, or virtual tours of cultural and historical sites.

4. Enhanced entertainment experience: Virtual reality can provide highly immersive and engaging entertainment experiences such as video games, movies and live events, which can transport users to new worlds and perspectives.

5. Therapeutic Benefits: By providing safe and controlled exposure to triggering stimuli, virtual reality can be used in therapy and rehabilitation to treat a wide range of conditions, such as PTSD, anxiety, phobias and physical injuries.

Overall, virtual reality has the potential to transform various industries and sectors, from healthcare and education to entertainment and tourism, by providing new ways to experience and interact with the world around us.

Essay on virtual reality 500 words:

The Immersive World of Virtual Reality

Introduction

Virtual Reality (VR) is a groundbreaking technology that has transformed the way we experience and interact with digital content. By creating simulated environments that engage our senses, VR has transcended the boundaries of traditional media and opened up new horizons for entertainment, education, healthcare, and various industries. In this essay, we will explore the evolution of virtual reality, its applications, and the impact it has on our lives.

The concept of virtual reality has been around for decades, with roots dating back to the 1960s. Early attempts at VR were rudimentary and limited by the technology of the time. It wasn’t until the late 20th century that VR began to take shape as a viable technology. Pioneers like Jaron Lanier and the development of the first head-mounted displays (HMDs) laid the foundation for modern VR.

Today’s VR experiences are made possible by high-resolution displays, precise motion tracking, and sophisticated software. HMDs like the Oculus Rift, HTC Vive, and PlayStation VR offer users an immersive experience by transporting them to digital worlds that can be as realistic or fantastical as developers imagine.

Entertainment: VR has revolutionized the entertainment industry. Video games, in particular, have benefited greatly from this technology. Players can now step into the shoes of their in-game avatars, exploring lifelike environments and experiencing gameplay in a way that was previously unimaginable. Beyond gaming, VR has expanded into the realm of cinematic experiences, allowing users to become a part of the story.
Education: VR has the potential to redefine education. It provides a dynamic and interactive learning environment, enabling students to explore historical events, visit far-off places, or even journey through the human body. This immersive approach to education can greatly enhance comprehension and engagement.
Healthcare: Virtual reality has found applications in healthcare, from pain management and physical therapy to surgical training and exposure therapy for treating phobias and PTSD. VR can create controlled, safe environments for patients and healthcare professionals to practice and improve their skills.
Architecture and Design: Architects and designers can use VR to create and walk through virtual models of buildings and spaces before they are constructed. This allows for more efficient planning and collaboration, ultimately leading to better-designed structures.
Training and Simulation: The military, aviation, and various industries use VR for training simulations. This technology provides a risk-free environment for trainees to practice complex tasks and scenarios.
Enhanced Experiences: VR has redefined the way we consume entertainment and interact with digital content. It offers a level of immersion that traditional media cannot match, making experiences more engaging and memorable.
Accessibility: While high-end VR systems can be expensive, the technology is becoming more accessible. Mobile VR solutions and standalone headsets are making VR experiences available to a broader audience.
Social Interaction: VR has the potential to bridge geographical gaps by enabling users to meet and interact in virtual spaces. Social VR platforms allow people to connect and engage in ways that feel remarkably real, even when they are miles apart.
Education and Training: VR is improving the quality of education and training programs by providing hands-on, practical experiences in a controlled environment. This can lead to better-prepared professionals across various fields.
Therapeutic Benefits: VR has shown promise in treating mental health issues, such as anxiety disorders and PTSD. Exposure therapy in virtual environments allows patients to confront their fears in a safe and controlled manner.

Virtual reality has come a long way since its inception, and its potential continues to grow. From entertainment to education, healthcare to industry, VR is reshaping how we interact with and perceive the digital world. As technology advances and becomes more accessible, we can expect VR to play an even more significant role in our lives, offering us new and exciting experiences that were once only dreams in the realm of science fiction.

Virtual reality (VR) is a technology that allows users to experience simulated environments through the use of specialized headsets and other equipment. It has the ability to transport users to alternate realities, immersing them in computer-generated environments that can be tailored to their specific needs.

One of the most important benefits of VR is its potential to revolutionize various industries such as gaming, education, and healthcare. In the gaming industry, VR can provide players with a more immersive gaming experience by placing them inside the game world, allowing them to interact with it in a more natural way. In education, VR can be used to simulate real-world scenarios, providing students with hands-on experiences in a safe and controlled environment. Additionally, in healthcare, VR can be used to train medical professionals and provide therapy to patients suffering from mental health conditions such as anxiety and depression.

However, like any technology, VR also has its downsides. One of the main concerns with VR is the potential for addiction, as users can become so immersed in the virtual world that they lose touch with reality. Additionally, the high cost of VR equipment may make it inaccessible to many, limiting its potential impact.

In conclusion, virtual reality is a technology that has immense potential to revolutionize various industries and provide new and innovative experiences to users. While it comes with its downsides, with proper use and development, VR has the potential to change the way we interact with technology and the world around us.

Discover related topics :-

i. Piaget’s theory of cognitive development important MCQs

ii. Digital education in India free PDF

iii. 10 important features and Preamble of Indian Constitution

iv. Remarkable Functions of state government

v. Indus Valley Civilization- Remarkable History, discoveries and sites

Social sharing ⬇️

Essay on jallianwala bagh massacre 13 april 1919, essay on vaisakhi festival celebration, essay on rabindranath tagore free pdf, essay on world earth day | essay on save earth, essay on internet free pdf | paragraph on internet, importance of literacy essay 1800 words free pdf, leave a comment cancel reply.

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment.

IMAGES

Importance of virtual reality
advantages of virtual reality in education
Rusnak's "The Thirteenth Floor" and The Concept of Virtual Reality
The Future of Virtual Reality Essay Example
Chapter1
PPT

VIDEO

Understanding Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality
Advantages of virtual reality
VR 101: The Basics of Virtual Reality
What is Virtual Reality's impact on education?
Virtual Reality Is Changing How We Educate
What is VR? An Introduction to Virtual Reality

COMMENTS

Why Virtual Reality is Important
It made work and socialization possible from afar. Not only did this help people adhere to social distancing guidelines, stopping the spread of the virus, but it also helped boost mental health for people who were feeling lonely and isolated during this time. In the future, virtual reality can continue offering these solutions to people in need ...
How Virtual Reality Technology Has Changed Our Lives: An Overview of
Virtual reality (VR) refers to a computer-generated, three-dimensional virtual environment that users can interact with, typically accessed via a computer that is capable of projecting 3D information via a display, which can be isolated screens or a wearable display, e.g., a head-mounted display (HMD), along with user identification sensors .
Virtual reality (VR)
virtual reality (VR), the use of computer modeling and simulation that enables a person to interact with an artificial three-dimensional (3-D) visual or other sensory environment.VR applications immerse the user in a computer-generated environment that simulates reality through the use of interactive devices, which send and receive information and are worn as goggles, headsets, gloves, or body ...
The Importance of Virtual Reality for Modern Society
The Importance of Virtual Reality for Modern Society. This essay sample was donated by a student to help the academic community. Papers provided by EduBirdie writers usually outdo students' samples. In 1968, Ivan Sutherland, an American computer scientist, with his student Bob Sproull made the first ever virtual reality head-mounted display.
Virtual Reality Essays
Writing Tips for an Essay on Virtual Reality. When writing an essay on virtual reality, it's important to consider the following tips: Research extensively: Start by conducting thorough research on virtual reality, including its history, current applications, and future potential. This will provide you with a solid foundation for your essay.
The Past, Present, and Future of Virtual and Augmented Reality Research
Virtual Reality Concepts and Features. The concept of VR could be traced at the mid of 1960 when Ivan Sutherland in a pivotal manuscript attempted to describe VR as a window through which a user perceives the virtual world as if looked, felt, sounded real and in which the user could act realistically (Sutherland, 1965).Since that time and in accordance with the application area, several ...
109 Virtual Reality Essay Topics & Samples
109 Virtual Reality Topics & Essay Examples. Updated: Mar 2nd, 2024. 8 min. When writing a virtual reality essay, it is hard to find just one area to focus on. Our experts have outlined 104 titles for you to choose from. We will write.
What is virtual reality?
First, a plausible, and richly detailed virtual world to explore; a computer model or simulation, in other words. Second, a powerful computer that can detect what we're going and adjust our experience accordingly, in real time (so what we see or hear changes as fast as we move—just like in real reality).
Virtual Reality's Main Benefits
Virtual reality is a fast-developing technology that carries a multitude of benefits for such professional fields as healthcare, education, military, versatile training, psychology, psychiatry, and entertainment; however, the technology is currently at the stage of development and has a set of weaknesses that prevent it from being widely applied.
Virtual Reality Technology
Virtual reality impacts societies positively by ensuring that mistakes and errors made in certain professions are avoided. For example, it is used in the medical field to offer training. The training involves use of simulated surgery by doctors to train new doctors and medical students who do not have experience in the medical field.
Importance of virtual reality
Also read: Importance of artificial intelligence. Immersive entertainment: Let us not forget how entertaining virtual reality can be. Imagine watching a magic show on your VR headset. Or maybe a trip to Disneyland, but only virtually, or playing a video game. Virtual reality will make each of these experiences a lot more real and a lot more fun.
Importance of Virtual Reality in Education: Analytical Essay
Virtual reality as an implementation of this concept has been recognized as an advance technology allowing learners to use it to interact with both virtual and real worlds at the same time bringing in potential enhancements to the learning process. Virtual reality can be used in classrooms to improve the quality of learning and commitment.
Virtual, mixed, and augmented reality: a systematic review for
2.1 Immersion "Immersion" and "presence" are important concepts for research in immersive systems. Nilsson et al. note that "the term immersion continues to be applied inconsistently within and across different fields of research connected with the study of virtual reality and interactive media."This observation is confirmed by our review of the literature.
Essay on Virtual Reality
250 Words Essay on Virtual Reality Introduction to Virtual Reality. Virtual Reality (VR) is a simulated experience that can be similar or completely different from the real world. It is a technology that creates an immersive, three-dimensional environment, providing a sense of presence and the ability to interact with the environment.
Virtual Reality Essay
The definition of Virtual Reality is "An artificial environment which is experienced through sensory stimuli (such as sights and sounds) provided by a computer and in which one's actions partially determine what happens in the environment" (www.Merriam-Webster.com). Virtual reality is probably one of the newest and most advanced way to ...
(PDF) A Systematic Literature Review on Extended Reality: Virtual
Keywords: Extended reality (XR) - virtual reality (VR) - augmented reality (AR) - collaboration - systematic literature review - working life Abstract
Analyzing augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) recent
Augmented & Virtual Reality applications: Survey: An interdisciplinary review of integration of VR & AR in different area and directions. Huang et al. (2019) AR & VR in Education: Exploratory Study: Virtual reality is more inclusive of spatial presence while augmented reality is more effective in dealing with auditory information: Guo et al. (2021)
The Past, Present, and Future of Virtual and Augmented Reality Research
Introduction. In the last 5 years, virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) have attracted the interest of investors and the general public, especially after Mark Zuckerberg bought Oculus for two billion dollars (Luckerson, 2014; Castelvecchi, 2016).Currently, many other companies, such as Sony, Samsung, HTC, and Google are making huge investments in VR and AR (Korolov, 2014; Ebert ...
Definition Essay on Virtual Reality
AR generally consists of applications and software used in mobile devices to add virtualized elements to the real world. Examples of RA include pop-up emails and text messages, virtual makeup mirrors, and garment color change applications. RA can be used to enhance reality, for example, the construction of physical objects through 3-D printers ...
Virtual Reality Essay Examples
Importance of Virtual Reality in Education: Analytical Essay Education is the most important thing in our current society and the knowledge we gain from it has been a top priority for the development of the whole world since the ancient times.
Creation of Virtual Reality for Education Purposes
Virtual reality systems have been developed primarily for the entertainment sector. However, they are being increasingly considered as high potential tools for use in industry and education. In this context, schools are now facing a challenge to introduce virtual-reality-supported teaching into their processes. With this in mind, the authors, in their paper, focus on the possibility for using ...
Full article: The effect of audio on the experience in virtual reality
The paper discusses the influence of audio on user or player experience in the context of HMD-based virtual reality. Checking whether papers are in scope thus involved three criteria: VR: the study made use of or discussed the use of HMDs or, for purely audio-based solutions, head-tracking systems.
Essay on Virtual reality importance 1000, 500, 300 words
Improved accessibility. Virtual reality can provide access to places and experiences that might otherwise be impossible, such as exploring a distant planet or experiencing life from the perspective of a person with a physical disability. This can help increase empathy and understanding and promote inclusivity. 5.

Virtual Reality Can Help Combat Climate Change

Virtual Reality Can Help Us Learn

Essays on Virtual Reality

Writing Tips for an Essay on Virtual Reality

Best Virtual Reality Essay Topics

Virtual Reality Essay Topics Prompts

The Transformative Potential of Virtual Reality: Applications and Implications

Virtual Reality

The Concept of Virtual Reality

Virtual Reality: Features, Requirements, Applications, Advantages and Disadvantages

Relevant topics

The Past, Present, and Future of Virtual and Augmented Reality Research: A Network and Cluster Analysis of the Literature

Irene Alice Chicchi Giglioli

Mariano Alcañiz Raya

Introduction

Virtual Reality Concepts and Features

From Virtual to Augmented Reality

Virtual Reality Technologies

Virtual Reality Applications

Augmented Reality Concept

Augmented Reality Technologies

Augmented Reality Applications

Materials and Methods

Who’s Who in VR Research

Citation Network and Cluster Analyses for VR

Citation Network and Cluster Analyses for AR

Author Contributions

Conflict of Interest Statement

Supplementary Material

Virtual reality

If you liked this article...

News and popular science

Scholarly articles

For older readers

For younger readers

Current research

Rate this page

Virtual Reality Technology Essay

Works Cited

Importance of virtual reality

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Virtual, mixed, and augmented reality: a systematic review for immersive systems research

Cite this article

Access this article

Similar content being viewed by others

The Cognitive Affective Model of Immersive Learning (CAMIL): a Theoretical Research-Based Model of Learning in Immersive Virtual Reality

Augmented Reality: A Comprehensive Review

Inclusive AR/VR: accessibility barriers for immersive technologies

Code availability

Author information

Contributions

Corresponding author

Ethics declarations

Additional information

Appendix: Keywords used in Scopus literature search

Rights and permissions

About this article

Share this article

Essay on Virtual Reality

100 Words Essay on Virtual Reality

VR in Entertainment

VR in Education

VR in Training

250 Words Essay on Virtual Reality

The Science Behind VR

Applications of VR

The Future of VR

500 Words Essay on Virtual Reality

The Mechanics of Virtual Reality

Applications of Virtual Reality

The Impact of Virtual Reality on Society

The Future of Virtual Reality

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Introduction

Virtual Reality Concepts and Features

From Virtual to Augmented Reality

Virtual Reality Technologies

Virtual Reality Applications

Augmented Reality Concept