The Virtual Reality Primer (McGraw Hill Series on Visual Technology) - Hardcover

Larijani, L. Casey; Stroyman, Herschel

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0070364176 ISBN 13: 9780070364172

Publisher: McGraw-Hill, 1993

Synopsis

Beyond the media fascination with virtual reality lies a fast-developing technology which has extraordinary - and quite real - commercial applications. And not just in the entertainment industry: VR applications hold tremendous promise in the manufacturing, engineering, medical, educational, architectural, and military fields, among many others.
Now you can discover exactly how virtual reality works, where it's going, and what impact it will have on your industry in the years ahead. This no-nonsense, jargon-free reference gives you the complete picture of how VR is being used today ... and its potential for tomorrow.
Packed with invaluable - and easy-to-understand - information, The Virtual Reality Primer reveals what you need to create a virtual world ... from hardware and software, to networking capabilities, to audio/video requirements - and how the various components work together; current and future prospects in a host of industries; objective reviews of representative VR products; the latest advances in R&D, players in the field, and who's investing in it; and glossary definitions of more than 200 terms.
As compelling and fascinating as the concept itself, the book is must reading for anyone with an interest in this high-potential technology.

About this title

From Booklist

Larijani gives an up-to-the-minute survey of this emerging technology and is, while accessible, agreeably more technical than her predecessors. Her chapter "Displaying Virtually Real Images," for instance, quite clearly lays out the differences between the haptic environment, in which objects are pushed or pulled to simulate feelings of speed or gravity, and "real-space imaging," in which virtual objects have reference to real objects and will appear or disappear according to precise conditions of place and context. Her chapters "Things You Need to Create a Virtual World" and "Behind the Scenes: Software, Databases, etc." are similarly technical, and, if read in tandem with some of the titles in her excellent bibliography, would provide a workable introduction for the enthusiast eager to begin programming virtual worlds. Larijani follows with a survey of what has happened and may happen in medicine, entertainment, architecture, the military, and the office; she concludes with a warning that this U.S. technology is rapidly being taken over by the French, Germans, British, and Japanese. The best book on this subject since Howard Rheingold's ground-breaking Virtual Reality (1991). John Mort

Edition details

• Publisher: McGraw-Hill
• Publication date: 1993
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0070364176
• ISBN 13: 9780070364172
• Binding: Hardcover
• Illustrator: Marynowski Anthony
• Number of pages: 274