First-Person Desktop Virtual Environments: Types, Technologies, Issues, and Potentials

Desktop virtual reality technology has improved dramatically with new developments in personal computer hardware, digital cameras, and photo-real virtual reality (VR) production software. Screen-based virtual environments (VEs) now can provide realistic and immersive learning experiences with costs and skill requirements that are economical for most educational institutions, business and Industry, and other commercial workforce entities. This session will define first-person desktop virtual reality environments in which users experience a location through their own eyes as if “walking through” in physical reality, and differentiate such environments from second-person worlds in which users interact through the on-screen persona known as avatars.