Virtual reality in fiction describes fictional representations of the technological concept of virtual reality.
Many science fiction books and films have imagined characters being "trapped in virtual reality" or entering into virtual reality. Laurence Manning's 1933 series of short stories, "The Man Who Awoke"—later a novel—describes a time when people ask to be connected to a machine that replaces all their senses with electrical impulses and, thus, live a virtual life chosen by them (à laThe Matrix, but voluntary, not imposed). A comprehensive and specific fictional model for virtual reality was published in 1935 in the short story "Pygmalion's Spectacles" [1] by Stanley G. Weinbaum. Other science fiction books have promoted the idea of virtual reality as a partial, but not total, substitution for the misery of reality, or have touted it as a method for creating virtual worlds in which one may escape from Earth. Stanisław Lem's 1961 story "I (Profesor Corcoran)", translated in English as "Further Reminiscences of Ijon Tichy I", [2] dealt with a scientist who created a number of computer-simulated people living in a virtual world. Lem further explored the implications of what he termed "phantomatics" in his nonfictional 1964 treatise Summa Technologiae .
A number of other popular fictional works use the concept of virtual reality. These include William Gibson's 1984 Neuromancer , which defined the concept of cyberspace, and his 1994 Virtual Light , where a presentation viewable in VR-like goggles was the MacGuffin. Other examples are Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash , in which he made extensive reference to the term avatar to describe one's representation in a virtual world, and Rudy Rucker's The Hacker and the Ants , in which a programmer uses VR for robot design and testing. The Otherland series of 4 novels by Tad Williams, published from 1996 to 2001 and set in the 2070s, shows a world where the Internet has become accessible via virtual reality. Virtual reality stories based upon video games have also become popular in recent years, such as the 2011 novel Ready Player One by Ernest Cline, which is about a virtual reality system called the OASIS that people use to escape from the grim reality of a dying Earth in 2045. Other recent examples include Conor Kostick's 2004 children's novel Epic [3] and Louis Bulaong's 2020 sci-fi book Escapist Dream . [4]
The concept of virtual reality was popularized in mass media by movies such as Tron (1982), Brainstorm (1983), and The Lawnmower Man (1993). The .hack multimedia franchise is based on a virtual reality MMORPG dubbed "The World". The French animated series Code Lyoko is based on the virtual world of Lyoko and the Internet.
A massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) is a video game that combines aspects of a role-playing video game and a massively multiplayer online game.
Virtual reality (VR) is a simulated experience that employs 3D near-eye displays and pose tracking to give the user an immersive feel of a virtual world. Applications of virtual reality include entertainment, education and business. VR is one of the key technologies in the reality-virtuality continuum. As such, it is different from other digital visualization solutions, such as augmented virtuality and augmented reality.
Snow Crash is a science fiction novel by the American writer Neal Stephenson, published in 1992. Like many of Stephenson's novels, its themes include history, linguistics, anthropology, archaeology, religion, computer science, politics, cryptography, memetics, and philosophy.
A parallel universe, also known as an alternate universe, parallel world, parallel dimension, alternate reality, or alternative dimension, is a hypothetical universe co-existing with one's own, typically distinct in some way. The sum of all potential parallel universes that constitute reality is often called the "multiverse." Another common term for a parallel universe is "another dimension", stemming from the idea that if the 4th dimension is time, the 5th dimension—a direction at a right angle to the fourth—is a direction into any of the alternate spacetime realities.
The Holodeck is a fictional device from the television franchise Star Trek which uses "holograms" to create a realistic 3D simulation of a real or imaginary setting, in which participants can freely interact with the environment as well as objects and characters, and sometimes a predefined narrative.
Permutation City is a 1994 science-fiction novel by Greg Egan that explores many concepts, including quantum ontology, through various philosophical aspects of artificial life and simulated reality. Sections of the story were adapted from Egan's 1992 short story "Dust", which dealt with many of the same philosophical themes. Permutation City won the John W. Campbell Award for the best science-fiction novel of the year in 1995 and was nominated for the Philip K. Dick Award the same year. The novel was also cited in a 2003 Scientific American article on multiverses by Max Tegmark.
A virtual world is a computer-simulated environment which may be populated by many simultaneous users who can create a personal avatar and independently explore the virtual world, participate in its activities, and communicate with others. These avatars can be textual, graphical representations, or live video avatars with auditory and touch sensations. Virtual worlds are closely related to mirror worlds.
In computing, an avatar is a graphical representation of a user, the user's character, or persona. Avatars can be two-dimensional icons in Internet forums and other online communities, where they are also known as profile pictures, userpics, or formerly picons. Alternatively, an avatar can take the form of a three-dimensional model, as used in online worlds and video games, or an imaginary character with no graphical appearance, as in text-based games or worlds such as MUDs.
Avatar is a concept in Hinduism representing a material manifestation of a deity.
VR.5 is an American science-fiction television series first broadcast on the Fox network from March 10 to May 12, 1995. Ten of its thirteen episodes were aired during its original run. The title of the show refers to the degree of immersion the protagonist experiences in virtual reality.
The Thirteenth Floor is a 1999 science fiction film written and directed by Josef Rusnak and produced by Roland Emmerich’s Centropolis Entertainment. Loosely based on Daniel F. Galouye’s 1964 novel, Simulacron-3, it is a remake of Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s 1973 miniseries World on a Wire. The film stars Craig Bierko, Gretchen Mol, Armin Mueller-Stahl, Vincent D'Onofrio, and Dennis Haysbert. In 2000, The Thirteenth Floor was nominated for the Saturn Award for Best Science Fiction Film but lost to The Matrix.
The metaverse is a loosely defined term referring to virtual worlds in which users represented by avatars interact, usually in 3D and focused on social and economic connection.
Virtual crime, can be described as a criminal act conducted in a virtual world -- usually massively multiplayer online role-playing games, MMORPGs. To grasp the definition of virtual crime, the modern interpretation of the term "virtual" must be assessed to portray the implications of virtual crime. In this sense, virtual crime describes those online acts that “evoke the effects of real crime” but are not widely considered to be prosecutable acts.
A virtual artifact (VA) is an immaterial object that exists in the human mind or in a digital environment, for example the Internet, intranet, virtual reality, cyberspace, etc.
In virtual reality (VR), immersion is the perception of being physically present in a non-physical world. The perception is created by surrounding the user of the VR system in images, sound or other stimuli that provide an engrossing total environment.
Digital immortality is the hypothetical yet increasingly realistic concept of storing a person's personality in digital substrate, i.e., a computer, robot or cyberspace. The result might look like an avatar behaving, reacting, and thinking like a person on the basis of that person's digital archive. After the death of the individual, this avatar could remain static or continue to learn and self-improve autonomously.
Ready Player One is a 2011 science fiction novel, and the debut novel of American author Ernest Cline. The story, set in a dystopia in 2045, follows protagonist Wade Watts on his search for an Easter egg in a worldwide virtual reality game, the discovery of which would lead him to inherit the game creator's fortune and the game itself. Cline sold the rights to publish the novel in June 2010, in a bidding war to the Crown Publishing Group. The book was published on August 16, 2011. An audiobook narrated by Wil Wheaton was released the same day.Ch. 20 In 2012, the book received an Alex Award from the Young Adult Library Services Association division of the American Library Association and won the 2011 Prometheus Award.
There are many applications of virtual reality. Applications have been developed in a variety of domains, such as education, architectural and urban design, digital marketing and activism, engineering and robotics, entertainment, virtual communities, fine arts, healthcare and clinical therapies, heritage and archaeology, occupational safety, social science and psychology.
NeosVR is a free-to-play, massively multiplayer online, virtual reality application created by Solirax. It was released for free on Microsoft Windows via Steam on May 4, 2018, with support for several VR headsets.
One last job could give him his life back but only if he can accomplish the impossible—inception.
