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Course: MIT+K12 > Unit 2
Lesson 2: Engineering and electronicsMIT explains: How does virtual reality work?
How can a tiny cardboard box make you feel like you're miles away at a sandy beach? And why aren't we all living in a virtual world right now, if it all seems so great? Valentina Shin, a Ph.D. student in the Computer Graphics Group at MIT's Computer Science & Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, explains! Note: This is a 360 video that works best on Google Chrome or in Google Cardboard.
Want to join the conversation?
- Thats amazing. so can i get google cardboard, download a vr app and see vr?(8 votes)
- Yes, that is the cheapest way. You need your smartphone, of course.(4 votes)
- I can't figure out how to move my point of view using my computer. Could someone please help?(4 votes)
- use the on screen arrows, your arrow keys or drag your mouse.(2 votes)
- How did you make the screen move when you swipe at the screen?(3 votes)
- Although Virtual Reality is fascinating, there is really no other improvements available, because to implement true virtual reality, feel, smell, and movement must be added, but they cost too much, right? (btw, sorry for the unnecessarily long sentence)(2 votes)
- it was the largest moving object(1 vote)
- I think this was the best khan academy video I have ever watched or seen but maybe not better then robot videos.(1 vote)
- Hey, wanna a free ticket go to my winter wonder ball go to: www.Omegle.com(1 vote)
- Awsome
how do i get a high tech virtual reality thin for a cheap price(1 vote)- at the moment you can not get vr for a cheap price but then what do you call cheap(1 vote)
- if its that simple to make that then people are wasting a lot of money.(0 votes)
- Why can't I watch this video? It says something like "this video is not available in your country" even though I watched it before.Can someone help me, please?(0 votes)
Video transcript
[MUSIC PLAYING] VALENTINE: As much
as I wish I could say that I'm enjoying a
nice vacation at the beach. I'm not. I'm here in Boston at MIT. So how did this
little cardboard box make me feel like I'm miles
away from where I actually am? How did it create
virtual reality? Now, if you open this little
box up, it's pretty simple. There's a place to put your
phone in, and the rest of it look like glasses with
these two plastic lenses. Now it's this piece
over here that's crucial to making me feel like
I'm inside a video on my phone. It's what creates 3D vision. 3D vision is actually
pretty simple. We have two eyes that's
about three inches apart, and because of this
separation, each of our eyes the world from a slightly
different perspective. Our brain fuses those two views
and creates a sense of depth. Hold out your thumb in front
of you and close your left eye. Now try closing your right eye. Do you notice how your
thumb jumps a little bit to the left or right when
you switch between your eyes? Now bring your thumb a
little bit closer to you and do the same thing. It seems to jump
even more, right? Depending on how close or
far you hold out your thumb, it'll jump more or less. Our brain gets a sense of how
far an object is depending on how different it appears from
the left versus the right eye, and that's 3D vision. Instead of one picture
covering the whole screen, this video has two
different images made for each eye that are
ever so slightly offset. The cardboard box holds the
image in the perfect distance to my eyes and divides
the image into two so that each eye
focuses on the image. This type of video-- the
stereoscopic display-- simulates what our eyes do
naturally and fools our brains into thinking that it's
looking at a 3D image by creating a sense of depth. But the cardboard in the video
do more than create 3D vision. When you move your head
around, it actually reveals new areas of the video. The phone has a
couple of sensors that measures position and
angle, sort of like a GPS, so it can track how
your head is moving and as you move
your head around, the images on the
screen adjust so that you feel like you're
not only looking at a video, but actually walking through it. Now, if virtual reality
is as easy as sliding a phone into a cardboard
box, why are we not all living in a
virtual world today? There's a couple of reasons. First, reality is more
than just what we see. If I really want to feel
like I'm at the beach, what are some other elements
that I would add in? The feeling of sand between your
toes, the smell of salt water, the sound of wind. Exactly. But these are things
that are harder to make virtual than vision. Things like haptics,
the science of touch, will help us to better
understand our real senses in order to simulate
them in virtual reality. By the way, simulating these
other senses, like taste, smell, or touch,
will eventually help us to improve motion sickness,
which a lot of people feel in virtual reality today. Also, to create a fully
immersive environment, even if it's just
visual, is a lot of work. It's way more than
just filming a scene from two different perspectives
to create 3D vision. You need to create and capture
an entire three-dimensional world where you can walk
around and move your head to see all the possible views. Several companies are developing
special software and cameras, but it's still very
expensive and time-consuming to do this at high quality. Virtual reality is
really cool, but even if it can create a
perfect virtual reality, we wouldn't want it to
replace actual reality. We still like to experience some
things in real life, like snow. And as a society, we
are just beginning to think about the ethical
and moral aspect of creating simulated realities. So virtual reality
may look simple, but it's very complicated. The cool thing is that the
better understanding we have of real reality, like
how our senses work, the better virtual
reality we'll get.