Mixed Realities: Human Interaction Technologies

Virtual Reality

The personal computer has long been a tool for the computer gamer and to a large extent its evolution has been driven by the ever increasing demands of this community for more realistic graphics and faster performance. Typically a game will transport the player into an entirely virtual world, where the computer screen presents a 2-D display of the 3-D world, and the player interacts with it via the traditional technology of keyboard, mouse or gamepad. These environments offer great opportunity for education as games can be constructed to target specific educational outcomes. The current market place is full of such games which target the younger student, presenting them with the familiar computer interface and an attractive visual interface, and making the educational outcome, in some games, almost a side effect of the game play.