What's real about virtual reality?

Abstract

In 1994, I surveyed the field of VR in a lecture that asked, "Is There Any Real Virtue in Virtual Reality?", My assessment then was that VR almost worked, that our discipline stood on Mount Pisgah looking into the Promised Land, but that we were not yet there. There were lots of demos and pilot systems, but except for vehicle simulators and entertainment applications, VR was not yet in produc-tion use doing real work.