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virtual reality (VR)? Do you imagine someone wearing a clunky helmet attached to a computer with a thick cable? Do visions of crudely rendered pterodactyls haunt you? Do you think of Neo and Morpheus traipsing about the Matrix? Or do you wince at the term, wishing it would just go away? If the last applies to you, you're likely a computer scientist or engineer, many of whom now avoid the words virtual reality even while they work on technologies most of us associate with VR. Today, you're more likely to hear someone use the words virtual environment (VE) to refer to what the public knows as virtual reality. We'll use the terms interchangeably in this article. Naming discrepancies aside, the concept remains the same - using computer technology to create a simulated, three-dimensional world that a user can manipulate and explore while feeling as if he were in that world. Scientists, theorists and engineers have designed dozens of devices and applications to achieve this goal. Opinions differ on what exactly constitutes a true VR experience, but in general it should include: Three-dimensional images that appear to be life-sized from the perspective of the user The ability to track a user's motions, particularly his head and eye movements, and correspondingly adjust the images on the user's display to reflect the change in perspective In this article, we'll look at the defining characteristics of VR, some of the technology used in VR systems, a few of its applications, some concerns about virtual reality and a brief history of the discipline. In the next section, we'll look at how experts define virtual environments, starting with immersion. Others are not so constrained. As recent news reports indicate, we’re at that 1939-World’s-Fair moment in which there’s just enough new technology out there to spark some creative thinking about the shape of boinking to come. When visionaries like Natasha Vita-More, an artist, futurist and transhumanist, look through mental telescopes, they talk about “neuromacrosensing” and millions of nanobots coursing “throughout the body communicating with different cells, sending signals to the brain so the whole body acts as a sensory communications system.” That ought to make sex feel pretty good, but you’ll have to wait. Such things are a long way off. But other changes are coming much sooner. A few have already arrived. Earlier this month, Palatin Technologies announced that a trial of its new drug for post-menopausal female sexual dysfunction succeeded in rejuvenating desire in women who had little of it. The drug, a so-called melanocortin agonist, acts through the central nervous system. Other companies have tried to gain approval for sex-stimulating drugs, mainly testosterone, but have failed so far. Still, whether this new one ultimately proves successful, its development indicates that the age of pharmaceutically enhanced sex is almost upon us. (Available impotence drugs like Viagra do not really enhance sex, they just make it possible.) “One thing we will see is increasing awareness of and control over the neurochemical basis of lust and desire,” says James Hughes, a futurist philosopher and author at Trinity College in Hartford, Conn., who has written extensively about the future of sex.
