The idea of simply wearing a head mounted display that would transport you into another world is fairly simple in it’s approach but ultimately failed in it’s execution.

Most HMDs of the 90s were of low resolution, refresh rate, and field of view. The idea of these HMDs being a parallel to reality was a joke but many media outlets ran with it. It was the game changing future of tomorrow but that tommorow never came.

Even today most HMDs are a joke and the large consumer populace has tired of waiting for such a device and settled with large LCD televisions or HD projectors.

Though the CAVE systems seem to be a fan favorite for iVR enthusiast, corporate dimes and academics. They require far too much space and money to be mass marketed to any consumer base.

This is why the media has lept at any opportunity to label MMOs such as Second Life and World of Warcraft virtual realites. They have nothing else to compare.

But now the new buzz is all around AR and it’s inception into smart phones. Which is a step in the right direction but ultimately this is not VR but could have potential to bring true iVR in the limelight. As holding a phone infront of your face for directions is terrible from an ergonomic stand point.

And with that hopefully we see the likes of virtual retina displays finally coming to mass production within the next five to ten years. These displays aren’t regulated to how many pixels can be produced on a surface of a display but how fast a MEMS device can scan a laser onto the back of your retina.

The plus of this is that it is capable of producing near human vision resolution at high refresh rates.This will be the only true way to produce VR in any traditional sense. Not a large box with six projectors and polarized lenses.

Until then the debate will rage and people will continue to willfully dream VR is just around the corner or just willfully ignore the idea entirely and buy a large 3D television.

My current point of view is that “scientific” battle needs a powerful ground to be correct and understandable. The “commercial” battle, instead, live on a swamp where if definitions doesn’t move they sink (=loosing money).

Any way to make me think that this is not true? I would also like to be less angry with this and move on with fresh concepts

I’m a young PhD student just at the very beginning of his long journey to be a PhD… but I’d been working on an AR development environment (actually, it was the project that I had to present here at Spain at the end of my degree). In the development of my work I was very concerned on making a deep study of what’s AR and what’s not… and it’s not that difficult to find an elegant and simple definition.

But with this last year crazy boom in the AR, people have cannibalized the AR definition in a uncountable number of ways.

After a lot of self-discussions (and some anger) I’ve realized that this perversion of terms comes from the most “commercial” areas. They have changed names to everything and AR/VR terms have been very affected.

With that I’m trying to say that’s researchers’ (and reviewers’) fault to mix concepts because “commercial” areas have and will mix that concepts for their profit. To engage users with the same old things but with new and brand-new cool names.

Good scientists have to respect that de facto definitions even they do not appear in the dictionary, isn’t it?

By the way, I like your definition of iVR, but I’m sure that it doesn’t need the immersive prefix.

I would rather prefer to add a prefix to Second-live’s VR… because that it’s an alternate world in which users project (like in any other video-game!) their minds but not they do not get physically immersed… then it could not be “reality”, isn’t it?

Let’s name it “projected-VR” and leave VR as the real immersive?

Thanks for your post! See you!