Virtual Reality in the Real World: A Personal Reflection on 12 Years of Human-Centred Endeavour

Over the past decade, the commercial and industrial Virtual Environment (VE) or Virtual Reality (VR) developer community has experienced many problems as a result of the outrageous claims of the early proponents of “immersive” technologies and the dominance of graphics supercomputer companies. Today, the very fact that a commercial, off-the-shelf personal computer, equipped with a low-cost graphics accelerator can out-perform some of its supercomputer “competitors” – at a fraction of the cost it takes to maintain those competitors – has rekindled interest in those commercial and industrial organisations who were once potential adopters of VR for competitive advantage. This paper is a personal reflection on some of the industrial trials and tribulations of the past few years of VR/VE developments and a constructive critique on present academic and commercial research and development trends.