Keynote Address: The Future of Virtual Reality and Prototyping
Roy Kalawsky · 1999
This keynote paper sets the scene for the International Scientific Workshop `Virtual Reality and Prototyping Conference' organised by the Laval International Virtual Reality Meeting. It briefly examines the background of today's impressive VR technology, which can be used to evaluate complex products from the conceptual design stage through to the manufacturing process. The emerging virtual revolution has wide and far-reaching consequences for many organisations. The paper looks at virtual prototyping and where opportunities exist for its application. It highlights also the urgent need for greater understanding of the associated human factors issues. 1 Introduction The evolution of virtual interfaces or virtual reality (VR) has led to an extremely important human-computer interaction medium which has the potential to present the `ideal' interface between the user [3] and a computer mediated, multi-dimensional virtual environment. A virtual reality system has a number of inhere...