Fooling your senses
Frank Steinicke · 2017
In his essay "The Ultimate Display" from 1965, Ivan E. Sutherland states that "The ultimate display would [...] be a room within which the computer can control the existence of matter [...]". This general notion of a computer-mediated or virtual reality, in which synthetic objects or the entire virtual environment get indistinguishable from the real world, dates back to Plato's "The Allegory of the Cave" and has been reconsidered again and again in science fiction literature as well as the movie industry. For instance, virtual reality is often used to question whether we truly "know" if our perceptions are real or not. Early science fiction movies like "The MatrixâĂİ or the fictional holodeck from the Star Trek universe are prominent examples of these kind of perceptual ambiguities. Furthermore, in movies like Steven Spielberg's "Minority Report", Jon Favreau's "Iron Man", or Brad Bird's "Mission Impossible 4" actors can seamlessly use freehand gestures in space combined with speech to manipulate 3D holographic projections, while they also perceive haptic feedback when touching the virtual objects.