I n 1992 the Virtual Environment Graphics and Applications Group was founded by the University of Hull, with support from British Aerospace. The general aims of VEGA are to
promote fundamental research, scientific and technological development and industrial
exploitation in the expanding area of virtual Environments.

Virtual environments (more popularly termed Virtual Reality) is a young developing and exciting field concerned with the construction of  “representational worlds” with which users may interact.

This research paper is about VR & Simulation and the relation between them. The objective of this research paper is to find if Virtual Reality & Simulation are different from each other and how they are very closely similar to each other from another way.

After a lot of search and reading different resources, contact with expertise in this field we observe a rea-sonable explanation.

We included that explanation in the research paper under two main titles:

The relation between Simulation and Virtual Reality, and the different between Simulation and Virtual Reality.

This research paper is organized in the following sequence:

* The first part is the general definition part, which describes the terms Virtual Reality & Simulation.
* The research most important part which is the relation and the different between Virtual Reality &.
    Simulation.
* The next part is application list for Virtual Reality Simulation, which describes some application in
    detail.
* The final part is the conclusion where our result is placed in, followed by future works and the
   reference page.

The backbone of the source is the Internet. Variety of searching types was involves in collecting the source such as Internet search and sending to and receiving e-mail from expertise and universities.

Finally, I would like to record my thanks and appreciation to Dr. Ivor Benjamin from UK for his valuable advises and assistance.
 

                                                                                                                  Researchers
 

 

Virtual Reality Definition:

Virtual Reality (VR) is the technology that allows users to become "immersed" in a computer gen-erated virtual world. It includes the technology for 3- D displays (head mounted, walk-in, etc.), methods for generating the virtual images including 3-D solids modeling, techniques for orienting the user in the virtual world and providing feedback to the computer of actions taken by the user in the virtual world. In other words, VR is a highly adaptive method of recreating or inventing environments which people can interact with.
 

Simulation Definition:

Simulation in general is to pretend that one deals with a real thing while really working with an Imitation, or in other words, it is the discipline of designing a model of an actual or theoretical physical system, executing the model on a digital computer, and analyzing the execution output.
 

The relation between Simulation and Virtual Reality:

In both the Simulation and Virtual Reality, the general purpose is to convert costly, impossible and dangerous thought, models, systems or a part of real life situations, to make it possible and reduce the cost and its risk. Both Simulation & Virtual Reality serves the purpose of viewing and looking to any thing be-fore it exists or form different perspective angle or window.
 

The different between Simulation and Virtual Reality:

Actually there is almost no different between Simulation and Virtual Reality except in the technical part, because if we have a look to the VR it is a particular kind of simulation and a means to provide simulations. And that is because of Virtual Reality's (or virtual environments as it is now more properly known) definition which is the use of computer technology to simulate (and stimulate) one or more of the human senses for the purpose of real-time interaction.

 
Applications:

There are a lot of Virtual reality and simulation applications such as the following:

1- Architecture.
2- Chemistry.
3- Training armed and other security forces.
4- Simulation of dangerous situation.
5- Tourism.
6- Games.
         
      In games                    In Chemistry

The following applications in some detail:

6- Logical Extension of Televideo Conferencing:
 
One of its projects is a project named as

Green Space project:

    Announced on the 14th of November 1994. It's a project, which involves a coop-erative U.S.-Japanese team to create a new era in teleconferencing. The project based on using an existing, 5,200 mile long fiber optic cable under the North Pacific. The system enables users to see animated, photo-realistic 3-D like nesses of each other's faces and to interact in real time across thousands of miles within a shared, graphically high- quality environment-also in 3-D.

Through Green Space, we hope to form a dynamic virtual common in which people can meet and interact using a worldwide transportation system for their senses, without the need for traveling physically.  The goal is to create a high- bandwidth international network for bringing people, ideas and data bases to-gether in a shared, virtual environment that's rich in visual and aural cues.

7- Medicine and surgery:

    Student doctors can already undertake their first operations using Virtual Reality. The nurses are there, the equipment is there, and the anesthetist is there, the student doctor gives all the instructions to the others, and performs the surgery. The operations can be at different levels of difficulty; unexpected complications may be randomly thrown in. There are VR systems that allow surgeons to practice eye and brain surgery before they do the operation on a patient. In addition, Virtual Reality is used for training in laparo-scopic (also known as keyhole) surgery. Several US companies including Cine-Med, Ethicon Endo-Surgery and High Techsplantations are all developing laparoscopic simu-lator systems, which will be used for training.

Using VR, patients requesting plastic surgery are able to assess exactly what the likely changes will be if they undergo a particular type of cosmetic operation. Again, VR allows users to explore 'what if' scenarios until the patient is satisfied, and the cosmetic surgeon then follows the instructions precisely.

8- Military:

    Military training and operations was one of the first practical applications of VR (flight
Simulators, development and testing of combat strategy).
VR allows avoidance of exposure to hazards such as firing of real weapons, or perform-ing dangerous maneuvers. Control of weapons after firing them by Telepresence from a safe distance reduces risks (smart bombs).

Future work:
 In the future scientists are working to create a very new era in the Virtual Reality Simulation field which is named as Browsing In Time and Space (BITS) project, which is basically enable user to be im-mersed in a virtual environment that simulates a different period of time to provide the user with the possi-bility of taking video shots and voice annotations during the simulation, and let the user see and hear like the natural objects under observation.

 

1- Sinus Surgery Simulation in Virtual Reality
  http://www.hitl.washington.edu/projects/medicine/sinus.html

2- Virtual Reality in Surgery
http://www.vetl.uh.edu/surgery/surpage.html

3- Training Packages target
http://www.ei.org/lectures/larry/Larry3.html

4- NASA News
http://www.msfc.nasa.gov/upload/pao/files/97-087.html

5- IMO Working paper 95/3: Virtual Reality The Technology and its Applications
http://www2.echo.lu/impact/imo/9503fnl.html#simulations

6- Virtual Reality The Technology and its Applications
http://www2.echo.lu/impact/imo/9503fnl.html

7- UK VR-SIG: UK Virtual Reality Special Interest Group
http://www.crg.cs.nott.ac.uk/groups/ukvrsig/

8- Applications of Virtual Reality
http://ksi.cpsc.ucalgary.ca/courses/547-95/poncsak/c547.html

9- A7 VIRTUAL REALITY
http://www.1idea.com/a7/vr.html

10- Virtual Reality in Neuro-Psycho-Physiology - A book about the applications of virtual reality in medi-cine, neurology and psychology
http://www.psicologia.net/neuropsy.htm

11- INTRODUCTION TO SIMULATION
http://iew3.technion.ac.il:8080/~bani/simint.html

12- What is simulation?
http://oyt.oulu.fi/tako/simugb01.html

13- WHY DO SIMULATION?
http://www.cis.ufl.edu/~fishwick/introsim/node2.html

14- Virtual Reality
http://www.hcooke.co.uk/technology/virtual.htm