Virtual Trade

There has been dramatic movement toward a global economy in the last two decades, but some nuances of human communication are not conveyed by the written or spoken word via internet, telephone, or even conference call. Application of virtual reality technology to international trade during the coming decade may remove some of these remaining limitations. The core of trade is connecting people to trade products and services. Virtual reality is an increasingly efficient way to do just that. Some professions that connect people for trade are being eroded by internet systems which make those connections faster, with more complete information, and at lower cost. Some functions done by stock brokers, travel agents, realtors, hotel chains, match makers, and others are increasingly done through the internet. The human element will not be totally replaced. In fact, some people in associated professions are adapting and taking advantage of the new features of the internet instead of allowing it to replace them. Related virtual reality topics at virtual education may be of use.

Virtual reality is an artificially-generated object, objects, or complete environment inside which multiple human beings come in contact as if it were genuine. It is possible to make this definition more specific by specifying the base-line technical features needed for the human to computer interaction to be Virtual Reality (VR). One can specify scope of vision, extent of precision of the visual display, and the range of human hand, head, and body motion to which the computer reacts, but these technical parameters will change with further improvements in computer power and new equipment for human to computer interface. Thus, a psychological definition based on requisite engagement of human cognition gives a more consistent definition of virtual reality. Sub-page defining pure virtual reality covers additional topics.

The essence of Virtual Reality (VR) is tricking the human body into perceiving things that are not real. In this respect, it is no surprise that one's body can respond negatively, particularly when it receives conflicting signals from different senses and is not entirely fooled. With respect to sight, one problem with current VR image display systems is conflict between eye focus (adjusting the lens of each eye at the apparent distance of the object viewed) and eye axial convergence (coordinating the angle of both eyes to intersect lines of sight at the perceived distance of the object). This problem is more serious for head mounted imaging systems in which pictures are displayed somewhat near to the eyes. Another problem is response lag (lagtime) between the kinetic motion impulses that the brain receives from the inner organelles of one's ear and the visual motion signals that the brain receives from the eyes. When there is a lag in visual picture processing, then the body gets impulses of motion from kinetic senses as things happen but signals of motion from vision after the lag. If you are interested in this, see perception, motion parallax, and accommodation for more.

Sound can also help in communication from people to computers. Voice recognition is the dominant type. There have been substantive achievements in the quickness and accuracy of speech recognition in the midst of the previous decade. While these advances have been largely independent from progress in Virtual Reality (VR), the new speech interpretation systems can be added to Virtual Reality (VR) with high-performance effects. Link to virtualization and data analysis provides expanded discussion.