A Survey of Underlying Base Technologies for Virtual Experience

A virtual experience is a simulation of a real experience. Instead of experiencing and interacting with physical objects in a real environment, in virtual environments, we interact with specific media in place of physical objects in a real environment. It is the same that the external stimuli sensed by the sensory organs of the human body are transmitted to the brain, and the reaction initiated from the brain again is expressed through various body organs of the human body. On the other hand, from the viewpoint of the object of interaction, the means of sensing and expressing is different.

For example, if a person is experiencing through an interaction method called “conversation,” the actual environment and the virtual environment can be distinguished as shown in Fig. 1 and Fig. 2. In the actual environment [Fig. 1], the voice information generated through the mouth of the human body is transmitted to the ear of the opponent, and the visual information generated from the body (look, facial expression, behavior, etc.) is transmitted to the opponent’s eyes. In the case of Fig. 2, it is assumed that the interaction target in the virtual environment is a general PC. Unlike humans, a person's voice information is acquired by a microphone and the visual information is acquired by a camera. Then, the acquired information processed by a PC's CPU. Response from PC, unlike humans, voice and visual information are represented by a speaker and a display monitor, respectively.