Taken from an online thesis...


Analysis and Development of Interaction Techniques between Real and Synthetic Worlds


Introduction

A major research goal during the last decade has been to create photo-realistic interactive synthetic worlds. Despite much effort, however, synthetic worlds remain artificial environments, and have limited usage in human life. Nowadays there are several Virtual Reality applications emerging for entertainment, medical and telepresence purposes. All these applications are dealing with homogenous synthetic worlds which are very far from representing the real world. One major problem is the restrictive human machine interfaces like gloves, magnetic trackers, and head mounted displays. Such interfaces with excessive connections are hampering the interactivity. Another major issue is the rendering of photo realistic, detailed and interactive environments in real-time. Although the current computer graphics technology can model, animate and render synthetic articulated figures with deformable surfaces with near photo-realism in real-time, we cannot say the same about rendering of a complex synthetic world.

Until now I presented the problems of the current Virtual Reality technology. There is a new approach, called Augmented Reality, to overcome the limitations of the Virtual Reality. We can summarize the Augmented Reality as a combination of distinct technologies spanning from virtual reality to computer vision. By definition Augmented Reality enhances user's view of the real world with visual information from a computer. In case of interactions between real and synthetic worlds, the computers perception should be enhanced also.