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Smiling girl wearing virtual reality headset
Cyberpsychology

Virtual reality

David Rose and Nigel Foreman describe the application to psychology of a fast-developing new technology.

18 November 1999

What we now know as virtual reality (VR) had its origins in the development of ‘visually coupled’ systems (Kalawsky, 1993), which formed the basis of the first flight simulators. This is a computer technology that allows us to present people with a computer-generated environment within which they can move around and with which they can interact. The nature of the virtual environment (VE) is determined by the programmer: it could be the cockpit of an aircraft, a building, a ski slope or a games environment.

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