For the disabled, virtual reality promises a new form of freedom. Consider the wheelchair bound paraplegic child who is suddenly able to use virtual reality gear to take part in games like baseball or basketball. Research funded by the government takes a military point of view, investigating the possibility of sending robots into the real conflict while human beings don cyberspace gear to guide them from back in the lab.
Task 2. Are the statements true or false?
Virtual reality is a computer-built fantasy world.
Virtual reality is also called cyberspace.
There are no limits to virtual reality.
Virtual reality is created by being in a special room.
Virtual reality is available only on expensive computer systems.
Virtual reality is the leading edge of the computer technology.
Eyephones are the 3DFX fiber-optic glasses.
Eyephones are not the only virtual reality gear.
Virtual reality might be misused.
Virtual reality can return the disabled to the full-fledged life.
Virtual reality was designed by the military to guide robots.
One can not only see or hear virtual reality, but also feel and smell it.
Virtual reality is only a type of computer interface.
Task 3. Read the words as they are used in the following sentences and try to come up with your own definition:
Using computers to create graphics and sounds, virtual reality makes the viewer believe he or she is in another world.
Three-dimensional images are created using technology that fools the viewers’ mind into perceptive depth.
Plug a terminal directly into the brain via a prepared skull and you can enter cyberspace.
I’ve got a set of eyephones, 3D goggles, a fiber optic glove and the rest of the gear.
There are many word substitutes for invalids, e.g. the handicapped, challenged by birth or by accidents, disabled people.
The bowman took a deep breath, aimed at the target and shot, but the arrow went astray.
Virtual reality —
Three-dimensional (3D) —
Cyberspace —
Gear —
Disabled —
To go astray —
Task 4. Put the proper words into sentences:
fibre-optic, swoop, go astray, clutching, gear, to one’s mind content, enhance, cyberspace, eye phones.
Virtual reality is sometimes called...
3-D ... are really individual computer screens for the eyes.
Virtual reality can ... possibilities of the disabled.
The manual ... box allows you to slow down without braking, while the automatic one doesn’t.
Cyberspace allows everybody to change it...
The letters wrongly addressed...
... unknown things may cause an accident.
By the end of the 20th century metal wires had been replaced by ... ones.
In one of the s the ... the NATO has lost their most expensive fighter.
be, have, see, do, leave, write, tell.
It was more than a hundred years ago that Lewis Carroll ... about Alice’s trip through the looking glass.
Now that fiction ... became a reality ... or you might say, a virtual reality ... because that’s the name of a new computer technology that many believe will revolutionize the way we live.
Trainees fighting in virtual battles often cannot ... a man from a machine.
Virtual reality lets you travel to places you’ve never do things you’ve never — without ... the room.
Someday, you will ... that virtual reality makes other forms of entertainment, such as TV and movies, obsolete.
Task 5. Translate the following sentences into Ukrainian.
Virtual reality straddles the foggy boundary between fantasy and fact.
Imagine a place and you’ll be able to step into it. Conjure up a dream and you’ll be able to fly through it.
He’s launched one of the first computers to mass-produce virtual reality systems.
Virtual reality techniques have been used to make a 3D model of the planet Mars. There are, of course, more down-to-earth applications. Virtual reality models of urban landscapes are allowing urban planners to redesign Main Street without leaving the room.
We’re now reaching a point where the simulations are so realistic that the line between playing a game or a simulation and actually blowing people up is becoming blurred.
Virtual reality has been featured in TV sitcoms as well as public television documentaries.
Slipping on the rest of the gear allows you to sense your voyage.
For the disabled, virtual reality promises a new form of freedom.
Eyephones are not the only virtual reality gear.
You can not only see or hear in virtual reality, but also feel and smell
Virtual reality lets you travel to places you have never visited.
In the future, people will be able to have easy access to virtual reality systems.
If virtual reality technology were more affordable at present time, many more people would be able to try it.
Virtual reality makes other forms of entertainment such as TV and movies obsolete.
Task 6. Match the sentence beginnings (1-6) with the correct endings (a-f):
1. Use of computer modelling and simulation enables a person 2. A computer-generated environment simulates reality by means of
3. The illusion of being in the created environment (telepresence) is accomplished by motion sensors that 4. The basis of the technology emerged in the 1960s in simulators that taught 5. It came in the 1980s and is now used in 6. It has potential for use in many fields
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a) pick up the user's movements and adjust his or her view accordingly, usually in real time. b) interactive devices that send and receive information and are worn as goggles, headsets, gloves, or body suits. c) including entertainment, medicine and biotechnology, engineering, design, and marketing. d) how to fly planes, drive tanks, shoot artillery, and generally perform in combat. e) games, exhibits, and aerospace simulators. f) to interact with an artificial three-dimensional visual or other sensory environment.
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Task 7. Fill in the gaps using the list of words in the box. Translate.
liquid-crystal sensors screen illusion devise link simulate cockpit simulation image stereoscopic electronic glove control create helmet launched video games |
A virtual reality system consists of a … with a color display in front of each eye, and wide-angle lenses to cover the entire field of view and give a … effect. The helmet contains …, rather like electronic compasses, to record where it is pointing. A computer calculates what the wearer should see in that direction and displays it on the …. In more advanced systems, the operator wears an … that detects exactly what the fingers are doing and transmits the information to the computer. If the user tries to pick up something, the computer will make the object follow the hand to give the … of carrying it.
Pads in the latest type of gloves press into the insides of the fingers and palm when an object is encountered, to … the illusion of feeling it. Complete ‘exoskeletons’ covering the user and allowing the computer … almost anything possible in real life are still in the laboratory.
The biggest initial market is likely to be for a new generation of … . W Industries have recently … a virtual reality system for video arcades. The system, called Virtuality, consists of a … in which a player sits, wearing the helmet, at a set of controls that can mimic a bobsleigh, a spaceship, or whatever the imagination of the games programmer can … . The helmet has a pair of … displays with wide-angle lenses giving a stereoscopic … , and a set of magnetic sensors to tell the computer what the helmet is looking at as it moves. The first game is a fighter … . Another is based on a sequence (eпiзод) in the film, Return of the Jedi, in which flying motor-cycles race through a forest. The computer can … and … several helmets at once for a group game.
Task 8. Translate the following sentences into English.
1. Віртуальна реальність - це інтерактивне, мультисенсорне середовище, змодельоване комп'ютером.
2. Для людської раси віртуальна реальність стане поворотною віхою.
3. Віртуальна реальність принесе людству більше шкоди, ніж користі.
4. Найкраще застосування віртуальна реальність знайде у військовій та медичній техніці.
5. Віртуальна реальність дає шанс повноцінного розвитку інвалідам.
6. Людина створила комп'ютер, комп'ютер створив віртуальну реальність.
7. З подальшим вдосконаленням техніки віртуальна реальність стане одним з найбільш популярних способів подорожі.
8. Мистецтво з часом стане непотрібним, оскільки його замінить віртуальна реальність.
Task 9. Fill in the chart with the some more appropriate info:
Who uses Virtual Reality?
User |
Use |
Implementation |
Benefit |
NASA |
recreating different critical situations (e.g. situation ‘fire or not to fire’) |
flight simulations; battle simulation
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risk-free, inexpensive, military training |
Architects |
|
|
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Medicine |
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turning a CAT scan into 3D model of the patient’s body; telepresence workstations for surgical procedures
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microcameras attached to endoscopic devices relayed images that could be shared among a group of surgeons looking at one or more monitors, often in diverse locations |
Education |
|
the Room of Educational Wall |
|
Libraries |
|
telepresence |
|
Museums |
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creating a 3-D image of an exhibit |
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Task 10. Render the following into English. Find additional information on modern trends in virtual reality and make short presentations in front of the class.
Сучасна технологія віртуальної реальності - це відгалуження комп'ютерної графіки, яка вплинула на все - від складання карт до телереклами.
Сучасна технологія віртуальної реальності починається з спроби поєднати візуальне сприйняття зі сприйняттям руху і звуку. Потрібні, як мінімум, головний дисплей і рукавичковий пристрій (або інші засоби управління віртуальними об'єктами). Повне занурення вимагає від користувача надіти сенсорний костюм, що передає дані про рухи до комп'ютера.
Головний дисплей - це два дуже маленьких відеомонітора, кожен з яких знаходиться перед відповідним оком, і спеціальні ширококутні лінзи. Ці пристрої розміщені в шоломі таким чином, що очі можуть приймати зображення, яке мозок ідентифікує як тривимірне. Деякі дисплеї забезпечені навушниками, що створюють звукове середовище. В минулому головні дисплеї були важкими і незграбними, більш пізнім прагнуть надати форму легкого шолома, що створює унікальний ефект присутності у віртуальному просторі.
Інші методи, як, наприклад, спеціальні електронні окуляри, дозволяють користувачам працювати в реальному середовищі, одночасно звертаючись до зображень в середовищі віртуальному.
Спеціальний рукавичковий пристрій дає користувачеві можливість буквально проникати в кіберпростір і змінювати його. Рукавичка може оцінювати становище і вигин кожного пальця. Це забезпечується використанням особливих оптико-волоконних ниток, які фіксують кількість світла, що проходить через кожну нитку, або, навпаки, вимірюють змін електричної напруги в ланцюзі.
Ще один важливий елемент системи занурення - це пристрій стеження за положенням. Це пристрій може працювати за допомогою або електромагнітного поля, або ультразвукових або інфрачервоних променів. Один пристрій стеження контролює рух головного дисплея, а інший - кожну рукавичку чи іншу частину тіла, яку користувач вважатиме за потрібне помістити в кіберпростір.
Ілюзія простору також може бути створена узгодженими звуковими сигналами. Тривимірний звук - не те ж саме, що звичне нам стерео. Він набагато сильніше впливає на людські вуха, голову і плечі. Індивідуальний характер такої звукової рецепції дозволяє користувачеві не тільки чути звук, але і визначати віртуальне становище його джерела.
У створенні ілюзії також може брати участь дотик. Зусилля в цьому напрямку включають імітацію грубих тканин або температурні коливання на кінчиках пальців рукавичок. Інша система поєднує тактильні відчуття з мінімальним почуттям опору, використовуючи в рукавичках крихітні повітряні бульбашки. Ще одна методика включає використання фізичного опору.
Task 11. Discussion. Tell the class your own ideas on the topics.
What developments in computer technology have changed the way people live and work?
How have some home entertainments such as television and video games affected people’s life?
How will further advances in computer technology continue to change the world?
It has been said that technology is a double-edged sword. What does that statement mean?
What is virtual reality?
Who can use virtual reality?
How can virtual reality benefit society?
How can virtual reality harm society?
Which uses of virtual reality appeal to you most?
Is it possible to create a perfect virtual reality?
Computers take you on mind trips. Where would you like to go on a mind trip?
The perspectives of the virtual reality development.
Task 12. Discussion. Answer the following questions.
How do you launch your web browser?
How do you change the size of the text on a web page?
How can you tell if your browser is working?
If you have a problem with your browser, what would you do?
Task 13. Read the following text to give an explanation to the following terms:
Web browser;
Menu bar;
Toolbar;
Browser’s window
Text 23B. WEB BROWSER
The Web browser is your access point to the information and resources that make up the World Wide Web (WWW). When you click on a hyperlink or type a Uniform Resource Locator (URL) in the location field or address box the browser requests information from a Web server. When the information is delivered it is the browser’s job to display the information or start another program to deal with it.
The commands you use to work with the Web browser are available through the menu bar, the toolbars, the keyboard, and the menus that pop up when you use the right or secondary mouse button. These ways of accessing commands or features stay the same, regardless of what you’re viewing or working with on the World Wide Web. The menu bar is a collection of pulldown menus that you can use for almost every operation or command. The toolbar has a number of items, often displayed as text and icons, which give quick access to some of the commands in the menu bar. Several commands are also available as keyboard shortcuts, meaning that you can type them directly on the keyboard instead of using a mouse.
Once a page is in the browser’s window, you can move around the page using the keyboard, the scroll bars, or the mouse. You can search for words in the page. To go to another page, move the mouse to a hyperlink (the pointer turns into a hand) and click on it. You can also type a URL in the address bar or address box and then press e to access it.
The browser keeps track of the sites you’ve visited during recent sessions. It does this so that you can backtrack and return to sites during a session. The history list holds links to all the sites that you have visited recently. You can collect a set of hyperlinks in the bookmark or favorites list. These will be available from one session to the next. The browser contains commands to let you maintain and manage your bookmark or favorites list.
Common sense tells us not to give out personal information, home phone numbers, or home addresses to people we don’t know. We’re likely not to do that in our daily lives when we don’t know the person who is asking for the information, and it is just as important to apply the same rules when we’re using the Internet or the World Wide Web. The Internet and the World Wide Web give us lots of opportunities for learning, recreation, and communication. We don’t need to be rude or unfriendly, but we do need to be careful, safe, and secure.
Security and privacy on the World Wide Web are important topics for a variety of reasons, including an individual’s desire for privacy, the increased use of the Internet for commercial transactions, and the need to maintain the integrity of information. If you access the Internet by logging into a computer system, you need to take care to choose a password that will be difficult to guess. Furthermore, you should notice and report any unusual circumstances or modifications.
Task 14. Find the words in the text above which have the following meanings and write them in the spaces provided:
A collection of direct links to predefined web pages which is stored in your web browser. _____________