Virtual Reality and Immersive Geovisualization

Virtual reality relies on a head-mounted display (HMD) that renders a stereoscopic, three-dimensional scene while tracking head orientation and, in room-scale systems, full body position, so that a user's own movements change their viewpoint within the simulated environment in real time. The modern consumer VR era began in 2016, when the Oculus Rift consumer edition shipped in March and the HTC Vive followed in April, both offering six-degrees-of-freedom tracking at a price point that, for the first time, brought immersive head-mounted VR within reach of ordinary consumers rather than research laboratories and specialized simulator facilities alone.