Basic virtual reality questions

[cdlinder]

Hello!

I hope that some of you will be able to assist me. I am a writer who is wanting to write a science fiction book that tells the story of a young boy who is a genious computer programmer and who creates a virtual reality game. Basically, his father had created the game but then disappeared (actually into the game, but nobody knows that yet), and his son happens upon the goggles, program, etc. and completes it to eventually find his father.

Anyway, I know nothing about writing virtual reality programs. I just need to know the basics in order to write this book (which is geared for children ages 9 to 12). Would any of you be able to help me by answering some questions, like:

- What code/program do you usually write in to develop virtual reality?

- What's involved in the writing/developing process?

- What are interesting features about virtual reality?

- Do you have to use only the goggles, or can you run it on a computer screen?

- Are there disks, CD's, memory sticks, etc. that you insert into the googles? How do the goggles work?

- Any other interesting/fundamental tidbits about virtual reality that would assist with developing my book?

I would definitely appreciate any suggestions, ideas, answers, advice, etc. I wanted to do all my research before I actually wrote the book.

Thanks so much!

[invisal]

What code/program do you usually write in to develop virtual reality?

There are some famous languages you have to know
+ Machine Code : It is system of codes directly understandable by a computer's CPU, But nowaday there only a few people use it, Since it is extraordinary difficult to write and difficult to learn it.
+ Assembly Language (low-level programming language) : Since Machine Code is too hard, and very waste time, They invent Assembly Language, which is little bit English-like.
+ C/C++ (high-level programming language): C/C++ is one of most famous programming language nowaday, Alot of large software developer company using it, Example : Microsoft Office, Linux, Microsoft Windows, etc...
There are other programming language such Cobol Programming , Basic Programming etc..., you can do search on Google for more information.

There some interesting API(Application programming interface) you need to know to make game :
- DirectX : is a collection of APIs for easily handling tasks related to game programming on Microsoft Windows. It is most widely used in the development of computer games for Windows
- OpenGL : Stand for Open Graphics Library, is a specification defining a cross-language cross-platform API for writing applications that produce 3D computer graphics.

Note (This information taken from Wikipedia) : In computer science, a low-level programming language is a language that provides little or no abstraction from a computer's microprocessor. The word "low" does not imply that the language is inferior to high-level programming languages but rather refers to the reduced amount of abstraction between the language and itself; because of this, low-level languages are sometimes described as being "closer to the hardware."

A high-level programming language is a programming language that is more user-friendly, to some extent platform-independent, and abstract from low-level computer processor operations such as memory accesses. See programming language for a detailed discussion.

The term "high level language" does not imply that the language is superior to low-level programming languages but rather refers to the higher level of abstraction from machine language. For example: the difference between the programming language Java and assembly language is that Java abstracts programming functionality that assembly does not, for example, strings.

In general, high-level languages make complex programming simpler, while low-level languages produce more efficient code. In a high-level language, complex elements can be broken up into simpler, though still fairly complex, elements for which the language provides abstractions, keeping programmers from having to "reinvent the wheel." The cost of this convenience is often less efficient code overall. For this reason, code which needs to run particularly quickly and efficiently may be written in a lower-level language, even if a higher-level language would make the coding easier.

[cdlinder]

Thank you so much for wonderfully answering that question! That kind of information will really help me. :) Any and all help is so appreciated! :)

[Daishi]

http://www.ncsa.uiuc.edu/VR/VR/

I've taken a few classes in developing virtual reality programs. We used the facilities posted above. I wrote code with primarily CaveGL (very similar to OpenGL), using c++.

These sort of facilities are fun, but they're pretty useless currently. It is kind of sad.

Check out this guy too: http://www.eecg.toronto.edu/~mann/

-Fredric