Virtual reality

A virtual reality (VR) environment provides a 3d replacement for the visual, auditory, tactile, and other senses. Initially it was popular with gamers who used headsets and gloves to provide the visual and auditory interactions, then contact-lens-based systems and implanted retinal-imaging devices. With the advent of direct stimulation of nerve pathways using neural implants, and fully immersive holographic environments like holodecks and holosuites, it moved on from gaming to a wide variety of pleasure, scientific, medical, architectural, software design and other intellectual pursuits.

The term virch was initially used for electronic VR as opposed to real-life flesh experiences. Now it is blurred as VR can be fully and physically interactive. A vircher is a person who is typically addicted to VR and sometimes use virtual drugs which can be administered neurally. Virchophobia is the irrational fear of virches or virchers.

Once a virch enters a VR world, it is referred to as a virchworld which with sufficient complexity are regarded as artificial worlds or cybercosms. As such, a virchuniverse is a large aggregation or collection of many interconnected virchworlds, all sharing the same ontology and lay-out to make intervirchal travel easy. Virchuniverses are regarded as artificial universes. The sum of all VR worlds, AR worlds, and the Internet, is sometimes called a metaverse.

Virchers living in virchuniverses may also be software or brain uploads, or AI sims (simulations with various levels of sapience). Together with the biological virchers, they make a complex environment that mimics real-life and the distinction can often be blurred or invisible, creating second lives for those unhappy with real life.

Compared with Real Life (RL) and Augmented Reality (AR), VR is cut off from reality.

Simulated reality (SR) is reality simulated by advanced (quantum) computers and generally indistinguishable from "true" reality especially from inhabitants that may or may not know or suspect that they live inside a simulation. VR in comparison is easily distinguished from reality.

A dream or one's subconscious can be considered a virtual world. With neural implants a dream can actually manifest into a virchworld and with linked holographic projectors can be viewed and recorded.

Astronomer Paul Davies once noted: ''“Eventually, entire virtual worlds will be created inside computers, their conscious inhabitants unaware that they are the simulated products of somebody else’s technology. For every original world, there will be a stupendous number of available virtual worlds—some of which would even include machines simulating virtual worlds of their own, and so on ad infinitum.”''

Examples of VR:
 * Obsidian Platinum in Supergirl used lenses that enabled the users to enter VR, though this was secretly a plot by a criminal organization to trap them inside
 * Cyberpunk's Braindance is immersive VR where the user ‘jacks in’ cybernetically to a headset. It puts them into a coma-like state, where they will relive a sequence recorded from someone else’s memories.
 * Ready Player One is about a VR entertainment universe in 2045 known as the OASIS
 * The Matrix is a vast SR created by artificially intelligent machines.
 * Inception is about a thief who steals information by infiltrating the subconscious. He creates artificial thoughts that are so realistic that once they are implanted in a person's mind, the person thinks these are his own thoughts.
 * The Lawnmower Man is about a research scientist who uses VR to jumpstart the mental and physical development of his mentally handicapped gardener.
 * Tron is about a hacker sucked into a VR and tries to escape with the help of Tron, a computer program within that VR.