Book list
From Booklist, Copyright © American Library Association. Used with permission.

Virtual reality gear has come a long way from the primitive flight simulators that helped train pilots as far back as WWII. Now, high-speed computers can project images to a headset-wearing user as fast as 90 frames a second, creating a startlingly vivid sense of presence the feeling of actual, lived experience in another environment. With his Stanford University-based Virtual Human Interactions Lab, Bailenson has spearheaded the adoption of virtual reality (VR) in medicine, business, and, most recently, professional sports. He begins this fascinating study of innovative VR technology with an account of veteran NFL quarterback Carson Palmer's dramatically improved pass-completion ratio via VR training. In addition to peddling VR's obvious potential for the entertainment industry, Bailenson catalogs some other surprising uses: virtual field trips for school children, reducing PTSD by revisiting traumatic experiences, alleviating pain in post-surgery and burn-unit patients. While Bailenson focuses more on laboratory studies than futuristic speculation, everyone with an interest in the digital realm, including technology entrepreneurs and gaming enthusiasts, will find his work thrillingly prophetic.--Hays, Carl Copyright 2018 Booklist

Kirkus
Copyright © Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

An expert on the subject explores virtual reality "as the potent and relatively young technologymigrates from industrial and research laboratories to living rooms across the world."Clunky but still spectacular today, virtual reality is unquestionably the Next Big Thing. Bailenson (Communication/Stanford Univ.; co-author: Infinite Reality: Avatars, Eternal Life, New Worlds, and the Dawn of the Virtual Revolution, 2011, etc.), the founding director of the Virtual Human Interaction Lab, delivers a lucid account of how VR works, today's applications (mostly games and education), ongoing research, and its dazzling future. "VR is not some augmentation of a previously existing medium," writes the author, "like adding 3D to movies, or color to television. It's an entirely new medium, with its own unique characteristics and psychological effects, and it will utterly change how we interact with the (real) world around us, and with other people." Wearing a helmet with a screen inside and perhaps other devices such as sensor-equipped gloves, a user enters a seemingly real environment and can interact with it. Since people learn better doing than by watching, VR is already teaching by allowing subjects to walk under oceans and through forests, treating PTSD by re-creating the traumatic event (simply imagining it doesn't work as well), and relieving pain by intense, immersive distraction. Hollywood has taken notice. A working scientist, Bailenson resists the temptation to convert tantalizing laboratory results into revolutionary breakthroughs, and he does not ignore VR's downsides, from simple eyestrain to "simulator sickness" to an ominous blurring between the real and virtual worlds. Producing fake news becomes a snap, and it can teach nasty as well as valuable skills. At least one mass murderer used VR to practice. The "killer app" for VR will be the ability to deal with other people in virtual space. Like miracle cures and a perfect alternate world, it's inevitablebut not yet.A sensible, thoroughly satisfying overview of the next quantum leap in digital technology. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Library Journal
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Virtual Reality (VR) is a psychologically powerful medium that allows people to have any experience at the push of a button. Bailenson (communications, Stanford Univ.), founding director of Stanford's Virtual Human Interaction Lab, discusses the purposes, uses, and wonders of VR through a first-person perspective citing decades of research. As with any technology, there are negative as well as positive impacts. The negatives of VR include small side effects such as eye strain but also bigger ramifications such as certain behavior modeling. Bailenson also provides thorough explorations of the benefits, including those for sports training and pain management. In fact, the medical uses are extensive; while not yet medically sanctioned, VR can be used as a distraction from dental anxieties or burn treatments. Also, a positive spin on the behavior modeling aspect is that VR can increase empathy by allowing people to walk in another person's shoes. Bailenson has done a considerable amount of VR research himself, but he also quotes researchers such as psychologist Stanley Milgram, journalist Daniel Grossman, and other experts. -VERDICT This firsthand perspective makes for an inviting personal account; readers will enjoy the explanations behind this newly popular technology.-Natalie Browning, -Longwood Univ. Lib., Farmville, VA © Copyright 2017. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.