Saturday, August 28, 2010

Assignment 2:- Group Thematic Project

stage 2

write an essay or a report of minimum 800 words about the topic that you have chosen.

theme:-
Virtual Reality in Creative Multimedia

What is "Creative Multimedia"? To begin understanding what it is, we have to clearly understand the definitions of the words separately. The definition of creativity is known to be the ability to create by originality and by expressiveness or the ability or power to create excellent product through imagination, and the ability to generate innovative ideas and manifest them from thought into reality and the definition of Multimedia is media and content that uses a combination of different content forms (Wikipedia). Creative Multimedia infuses the concepts of creativity with various forms of multimedia. It is the concept of multimedia communication either in the form of multimedia. It is the concept of multimedia communication either in the form of business, art, design, entertainment and education.

Multimedia includes a combination of text, audio, still images, animation, video and interactivity content forms. Multimedia can be separated into two categories, linear and non-linear. Linear content does not require any form of input from the audience, for example a theater screening. Non-linear content gives interactivity to its audience and makes them users, for example, a video game gives users the opportunity to control the progress of the game they play.

To expand on the creative side, the word originates from the Latin word "creo" which means to make or create. The creative process is the process that uses creative problem solving to discover new original ideas and concepts. It also includes reproducing existing ideas and improving them at the same time by inputting original and new concepts into it.

Creative Multimedia is something important as it can be used in various fields. It can be used in Advertising as a way to attract more clients and users in a specific product. In other fields suck as entertainment, it can be used to create new forms of experiences for people. Moreover, it can be used to create special effects to enhance certain forms of entertainment. Other than that, it can also be used to enhance the learning process. Using Creative Multimedia to help students to learn through"Edutainment", rather than just the traditional textbook reading and memorizing methods. Finally, it can be used in the field of engineering. For example, a flight simulator is used to train pilots instead of being a form of entertainment; this of course is a much less risky way of training pilots to fly planes. Next, the creative though process is something very important in this field. Not only does it help solve problems but the solutions produced are not stereotyped. This will highly benefit the creation of ideas or improvement of previous ones.

Virtual Reality as known as VR applies to computer-simulated environment that can simulate places in the real world and imaginary world too. The idea of Virtual Reality began well before the advent of the modern computer. According to history it has occurred over the past 40 years. Ivan Sutherland, Michael Noll and Myron Krueger are the pioneer in this industry. They all had their very own parts to play in the creation of 'modern-day' VR. Both popular culture and the science fiction genre have also profound effects on research as to the social implications to VR.

It plays an important role in creative multimedia especially in gaming field. It gives players a whole new level of experience while playing games. Players can feel kicks, punches, explosions, crashes and every blow through the Aura Interactor Virtual Reality Game Wear in the 90's. It has a chest and back harness which allows players to feel the impact. It is also compatible with the Sega Genesis and Super Nintendo Entertainment System, both are game consoles. For example, in the Mage: The Ascension role-playing game, the mage tradition of the Virtual Adepts is presented as the creators of VR. Its prime objective is to move deeper into Virtual Reality where scrapping physical bodies to improve it into better virtual ones. Also, the .hack series centers on a Virtual Reality video game. By demonstrating the adverse effects on human health and possible viruses have shown the potentially dangerous side of VR. Besides, Metal Gear Solid also bases heavily on VR usage, either as a part of the plot or simply to guide the players through training sessions.

Apart from that,Virtual Reality also influenced television programme and motion pictures ever since in the early 70's and 80's. The earliest example of VR on television is the Doctor Who serial "The Deadly Assassin". It was introduced a dream-like computer-generated reality or known as the Matrix was broadcast in 1976. A holodeck is a VR facility that helps users to create experience and recreate anything they desire. This facility was used in an American television series to showcase Star Trek: The Next Generation. Whereas in 1982, the first mainstream Hollywood picture to explore the idea of Virtual reality was Steven Lisberger's movie TRON. It has distinctive visual style and it was one of the first films that use the extensive computer graphics.

Mass media has been a great support and perhaps a great interference to Virtual Reality's development over the years. VR's potential overexposure in publishing the predictions, thus, built the expectations of the technology so high that impossible to achieve under the technology then others to date. Entertainment media reinforced the concepts with futuristic imagery from many generations beyond the contemporary capabilities.

In conclusions, Virtual Reality plays a big role in Creative Multimedia. This is because Virtual Reality brings in entertainment and unlocks our senses to the modern day technologies. Creative Multimedia too is versatile to any fields that can create new forms of experiences for people regardless in advertising, art or books. They widen people's knowledge and horizon regarding the modern technology that has evolved from time to time. Therefore, we cannot neglect the importance of Creative Multimedia that plays an important role to the modern society and technology.