VR finally feels real in 2016. With PlayStation VR, HTC Vive, Oculus Rift out alongside cheaper headsets Samsung Gear VR and Google Cardboard, you have yourself a huge selection of both high-end and mobile games to choose from.
There are more game developers than ever before learning the ins and outs of VR development, meaning there's an influx of games hitting the arena. With Oculus Touch on the horizon you can expect even more titles to immerse you deeper in the game.
 

How does VR work? How does wearable tech make you think you're standing on Mars when you're actually about to bump into the kitchen counter?

VR headsets like Oculus Rift and PlayStation VR are often referred to as HMDs and all that means is that they are head mounted displays. Even with no audio or hand tracking, holding up Google Cardboard to place your smartphone's display in front of your face can be enough to get you half-immersed in a virtual world.

The goal of the hardware is to create what appears to be a life size, 3D virtual environment without the boundaries we usually associate with TV or computer screens. So whichever way you look, the screen mounted to your face follows you.

 

VR headsets use either two feeds sent to one display or two LCD displays, one per eye. There are also lenses which are placed between your eyes and the pixels which is why the devices are often called goggles.

These lenses focus and reshape the picture for each eye and create a stereoscopic 3D image by angling the two 2D images to mimic how each of our two eyes views the world ever-so-slightly differently.

Head tracking means that when you wear a VR headset, the picture in front of you shifts as you look up, down and side to side or angle your head. A system called 6DoF (six degrees of freedom) plots your head in terms of your x, y and z axis to measure head movements forward and backwards, side to side and shoulder to shoulder, otherwise known as pitch, yaw and roll.  There's a few different internal components which can be used in a head-tracking system such as a gyroscope, accelerometer and a magnetometer.

Finally, headphones can be used to increase the sense of immersion. Binaural or 3D audio can be used by app and game developers to tap into VR headsets' head-tracking technology to take advantage of this and give the wearer the sense that sound is coming from behind, to the side of them or in the distance. 

In Hamburg was held one of the first surgeries using Augmented Reality technology. The medical team of Professor Karl Oldhafer did the surgery with the aid of a tablet, so surgeons viewing information on the planning of surgery and might have more control at the time of the procedure.

During surgery, the liver was shot by a tablet, which superimposed the body image in three dimensions on a similar model. This feature helps locate critical structures such as tumors and vessels.
In practice the process works as follows: they are made organ imaging before surgery, allowing a complete reconstruction of the image in 3D on the computer.
With Augmented Reality technology can project the image on the tablet screen on the images being filmed at the time of surgery, this enables the precise location of the parts to be fixed.

Virtual reality (VR) typically refers to computer technologies that use software to generate realistic images, sounds and other sensations that replicate a real environment (or create an imaginary setting), and simulate a user's physical presence in this environment, by enabling the user to interact with this space and any objects depicted therein using specialized display screens or projectors and other devices. VR has been defined as "...a realistic and immersive simulation of a three-dimensional environment, created using interactive software and hardware, and experienced or controlled by movement of the body" or as an "immersive, interactive experience generated by a computer". A person using virtual reality equipment is typically able to "look around" the artificial world, move about in it and interact with features or items that are depicted on a screen or in goggles. Virtual realities artificially create sensory experiences, which can include sight, touch, hearing, and, less commonly, smell. Most 2016-era virtual realities are displayed either on a computer monitor, a projector screen, or with a virtual reality headset (also called head-mounted display or HMD). HMDs typically take the form of head-mounted goggles with a screen in front of the eyes. Some simulations include additional sensory information and provide sounds through speakers or headphones. VR comes in a few different forms. There's the cheap headset that works with your phone and there's the much more expensive option that requires a powerful PC or gaming console and some space to move around.