Portable reality: Expanding available space

Summary form only given. All of the components for creating fully immersive virtual worlds have suddenly become ubiquitous and cheap, often built into devices that we have already in our pockets and on our desktops. These devices have everything they need to become state-of-the-art platforms for immersive games and virtual reality: powerful graphics, high-resolution displays, and precision sensors. Just add some optics, and now a responsive, fully immersive virtual reality platform can be built for next to nothing. And once we can do that, there's nothing to stop us from unleashing a flood of alternate and augmented worlds that can be colocated with our physical surroundings, anywhere and any time. More than just information or annotation, we can begin to imagine a multiplicity of inhabitable, immersive, interactive, networked environments that can be coordinated with our everyday lives. The coming proliferation of virtual and augmented worlds will make manifest the idea that there is far more to reality than we are normally aware of, and that there are countless virtual realms that can now be brought into conscious experience.