VIRTUAL REALITY FOR METAL ARC WELDING: A REVIEW AND DESIGN CONCEPT

Virtual Reality (VR) creates computer generated environment that facilitates multidisciplinary collaborative engineering. Computer graphics becomes very much user friendly for an average user. It allows people to see the surrounding world in new dimension and to experience objects that are not feasible in real life environment. Virtual reality helps into the world where one can interact with computer based simulation instead of just watching a picture on the monitor screen. Virtual reality environment is based on visual experiences and computer screen or stereoscopic displays. Virtual environment creates users to interact with the devices such as a keyboard, a mouse, or a wired glove, goggles etc. Virtual Reality technology may provide an effective and innovative solution, and various complex high-tech VR systems for training. The paper aims at providing a review on virtual reality, virtual reality systems, virtual reality applications, challenges in virtual reality, virtual welding and Virtual Reality Modelling Language (VRML). The paper also emphasizes on conceptual design of virtual welding platform.