An artificial environment created with computer hardwareand software and presented to the user in such a way that itappears and feels like a real environment. To "enter" avirtual reality, a user does special gloves, earphones, andgoggles, all of which receive their input from the computersystem. In this way, at least three of the five senses arecontrolled by the computer. In addition to feeding sensoryinput to the user, the devices also monitor the user'sactions. The goggles, for example, track how the eyesmove and respond accordingly by sending new video input.Virtual reality systems require extremely expensivehardware and software and are confined mostly to researchlaboratories. The termvirtual reality is sometimes usedmore generally to refer to any virtual world represented in acomputer, even if it's just a text-based or graphicalrepresentation.