If you’ve been focused on the ongoing tragedy that is the American political system, you may not have realized that we are about to experience a new technological revolution, one that has the possibility of changing the way we interact with each other, share information, learn, and play.

Next week, hundreds of thousands of people will begin receiving their consumer versions of the Oculus Rift and HTC Vive, two competing systems for transporting people into a computer-generated reality. These systems consist of headsets with high-resolution, wide field of view 3D displays, coupled with tracking systems to measure your head and body movements. The HTC Vive also comes with hand controllers that can be tracked with sub-millimeter accuracy, and room sensors that will track your entire body, also with sub-millimeter accuracy.

The holy grail of VR is to instil a sense of “presence” in the user; i.e., to trick your brain and senses into believing that you are actually in the world projected in front of your eyes, and not just watching a 3D screen. Achieving presence requires a lot of tricks: The displays must respond instantly, with extremely low “latency” and high refresh rates; The resolution must be high enough for your eyes to perceive the scene as real; And the field of view wide enough to encompass your peripheral vision. Body and head tracking has to be accurate below a millimeter. Sounds have to be positional, and change as you move your head. All of these techniques trick your brain into accepting the virtual reality as though it were real.