Virtual reality isn't just for gaming - it could transform mental health treatment

The results of our experiment paint a very striking picture of the power of therapy involving VR in treating patients with persecutory delusions

If you haven't yet heard about Oculus Rift, chances are you soon will. Virtual reality (VR) headset technology - in the form of the Oculus and its main competitor the HTC Vive, both of which have just been launched on the consumer market - is about to make the leap into the mainstream. For the gaming industry, big bucks are in the offing. Facebook paid 2 billion to acquire Oculus Rift ; the returns, one imagines, could swiftly dwarf that figure.

VR may be about to transform gaming, but the technology dates back to the late 1960s and the so-called Sword of Damocles. Bulky and relatively unsophisticated though it was, the main elements of VR were all present in the Sword. A computer generated an image, a display system presented the sensory information and a tracker fed back the user's position and orientation in order to update the image. For the user, sensory data from the natural world was superseded by information about an imaginary world that changed in response to their actions. The result was what you'd experience with Oculus Rift or the Vive today: a "sense of presence" in an interactive, three-dimensional virtual world.