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There may be no phrase in the English language that has been prostituted as ruthlessly as virtual reality. When first coined-arguably in the early '80s, arguably by dreadlocked techno-visionary Jaron Lanier-the term connoted a fully immersive, nearly hallucinatory experience in which a person could plug in to endless imaginary worlds. The devices needed to do so depended upon which futurist was doing the talking: Most foresaw some kind of video helmet with which to see and some kind of wired glove with which to touch. The more horny slavered over the prospect of full-body VR suits. It was all pretty much sci-fi stuff; today, TV shows such as VR.5 continue to push that quasi-mystical vision. Yet there's a whole industry out there trying to turn VR into entertainment fact, and in bringing the beast to market, the technology is taking on a tamer aspect. ''You won't be fully immersed,'' admits Toni Emerson of the Human Interface Technology Lab at the University of Washington. ''But you don't need to be fully immersed to have a good time with a videogame.'' Granted, videogames are only one aspect of current virtual reality. The phrase can mean on-line Multi-User Domains (MUDs)-rococo Internet universes in which participants create detailed rooms out of mere text, then wander around talking to each other. It can describe a souped-up carnival attraction like Mindblender, which took folks at Woodstock '94 on a roller-coaster ride through Peter Gabriel's ''Kiss That Frog'' video. And it can mean arcade installations such as BattleTech, where, for around eight bucks a pop, you can thwump futuristic robots from a fiendishly detailed cockpit parked in a shopping mall. But the real dogfighting is going on over your rec room, where computer games have the promise to turn not only immersive but three-dimensional and capable of head tracking (i.e., when you turn your noggin, the image moves accordingly). The big guns are rushing ahead: Sega is pressing forward with its SegaVR helmet despite setbacks (rumors persist that test users suffered ''alternate-world disorder'' symptoms like nausea and headaches), but Atari is planning a head-mounted device (HMD) for the end of this year, and Nintendo is similarly rushing out Virtual Boy, a kind of newfangled View-Master that lets you play primitive 3-D games. At least four smaller companies have already released HMDs in the under- $1,000 range. Like VictorMaxx's CyberMaxx helmet ( 246, Oct. 28), most of them are meant to plug directly into your PC, and they come with a bewildering array of patch cords and/or driver cards to install. The payoff? Generally blurry visuals and a neckache from wearing pounds of hardware as a hat. The one VR tchotchke that seems poised to break into the mainstream is Virtual i/O's i-glasses! Ignore the frenzied name: This is one of the first HMDs that doesn't weigh a ton (eight ounces, actually) and that only looks mildly silly when you put it on. More to the point, i-glasses! (okay, I'm gonna stop with the exclamation point now) enable you to plug into a TV set as well as a PC. Which means that, at the most crass, utilitarian level, you can watch Letterman while your spouse sleeps. I don't know about you, but I make most of my buying decisions at the crass, utilitarian level. You can buy i-glasses in two configurations: $599 gets you the TV and VCR version; $799 enables you to hook up to a PC as well. The latter includes a clip-on head-tracking attachment and several computer games (such as Descent and Heretic) rejiggered for 3-D, head-tracking capability-or both. Where the i-glasses scrimp is with field of view. While other HMDs deliver wraparound visuals, the i-glasses experience is not unlike watching a TV or computer screen floating in space. The trade-off is that visual quality is far higher than that of competing headsets: not so crystalline that you can read text on your computer screen, but fine for most games. TV images look impressively sharp, too, and if you can get your hands on some 3-D videotapes, you're in for a treat. There may, in fact, be a lot of 3-D TV coming down the pike: Not for nothing is Virtual i/O backed by cable giant TCI. Is this virtual reality as Jaron Lanier envisioned it? Nah, the commercial genius of i-glasses is that it's little more than a fancy TV set. As with everything else in new media, home VR won't take off until people start creating specific, innovative content for it. We may have a long wait. ''This industry is being driven by technologists and financiers right now,'' says musician and VR artist Thomas Dolby, ''and until that changes, there will be a real risk of the public feeling ripped off by all the hype surrounding the next $700 box they're supposed to need.'' *
