It is a text-based online virtual reality system to which multiple users are connected at the same time.
It also could be considered a very early virtual reality system.
The equipment in this system costs only about $25,000, as opposed to $250,000 for most virtual reality systems.
Its main application is a photorealistic material rendering of objects in virtual reality systems.
Such virtual reality systems are already in existence today and foreshadow far more powerful developments likely within a few years.
But computerized virtual reality systems are starting to let doctors and nurses learn by doing - without doing it to a live patient.
Apart from its use as a game engine, it is used for virtual reality systems, serious games and visualization.
Though no real estate brokers have yet developed a virtual reality system to sell homes, such an process isn't a great leap from existing uses.
Useful artificial reality systems are still years from, well, reality.
Virtual reality systems allow users to feel and act as if they are inside a computer-generated scene.