In an interview for the New Scientist magazine, Michael McGuigan from Brookhaven National Laboratory said that in just a few years we will get the chance to experience a world similar to Matrix, where you could not tell reality from virtual reality.
Michael McGuigan statement is based on the fact that scientists were able to recreate due to the processing speed of the Blue Gene supercomputer a virtual beam that mimics the effect of natural light so good you couldn’t tell it isn’t real.

It seems that scientists are now concerned on moving towards more powerful algorithms, which will increase the computer speed processing for those effects, meaning that in the near future advanced virtual effects will not be produced exclusively by room size supercomputers.

But how will a virtual world exist without virtual people?
So far, no computer or AI could pass as a human in a conversation, but now researchers are working on a new project called Sensitive Artificial Listener.
SAL is modeled on Oprah’s behavior and is capable to keep a conversation going for more than a half-hour with the help of its social skill such as nodes, smiles and different tones of voice.
Not only that, but scientists are also working on other projects such as touch simulation, so the idea of meeting a virtual person or having a virtual glass of wine might not be so far off.