Skip to main content
Glite Dictionary
🪞 Optical reflection 💻 Digital picture
virtual image

virtual image

5.3
A picture a computer makes for a game or simulation
  • noun
  • Specialized
translation icon : imagen virtual
  • The architect created a virtual image of the building to help clients visualize the design before construction.

Examples

  • PHOTO (COLOR): Right, a virtual image of Bronze Age walls buried ten to thirteen feet deep at Helike.

    Academic text (2004)

  • In the virtual reality game, players could see a virtual image of their character interacting with the environment.

  • And finally, you use the symbol Big L for the distance between the virtual image and the I.

  • Using advanced software, the designer rendered a detailed virtual image that depicted the interior of the house.

How Computer-Generated

rendering
  • Specialized
20 5.8
virtual image
  • Specialized
5.3
to photograph
202 2.1

Surface Forms

virtual image singular
virtual images plural

Morphology

virtual + image

The phrase is directly compositional: 'virtual' (not physically real / existing in a simulation) modifies 'image' (a picture), yielding an image that exists in or is produced by a virtual environment. This adjective+noun pattern is a regular, cross-linguistically common combination, so a B1 learner who knows both constituents can reliably infer the meaning.

Etymology

The noun virtual image in computers means a picture made inside a program, not taken by a real camera. The virtual part shows it exists only in the machine, so it means 'an image made by a computer'.