Mechanisms for providing environment information to a visually impaired person (VIP) are provided, the mechanisms including: receiving information relating to a direction from a VIP when in an environment using at least one hardware processor; identifying at least one object in the direction from the VIP when in the environment; and providing environment information regarding at least one object to the VIP. In some of these embodiments, the environment is a virtual environment. In some of these embodiments, the information relating to the direction is a bearing relative to a reference from the VIP. In some of these embodiments, the information is image data. In some of these embodiments, the method further comprises: determining that the direction has changed; and stopping providing the environment information in response to determining that the direction has changed.
