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A Word on Virtual Reality Applications Beyond Gaming
10 years ago
General
So, with VR finally upon us, is everyone becoming addicted and neglecting real life, like in the scary sci-fi stories writers have been giving us since at least the 1940's, such as Ray Bradbury's The Veldt? Not exactly.
While some use their virtual reality gear to enjoy VR enabled games like Elite Dangerous, Radial-G, and Alien Isolation on a regular basis (all available on Steam), others go on a VR gaming binge when they first get such equipment, and then watch their headsets collect dust as none of the currently available games kept their interest. But they wanted more VR experiences than a few games only recently altered to be compatible with VR, and the newer games made for VR from the ground up won't be out for months. What do?!?
I suggest remembering that VR doesn't have to just be about games. VR can provide all kinds of experiences. Frustratingly, many reviewers insist on calling any and all applications that you can run in VR "games", as if there is no distinction between experiences and games, just because a creation is rendered in VR.
Like life, VR can often be what you make of it, whether it's a relaxing ride from a balloon high in the sky during a rainstorm - https://share.oculus.com/app/therap.....ion-expereince
Or a horrific trip through the experience of being assaulted by terrible monsters, as in this demo out of Malaysia that the developers must have made to torture their enemies - https://www.wearvr.com/apps/dreadeye
Or one could experience strange new worlds through fractal art creations, as in the 360 degree, and sometimes in stereoscopic 3D, videos of Julius Horsthuis - http://www.julius-horsthuis.com/vr-projects/
And there's the developing Waifuverse coming from Japan for the especially lonely among us, full of young school girls for users to moles-, err, get to know better, as in the Summer Lesson demo from Bandai-Namco - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-E_WEgUDdYg
Could all this innocent fun lead to the usual alarming news stories and congressional scrutiny that exploitable hysteria over all new technology seems to help bring about?
Well, maybe not this time. While Oculus has left their version of the concept an open platform, having publicly stated that all development will be allowed regardless of subject matter, they have also been very careful to have a zero tolerance policy for overtly porny or controversial creations on their marketplace, just as Steam already does in their marketplace.
Steam will no doubt be the market Valve will setup for use with the HTC Vive which will be released around the same time as the Oculus Rift during the first quarter of the coming year. Meanwhile, the Summer Lesson demo was developed for Sony's PS4 based headset. That's alot of VR options suddenly on the scene, but they are all tethered to official content that will be censored, which should help keep governments and interest groups happy.
So, without direct support for, um, questionable content by HMD manufacturers, in order for congress critters to argue that VR must be regulated into oblivion, they would have to make a pretty broad argument against the gaming industry as a whole all over again, which they already did and therefore probably can't get as much mileage out of it yet another time.
With any luck, we can avoid the 60 Minutes segment on the dangers of VR, or the Fox News story on how VR will corrupt da childrens, or the congressional testimony by industry leaders ahead of new regulations that the Supreme Court will then need to debate before striking them down, such as happened when the Internet, as a public consumer platform, was new and they tried to pass the Communications Decency Act. People will see that the sky is not falling, and VR only offers potentially mind expanding and useful or fun experiences for so many, as an innocuous consumer product and nothing more.
But now, please excuse me while I pause for a strange interlude:
Just between you and me, VR has been a long time coming and actually does have the potential to skullfuck everyone. In its most impressive moments, it's that awesome and really could change everything. The involuntary reactions it can evoke from mind and body are really something, and we have only just started exploring the potential of it all.
VR was first funded by the Defense Department and the CIA, leading to the development of the first head mounted displays at MIT during the 1960's. They were so heavy that they had to be suspended from wires to be usable, but they still experimented with them all those decades ago.
Think about that for a moment. While the VR skeptics complain that VR is a mere fad, no different from the passing hype for 3D monitors we recently experienced, that will distract from better vidya game development, that's how long this has been coming, and with the push largely coming from agents of the government. Somehow, I don't think the government was thinking of games when they threw money at the concept nearly fifty years ago.
Yet games and military simulations have been linked for a while. The army approached Atari about one of their games in hopes of using it for tank simulations, with prototypes being developed for them by Atari. And the US Army uses a computer game to help promote enlistment to this day. The military-industrial complex has been deeply involved in simulation development with a concentration on military vehicles. As such, many of the early VR researchers were either government workers or contractors at one point or another in their careers.
This is why Sega worked with military contractor Lockheed Martin on some of their arcade hardware, because Lockheed had already been funded for the development of more advanced 3D through the military applications. Meanwhile, Valve, Google, and other corporations have had VR and augmented reality plans in place for decades, as revealed by various memos coming to light, cause they knew it would come about as a consumer option, it was just a question of when the remaining problems of realizing VR in the home would be solved, not whether or not it would happen.
Oculus just pushed the timetable ahead further than expected thanks to crowdfunding of a project, but it was always part of The Plan for many companies and governments. Anyone who still thinks that all these governments and companies have been dumping billions into VR just for giggles and games has not been paying attention. So, while we argue on-line about games, porn and VR consumer apps, the Powers That Be have had their own ideas about VR all along since before most of the people arguing were even born.
But I did not say this. I am not here. VR is just a harmlessly amusing toy for consumers to use to play VR Candy Crush that you need not be concerned about.
End of Interlude
If we can get past the hype, fears and potential hysteria about VR and its implications, we could all enjoy Angry Birds in VR in the future. But more importantly, alternative experiences that could be breathtaking and thought provoking, without the mechanics of a game, could increasingly be available as well.
For example, one of the apps available on Oculus Share includes a simulation of what it was like to be in the World Trade Center when it was destroyed on 9/11. Just think, this could open up possibilities in disaster tourism not previously imagined.
We could experience first hand what it was like to burn alive during the Hindenburg Disaster, or sink with the Titanic (Actually, a detailed Titanic simulator is already in development for VR. Try the demo! - http://www.titanichg.com/), or be swept away by a tsunami in Japan. I recall surviving roughly over 30 earthquakes in a single week during my time in Central America some years back, and I would love to be able to share that experience with others with fewer quakes in their backgrounds as, believe me, it really is quite mind expanding.
VR has so much potential beyond games, so seeing mostly gamers with an interest in it and leading the arguments about it is kind of disappointing, even though I do love games, as I suspect that people don't see the forest for the trees. But I think we will quickly move past this stage of VR's development, and soon enter a brave new world of exciting experiences that VR will make possible.
Rave
While some use their virtual reality gear to enjoy VR enabled games like Elite Dangerous, Radial-G, and Alien Isolation on a regular basis (all available on Steam), others go on a VR gaming binge when they first get such equipment, and then watch their headsets collect dust as none of the currently available games kept their interest. But they wanted more VR experiences than a few games only recently altered to be compatible with VR, and the newer games made for VR from the ground up won't be out for months. What do?!?
I suggest remembering that VR doesn't have to just be about games. VR can provide all kinds of experiences. Frustratingly, many reviewers insist on calling any and all applications that you can run in VR "games", as if there is no distinction between experiences and games, just because a creation is rendered in VR.
Like life, VR can often be what you make of it, whether it's a relaxing ride from a balloon high in the sky during a rainstorm - https://share.oculus.com/app/therap.....ion-expereince
Or a horrific trip through the experience of being assaulted by terrible monsters, as in this demo out of Malaysia that the developers must have made to torture their enemies - https://www.wearvr.com/apps/dreadeye
Or one could experience strange new worlds through fractal art creations, as in the 360 degree, and sometimes in stereoscopic 3D, videos of Julius Horsthuis - http://www.julius-horsthuis.com/vr-projects/
And there's the developing Waifuverse coming from Japan for the especially lonely among us, full of young school girls for users to moles-, err, get to know better, as in the Summer Lesson demo from Bandai-Namco - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-E_WEgUDdYg
Could all this innocent fun lead to the usual alarming news stories and congressional scrutiny that exploitable hysteria over all new technology seems to help bring about?
Well, maybe not this time. While Oculus has left their version of the concept an open platform, having publicly stated that all development will be allowed regardless of subject matter, they have also been very careful to have a zero tolerance policy for overtly porny or controversial creations on their marketplace, just as Steam already does in their marketplace.
Steam will no doubt be the market Valve will setup for use with the HTC Vive which will be released around the same time as the Oculus Rift during the first quarter of the coming year. Meanwhile, the Summer Lesson demo was developed for Sony's PS4 based headset. That's alot of VR options suddenly on the scene, but they are all tethered to official content that will be censored, which should help keep governments and interest groups happy.
So, without direct support for, um, questionable content by HMD manufacturers, in order for congress critters to argue that VR must be regulated into oblivion, they would have to make a pretty broad argument against the gaming industry as a whole all over again, which they already did and therefore probably can't get as much mileage out of it yet another time.
With any luck, we can avoid the 60 Minutes segment on the dangers of VR, or the Fox News story on how VR will corrupt da childrens, or the congressional testimony by industry leaders ahead of new regulations that the Supreme Court will then need to debate before striking them down, such as happened when the Internet, as a public consumer platform, was new and they tried to pass the Communications Decency Act. People will see that the sky is not falling, and VR only offers potentially mind expanding and useful or fun experiences for so many, as an innocuous consumer product and nothing more.
But now, please excuse me while I pause for a strange interlude:
Just between you and me, VR has been a long time coming and actually does have the potential to skullfuck everyone. In its most impressive moments, it's that awesome and really could change everything. The involuntary reactions it can evoke from mind and body are really something, and we have only just started exploring the potential of it all.
VR was first funded by the Defense Department and the CIA, leading to the development of the first head mounted displays at MIT during the 1960's. They were so heavy that they had to be suspended from wires to be usable, but they still experimented with them all those decades ago.
Think about that for a moment. While the VR skeptics complain that VR is a mere fad, no different from the passing hype for 3D monitors we recently experienced, that will distract from better vidya game development, that's how long this has been coming, and with the push largely coming from agents of the government. Somehow, I don't think the government was thinking of games when they threw money at the concept nearly fifty years ago.
Yet games and military simulations have been linked for a while. The army approached Atari about one of their games in hopes of using it for tank simulations, with prototypes being developed for them by Atari. And the US Army uses a computer game to help promote enlistment to this day. The military-industrial complex has been deeply involved in simulation development with a concentration on military vehicles. As such, many of the early VR researchers were either government workers or contractors at one point or another in their careers.
This is why Sega worked with military contractor Lockheed Martin on some of their arcade hardware, because Lockheed had already been funded for the development of more advanced 3D through the military applications. Meanwhile, Valve, Google, and other corporations have had VR and augmented reality plans in place for decades, as revealed by various memos coming to light, cause they knew it would come about as a consumer option, it was just a question of when the remaining problems of realizing VR in the home would be solved, not whether or not it would happen.
Oculus just pushed the timetable ahead further than expected thanks to crowdfunding of a project, but it was always part of The Plan for many companies and governments. Anyone who still thinks that all these governments and companies have been dumping billions into VR just for giggles and games has not been paying attention. So, while we argue on-line about games, porn and VR consumer apps, the Powers That Be have had their own ideas about VR all along since before most of the people arguing were even born.
But I did not say this. I am not here. VR is just a harmlessly amusing toy for consumers to use to play VR Candy Crush that you need not be concerned about.
End of Interlude
If we can get past the hype, fears and potential hysteria about VR and its implications, we could all enjoy Angry Birds in VR in the future. But more importantly, alternative experiences that could be breathtaking and thought provoking, without the mechanics of a game, could increasingly be available as well.
For example, one of the apps available on Oculus Share includes a simulation of what it was like to be in the World Trade Center when it was destroyed on 9/11. Just think, this could open up possibilities in disaster tourism not previously imagined.
We could experience first hand what it was like to burn alive during the Hindenburg Disaster, or sink with the Titanic (Actually, a detailed Titanic simulator is already in development for VR. Try the demo! - http://www.titanichg.com/), or be swept away by a tsunami in Japan. I recall surviving roughly over 30 earthquakes in a single week during my time in Central America some years back, and I would love to be able to share that experience with others with fewer quakes in their backgrounds as, believe me, it really is quite mind expanding.
VR has so much potential beyond games, so seeing mostly gamers with an interest in it and leading the arguments about it is kind of disappointing, even though I do love games, as I suspect that people don't see the forest for the trees. But I think we will quickly move past this stage of VR's development, and soon enter a brave new world of exciting experiences that VR will make possible.
Rave
I think this is a prime time for VR to be realized. The technology is where it needs to be. My fear is that we have multiple competing VR platforms all coming out at the same time. If games are not 100% cross-compatible between them, the headsets could end up eating each other's audiences; instead of one successful product, you will end up with multiple failures.
As for VR having potential 'beyond games,' I think it needs to be said that 'games' is already an almost-uselessly broad term to begin with. Is sinking with the Titanic a 'game'? If not, then why is Dear Esther a 'game'? In both cases, you're just waiting for things to happen around you, except one has VR and the other does not. One may be telling a real story, but what if you wanted to make a simulation where you're just walking around a space station, as a VR showcase? Is that a game, because it's fictional? Where is the line drawn? There probably isn't one to begin with.
I think the critics who note things like the 3D monitors and the Wii and such may be off base, as VR is very different from those things. Those other things added stuff to the same old gaming experience, while VR all but completely changes it and expands its possibilities, which is a horse of a different color. Those who speak of VR in terms of being a gimmick have usually not experienced it yet.
Some early VR apps merely challenge gamers to not flinch (such as the demo Don't Let Go) while awful things happen to them in ways that feel disturbingly real. That simply would not work outside of the VR experience. Even mildly creative developers will no doubt see the potential there, as having an almost direct line to a brain's involuntary responses must be a developer's dream come true. They finally have us where they want us - tied to a chair in a filthy basement with no ability to look away while a monster approaches to eat our faces.
I think the other concern though is whether or not consumers will really want to embrace VR to begin with, even with all its impressive qualities. As amazing as it will no doubt be as an experience for most people at first, I have to admit that its appeal may have some practical limitations for those who are not enthusiasts or hardcore computing or gaming fans. Many folks just want to use games for relaxation or a quick passing of the time during their commute or before bed. VR does not suit this very well, for the same reasons mentioned above about the experiential aspect of it. Hardcore gamers may dream of full immersion, but a lot of people really do just want a quick game of Candy Crush. iTunes became popular due to being convenient, not due to providing the best sound quality. If consumers again choose convenience and relaxation over immersion, then VR may indeed be very limited in its adoption.
But then again, who knows? People of the future may look back on non-vr media the same way that we now look back on silent movies, even though people back in the day wondered if talkies would ever catch on.
The question of competing platforms is far more troubling, though. These things are already expensive, they're already super complicated (people with vision problems need to calibrate their headsets accordingly), and there's already so damn many of them. Not just the Oculus and the Vive; there are a ton of new peripherals being developed, many of them even more different than those two. There's far more sellers than there ever could be buyers; and if games end up only being compatible with one of them, the market split could bring it all down.
They can't block all of the content all of the time, they can only block some of the content some of the time. That being said, there is already 'overtly porny' content on these HMDs, perhaps not on the ones that have lent themselves to the Moral Guard filters but they're definitely there. And this type of content actually HELPS VR instead of hinders it.
Consider VHS when it was starting out. I'm sure if you look on youtube, you'll find a feels-laiden clip of Mr. Rogers defending the platform by giving his message about how children needed his show out of all the other content on television at the time and winning out... but the thing that helped make VHS household was the concept of being able to buy a racy video and watching it in your own home... as apposed to say, watching it in a theater. With a crowd. and possibly being arrested for masturbating in public. Sex sells. It can sound pessimistic but, when you look at it like this and consider the alternatives in absence of this technology, it's honestly the groundwork that may keep it from going under in the first few years of it's being on the open market.
When it comes to new media there's always a Batman and Joker thing it, a two-face thing to it. The 'Moral Good' cannot exist without the 'Moral Bad'. The 'good' of new technology tends to have a slow pace about it where when people post an idea, society at large says something to the effect of "Oh sure, maybe later. We're working on this thing now." Where as the 'bad' just goes for it from the hip, tossing ideas at the wall until something sticks tossing the same idea at a wall until it start to hit from the right angle.
What better way to do that type of experimentation than games? Just like VarVicia says, focusing on the one thing that this tech can do well can keep it afloat. It's how those games come out that really matters. The funny thing is, some games (and media that bases itself on the premise of games) talk about VR and it's potential applications. In Metal Gear, across the whole series, it explores how the experiences of this media compares to reality and how the line separating them just blurs more and more as time passes. In one anime, Sword Art Online (cue groaning), you see a micro society build up out of the game when the players are effectively separated from reality. Later in the same series, it talks about how the VR system can help the disabled experience something other than the hospitals and sicknesses they're dealing with in reality--with all it's benefits hinging in part on the fact that people kept playing the games.
And I don't think I've heard anything about how HMDs might affect MMOs like World of Warcraft or, more importantly, Second Life. Mainstream is simply aware that Second Life exists, but what happens to that awareness when a Virtual Reality headset allows you to shape and interact with a play space as you see fit? What happens when you can effectively start buying and selling the near-limitless things that you can create for actual money? "Second Life" is simply a title of the platform for many people now but for some it's fitting. VR may promise to make that form of reality more common.
I have not watched Sword Art Online, but I can't help but be aware of it, as people keep mentioning it as one of the experiences they want to have with this new VR technology. Which strikes me as odd as I thought that was the game that kills you in RL if you die in it, but oh well. I'm sure there are people who want to play with the box from Hellraiser too. But in any case, SAO is one of the few recent mass media products that has been getting kids to think about VR lately, which is kind of a service so near a time when we are starting to have actual consumer VR. On the other hand, such imaginings may create unrealistic expectations for this early round of the tech, even though the anime reportedly mentions that the world envisioned has graphical artifacts and such and is not holodeck-real in its appearance for the players of SAO.
I'm not sure how VR may change our perceptions of reality, but there are all kinds of odd possibilities. If VR can take us most anyplace in an experiential way, and augmented reality can place any seemingly 3D object overlayed onto our actual reality, then our very ideas about experience and how it works may be altered, and entire industries changed with it. Or, people may get bored with the sense of presence that VR provides due to general issues with comfort, convenience and cost that the industry takes another 30 years or so to get past. It's hard to say what will happen, but I suspect that the genie may be out of the bottle, and VR will continue in some form or another this time for a while.
I'd like to think of the Sword Art Online portion as less of an invitation to create games that will kill players IRL. That's just a plot point for the story. The unrealistic things that you mention are what's more important--It doesn't represent what VR will be once it's on the market it, like any other bit of sci-fi, represents where the technology could go if we work towards it. At least, that's how I'd like to see it.
My greatest hope for VR and it's cousin AR is that it'll be like the Internet when it first started, that in the first decade of it's inception to the social market people either don't care or care too much and create a bubble that'll eventually pop... but also introduce the first adapters of the technology how it can best be used and how easily it can fail. My hope is that this tech will be the sleeper hit that'll bring about the second coming of Steve Jobs and change human interaction in ways we could only bat a barely-reaching cat's paw at.