SSES Gästskribent: How close is virtual reality to our reality?
By Guest at 19 March, 2008, 1:41 pm
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Last December, a professor at Indiana University created a buzz when he published his book predicting the exodus of the population to virtual worlds such as Second Life. Dr Edward Castranova added that everyone will be involved in a virtual environment within ten years. He said in an interview: “My guess is that the impact on the real world really is going to involve folks disappearing from reality in a lot of places where we see them”.
In recent years, virtual worlds have become mainstream as they evolved from massively multiplayer role playing games. The hype surrounding Second Life and contemporary online virtual worlds masked the fact that virtual environments have been around for more than 30 years. People had come to expect a lot from the technology as its popularity grew with the increased production of virtual reality (VR) goggles and head mounted displays in the 1980s. While those devices are still used today in immersive environments developed in research and academic institutions, they never really penetrated the public sphere. The advent of the web however, allowed a slightly different form of VR to surface – that of virtual worlds.
Nevertheless, the VR that is expected from the masses – the full senses experience comprising sight, sound, touch and taste, have not yet intersected our daily lives. Or have they? Swedish start-up Curictus provides serious game systems for stroke rehabilitation that hinge on stereographic technology and haptics, the simulation of touch in virtual environments. Patients could feel the weight and bump of a tennis ball on their virtual racquet, as they look into a virtual environment with stereographic glasses that enhance depth perception. French company Total Immersion is also bringing VR into reality, spicing up presentations and events with augmented reality (check out their augmented Harry Potter Sorting Hat and their presentation at Demo 2007.
Once a fabrication of the imagination, holographs and gesture-based interaction are no longer mere subjects of science fiction. They are here, although not accessible to everyone. While we may not yet own a personal holographic secretary, VR is gradually inching into the reality that we know, transpired in old practices transformed anew. Will it take ten years before everyone is involved in a virtual environment, as predicted by Dr Castranova? Will these realities merge into a combination that future humankind will recognize as their one reality? Time of course, will tell.
- Julian Ung, nuStart
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