Get Ready to Embrace A Whole New World of Virtual Reality
Back in 2011, Palmer Luckey was an employee working on a program, I.C.T.’s Virtual Reality Exposure, that helped veterans suffering from PTSD. The veterans would wear heavy goggles that a simulation of the terror that comes with combat, while being guided by therapists. Palmer Luckey was just 18 years old, attending the University of Southern California’s Institute for Creative Technologies. He built a set of VR goggles in the garage at his parent’s house.
He was already an enthusiast for immersive computer-simulated environments. He even had many commercial and industrial headsets stocked in his parent’s garage (his workshop). The program used to help veterans was called “Virtual Iraq” and was a type of exposure therapy. It’s actually been used for many years and several dozen Veterans Affairs facilities around the country have received this program.
Unfortunately, the hardware to create this program can be up to $1500 per unit. If we were talking high-end virtual reality tech it would be closer to tens of thousands of dollars. In addition, it’s a bit clunky. The headsets have small viewports so it’s kind of similar to a person looking through a pair of binoculars.
Palmer Luckey realized that nobody seemed to notice a piece of technology that could be implemented for the greater good; cheap smartphones. These phones have motion sensors and high-resolution displays; something the headsets were lacking. This creation of his, eventually became the “Oculus Rift” and could easily be considered a smartphone with a headband. The screen (LCD) sits about an inch away from your eyes. Each eye has one screen via the barrier that divides the display. There are motion sensors that track the position of your head, and this information is fed across a cord to a computer; often a gaming computer.
Unlike typical first-person video games that render a 3D world to a single monitor, the same 3D world is rendered twice but from slightly different angles. These two perspectives are then sent to the Oculus Rift. Thus, the illusion of depth is created. The way you move your head is monitored through the motion sensors so rather than moving your mouse or using a controller, you simply move your head in the direction you want to look.
The realistic sensation is created through optical tricks by the Oculus Rift. Such tricks include correcting the slight warp in the edges of the computer view, by plastic lenses inside the googles. This causes pixels to tighten in front of the eye, resulting in a more human-like visual perspective. The Oculus Rift is definitely among the best VR hardware available.
In the beginning of development, Luckey and Oculus actually launched a kickstarter campaign for these development kits. They were pre-selling them for $300. Their goal was to raise $250,000. They actually raised $2,437,429. The Rift was available for awhile at around that same price of $300 but could go up to $600.
I actually tested it out for a month and it seemed to be similar to scuba diving. You have to put this ‘mask’ on your head. Then once you have it on, you’re trying to deal with the weird feeling of being disconnected in terms of where you body really is and where your mind is telling you it is via the goggles. The original Oculus Rift wouldn’t track anything but your head and this made for a confusing experience.
Even still, it was pretty interesting. I had friends try the headset too and prior to doing so, you could say they were skeptical. Once they actually experienced it, however, they were believers of Virtual Reality.
It didn’t take long for video-game producers to start supporting the platform and offering games that were compatible with the headset. Of course, the majority of these games were better described as ‘experiences’ since you basically could look around, rather than interacting. Among those that became available, there were two I’d like to mention.
Titans of Space – this experience put you inside a space capsule. You would start the simulation in orbit around earth. You could glance down and see the control console of the capsule, which featured trivia about the moon and the earth. Look a little farther down and you could see your gloved hands folded in your lap.
The Rift was only tracking your head, so it sort of felt like a detached body. You would click the mouse - which wasn’t always easy because you’re wearing goggles and can’t see your actual environment - the capsule would proceed to begin on a course through the solar system (predetermined), making a stop over each planet and notable moon. In a short amount of time, I was tilting my head back all the way to really take in everything I was seeing…it was pretty incredible.
VR Cinema 3D – this application was developed by Joo Hyung Ahn, a Korean developer. The name seemed a little redundant to me, but it’s basically a VR movie theater. The neat part was just how close to ‘real’ the movie theater was. It was all there…the empty seats, the illuminated aisles. Facing forward you could watch the movie, or you could look around and even see the movie projector behind you.
This probably sounds kind of boring to some, but it really isn’t. It’s quite impressive that you’re looking at such a tiny image on a panel just inches from your eyes, but you’re seeing a larger-than-life image in a movie theater. It’s not hard to envision watching a movie this way with friends, or even with avatars of your friends inside the theater. Everyone wearing their VR goggles and meeting up in a virtual environment to enjoy a flick.
Looking for a small VR headset? That’s definitely not the Oculus Rift. The first set in development resembles the size of an iPad mini but it’s strapped onto your face. It’s not very heavy though, which is a bonus. Of course, the longer you wear it the more discomfort you might experience but I wore mine for 30 minutes at a time and it wasn’t uncomfortable. Of course, how you look to others while you’re immersed in a VR experience will most likely be quite entertaining.
When the Oculus was introduced, there were definitely some hardware limitations but it didn’t take long for the company to address those. Their following version was higher-definition and lessened the screen-door effect, and improved the tracking of gaze which resulted in a more immersive experience for users. Further concerns and questions regarding the new technology included trying to determine how people would feel wearing VR goggles in public. Because let’s face it, even just enjoying VR at home can sometimes be a bit disorienting; would you want onlookers to see that?
Take the Google Glass for example. There were many people that were skeptical of this technology and it’s not even AR or VR; it simply displays computer graphics right in your vision, on top of the real world view.
While there have been many warnings of VR bringing about dystopian cyberpunk, that may not be the case. Virtual Reality is simply another way for people to interact with each other and with information. It could be how we find a restaurant close to us and what they offer on their menu. Screens have already been a way for us to view generated worlds; now with VR we can just actually step inside that world and look around.