Journey a Thousand Miles Without a Single Step

Sometimes there's a moment when you're sure you've gotten a glimpse into the future and all things that are to come. Sometimes it's not a moment, but a bunch of little moments that add up into an, ah-ha! realization. I've had one of those not to long ago. 

Remembering the story of my...interesting boat interview and the doomed VR startup I worked for 16 years ago got me to really thinking about where we are with VR today.

It. Is. Amazing.

VR is a transformative technology and we’ve only just begun to explore the depth and breadth of where it can take us. My wife, Melissa, and I have two Oculus Rifts set up – on opposite sides of a central table so that we don’t run into one another – and spend many happy hours gaming, hanging out in collaborative VR spaces, or taking on groups of folks in a virtual paintball arena.

We’ve had some challenges with both of us using VR at once because each person can lose track of the other’s experience in reality and not notice that the other one has had to pause for some reason before splattering them with a ridiculous amount of paintballs.

And then there was the day I achieved complete immersion where the sense of presence in the virtual world was so real my physical body reacted to what my brain was sure was a real place.

Getting There

Achieving presence requires a high enough display resolution, low motion to photon latency, and wide field of view. When these key elements come together your brain begins to accept that you are occupying the virtual world, that you are someplace else, VR takes over. On top of the enabling VR hardware, presence is also affected by the app you are running, the software creating the virtual world itself, inviting you over to the other side of the screen.

One of my favorites is called Perfect*. It’s more of a relaxation “experience” than a game, with three interactive scenes: a snowy forest, a mountain lake, and a tropical island. Each scene comes with day or night modes and has elements to interact with, like snowballs and rocks to throw, a radio to turn on, and sticks to toss on a campfire (or light on fire and hurl into the snow, which is fun but not so relaxing).

The detail in each of the worlds, as well as the digital rendering of those details, is astoundingly realistic. The snowballs splat and fall apart when thrown. The trees sway and creak, and sparks fly off the campfire and whirl into the air when the wind blows. Overhead, the northern lights streak and swirl through the sky just as they do in reality.

The attention to detail in the app is incredible, and, as somebody who spent a good deal of time developing particle systems, and visual effects, and high performance terrain rendering algorithms back in ‘01, I can appreciate the heavy lifting going on behind the scenes to make all those subtle design pieces work together. Perfect takes what we were doing back in ‘01 to an incredible next level, with volumetric particles that make the snow move and behave like real, semi-solid snow. The water in the tropical scene moves and splashes like water. The sounds, realistic background, wind simulation, and motions are cohesive and work together to let the user pass the threshold into a true sense of inhabiting the environment. It is beautiful, and the app’s name is quite fitting.

Feeling It

So, there I was, taking a break, relaxing as the snow swirled down and the fire crackled, sparks swirling in a puff of wind as the trees swayed and creaked in the distance. Overhead the northern lights streaked across the sky with an eerie green glow. It was peaceful and relaxing after a busy day. I realized after a bit that I was getting too cold sitting out in the snow and needed to warm up, I wanted to get up to go inside when I was abruptly reminded by the feel of my old chair behind me that I was already in a balmy, 70-degree Fahrenheit room.

I laughed at myself, a bit chagrined and amazed that I was that immersed in the experience, and switched to the tropical island to finish my relaxation session somewhere warm.

But there it was, a transformative VR experience where it felt so real that I was convinced my physical body was cold, as if I were actually there in that frigid landscape.

VR has come so far in the past 16 years, and yet, we’re just at the beginning. The rate of advance is incredible – it feels like a seismic shift.

Going back to my memories of the Nintendo Virtual Boy launch back in 1995, then jumping ahead some 20 years to the Rift is a phenomenal difference. In addition to the incredible increase in resolution, the frame rate has seen a dramatic increase. Not only has display technology leapt and bounded forward, our understanding of what it takes to create presence has advanced equally.

Hanging Out

Which brings me to Bigscreen*, which is also not a game. Instead it’s a virtual world where you can use your computer in a virtual space to do anything you want to do. Bigscreen is part of a whole new aspect to VR – a collaborative, social component that lets users interact with each other and their computer in new spaces and new ways that they, perhaps, would never do in real life.

You can meet up and game with friends. You can get together with colleagues in a virtual workspace to have that meeting about the big presentation while you’re across the country from each other. You can watch a movie, in a virtual living room or theater, by yourself or with friends. You can see other folks computer desktops in communal spaces and see what they are working on.

Your experience can be shared or private while you inhabit virtual space with no distractions from your real world location, completely absorbed in your data, creation, game, movie, whatever.

Bigscreen is a transformative experience in a completely different way than Perfect – yet, both apps feel like watershed moments in virtual reality – the point at which a virtual place becomes part of the landscape of your life.

When I first started working on VR – apps, core software, then hardware – I, like many enthusiasts, was focused on gaming as the apex of the VR experience. I’m not so sure anymore. The possibilities for collaboration, virtual encounters, virtual tourism, and, potentially, science are more exciting by the day, and I’m thrilled I get to be alive to see it and help it become a reality.

Not that I’ve abandoned gaming. I’m pretty sure Melissa and I will be dodging, ducking and plastering folks with virtual paint in RecRoom* at some point this weekend.

What about you? What do you think is exciting about VR? What do you love about it? What do you hope it will do, or what are you hoping to experience? Leave a comment and let me know.

*Mention of specific programs or VR experiences in this post are my own opinion and do not represent an official endorsement of the VR applications or the companies that sell and distribute these apps.