Jay Talks Tech #001 - The state of VR
Hey guys. So, I felt that somehow – one way or another - I would
be talking about Virtual Reality at the start of this tech journey. And I can
certainly say that it won’t be the last. Virtual reality is an amazing topic; one
that I dreamed of since I was a kid. I speculated the days of me being able to fist
bump my favourite game characters or fight like the Dragonborn with my entire
body. Many of us have dreamed of entering a game world and interacting physically
with game entities like real life interaction. And now; that dream is starting
to become a reality.
VR has recently come into centre
stage and it’s definitely not leaving any time soon – It’s become popular since
the commercial release of devices like the Oculus Rift in March 2016 and the
slightly more recent HTC Vive of April 2016. It’s everywhere, on social media,
all your favourite Youtubers are investing huge money on VR Setups and Computer
Rigs and the beautiful people over at NVidia are fitting into the VR movement
by advertising that the new graphics cards – the GTX 1070 & GTX 1080 – are
made to be VR Ready.
There are three main concepts of
VR that I will be looking at in this video:
-
Adaptations of VR
-
Finance of VR
-
Aspirations of VR
Whenever I think of Virtual
Reality; the first thing that comes to mind is the ability to see yourself
visually in an animated or realistic game world. And of course, I would like to
bring this into context more with SAO. Sword Art Online is based off an
adaptation of VR which is quite hard to understand; but let me give you my understanding of it.
I call it Consciousness Manipulation and I
call it this is because it’s self-explanatory. Still confused? Let me break it
down.
To be able to understand my
explanation, you need to understand what a consciousness is. A consciousness is
something that enables us to be aware and/or react to our mental and exterior
environment in cohesion with our senses. In terms of the VR we are capable of
now – the user’s sense of sight is manipulated to be able to see the virtual
world.
Their is a very popular
adaptation of VR in an anime called SAO. In SAO, The player’s consciousness is moved
to that of a virtual world that appears like their almost in a real life dream
by controlling their nerves. The player can physically feel changes in their body’s
external environment as if events in the game are happening to them in the real
life because all their senses are controlled to have a certain experience
whether its smelling a grass field, feeling jagged rocks or tasting spicy food.
And remember this is all happening in a game through a headset known as the
Nervegear.
Do I think this kind of technology
is a possibility? Probably in about 1000 years into the future. Already things
like omnidirectional treadmills, feeling gloves and atmospheric fume inhalers
are possible. Who knows maybe we aren’t to far off.
Moving on, VR is at a somewhat
stalemate in terms of cost. With the price of $599 for the Oculus Rift and $799
for the HTC Vive – only a select few would be willing the fork up the cash for
a fully fledged headset ready for gaming. However, with the innovative use of
Mobile Phone technology – there are relatively cheap options for VR like the
Google cardboard. The whole bang for buck ratio for all these headsets isn’t
really appealing in my opinion. Again this is my opinion, comment below if you
agree or disagree!
In the end, I think we are in the
dream state of VR. Huge companies are thinking of the most innovative ideas for
VR and not only for gaming. The possibilities are endless, surgery simulation,
flight simulation, media viewing – the excitement when just thinking about VR
is overwhelming; that’s how I know that these dreams won’t just be dreams.
Thanks for reading, peace.
