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Janaka, the king of Mithila, once dreamt he had lost his kingdom and was begging on the streets. He woke up disturbed. His dream seemed more real than his waking state. Janaka had one question: "Which is real, this or that?" No one had a satisfactory answer. Sage Ashtavakra then leaned over to whisper into the king's ear: "Neither this, nor that." This realness may be debated again, with Facebook reaching a $2-billion agreement to buy Oculus VR, the maker of a virtual reality headset. Dismissed as a 1980s fad, immersive virtual reality is what Facebook sees as the future of social media. Imagine slipping into a virtual world by wearing a headset and body movement trackers. You would see others as 3D avatars. Unless you stopped to examine your surroundings more closely, it would be difficult to tell the virtual from the real.
This could be an escape hatch into a better reality. It could be a place where anything is possible. Philip Rosedale, the maker of flat-screen (as against immersive) virtual reality, Second Life, is now busy with an immersive project, High Fidelity. At the Augmented World Expo in California on June 4, 2013, he said: "Moore's law (transistors double per square inch every year) means the richness of virtual reality will surpass the real world." An immersive virtual world could be like a grid of virtual cities with skyscrapers. Each city could be supported by a server. Skies could have flying vehicles and the streets could have avatars sporting designer wear or default costumes, depending on purchasing power.
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Virtual field trips Visit Tutankhamen’s empire or travel through a heart and watch it pumping from the inside. Virtual field trips will soon make such experiences possible for students.
A healing experience Exposure to virtual reality has been therapeutic for Iraq and Afghanistan veterans. Using a headset, the veteran confronts his fears of the conflict zone, complete with the smell and shock of explosives. Lessons in medicine A virtual reality medical education company offers nurses a chance to practise their skills at diagnosis and helps them devise a treatment plan for the elderly. Such virtual training is both cost and time efficient. |
In this world, the fat could become thin, the ugly beautiful, and the shy extroverted. You could change your name, age, sex, race, height, weight, voice, hair colour and bone structure. Or you could cease being human and become an elf, ogre, alien, or any other creature from literature, mythology or movie - anything, without revealing your identity. Users could create content. A person's online presence would no longer be limited to a site or a social-networking profile. You could create your own private island, build a mansion on it, furnish and decorate it and invite a few thousand friends over for a party. And those friends could be living in a dozen different time zones, spread over the globe. Ships could crisscross the virtual sun, zooming off to explore the simulation.
Imagine watching a movie and then deciding to play the lead role in it. This means you will be 'in' the movie. James Iliff, co-founder and president of Survios, an immersive virtual reality company, says a movie as an interactive simulation is possible. "Playing a lead role in a film in virtual reality will be possible. But it will take a few years to create virtual reality experiences on a large scale. Cinema itself took 20 years to go from an initial spark to a giant." With headsets, you can experience a 360-degree video. "JauntVR is pioneering this new segment," says Iliff.
Rosedale had showed a nightclub in High Fidelity some time back. As he approached it, the size kept growing bigger and the music louder. Inside, laser lights illuminated the dance floor that was a mess of avatars' energetic limbs and wavy hair. One avatar came and whispered in his ears. Rosedale said talking would be in real time (with lag less than a mobile's), meaning you could cut the other person and vice versa. He showed how an avatar's face could be made to emote and blink by simply talking into his webcam. There could be the possibility of the avatar's face pouting or blushing, too. Real-time emotion feature could make the avatar mirror facial expressions and body language.
Iliff says the player will use hand-held motion controls instead of a mouse and keyboard. "Facial and eye movements can be faked with animation and prediction algorithms. Your avatar will blink and look at others in a way that does not necessarily indicate real actions, only imitates assumed actions." A High Fidelity spokesperson says: "We're working with a variety of 3D cameras and standard webcams to track eye and facial movements. These breathe life into avatars. We have also been using Sixense's Hydra hand controllers to capture gestures, and are impressed with the added expressivity. With hardware innovation accelerating every quarter, low-latency tracking of body movements is becoming more accessible." Amsterdam-based Toon Timmermans, founder of digital intimacy company Kiiroo, has made devices which, when worn on genitalia, allow long-distance partners to 'feel' each other. "We realise our products can be used to promote safe sex." Timmermans says they are building a social media site by starting with a Skype-like interface, but "Kiiroo does not want to replace real sex."
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Imagine yourself as a chicken in a small cage. Staying there all day could depress you. This is how most chickens feel in a farm. Now, Austin Stewart, an assistant professor in Iowa State University, says he wants to enrich chickens’ lives by fitting them with virtual reality headsets. He calls the project Second Livestock, a play on Second Life. Chickens, from a young age, would stand on omni-directional treadmills and wear headsets that would create the illusion of a free existence. Stewart says people are living increasingly in virtual worlds in homes and cubicles, so “why wouldn’t chickens want that as well?” |
The project is intended to create a conversation on animal welfare and draw parallels between how we treat animals and ourselves. Stewart says happy chickens tend to be more productive, much like happy humans. Also, by raising chickens in a virtual free range, 20 per cent loss of birds that can occur in a real free-range flock is eliminated. “The sensors that allow the chickens to roam in the virtual world track the activity levels and alert the farmer if there is a change. This could indicate illness.”
The virtual world will allow chickens to socialise and even have virtual sex. “We are developing a haptic feedback system that will allow them to ‘touch’ one another in the virtual world.” Each chicken will be equipped with a microphone so they can call to each other. Stewart plans to extend the project to other animals. “We are developing Second Dog Park, a virtual world for neglected pets, and Second Habitat that allows depressed zoo animals to experience their native habitat.”
There are other uses too. Laura Jeffcoat (avatar: Lowri Mills), chief executive and co-founder of Learn It Town in Second Life, says soon teachers could take students on a virtual field trip every day. During history classes, students could enter a simulation to see Tutankhamen's empire in all its glory. In biology, they could travel through a heart and watch it pumping from the inside. In science, they could visit each of Jupiter's moons. "As the teacher speaks to students, the planet looms behind her, filling half the sky, and churning slowly over her shoulder," says Jeffcoat.
There are degrees of immersion. A smartphone can afford you immersion to an extent. Reading can teleport you to another world. But virtual reality promises full immersion. This aspect has been criticised. Some say it amounts to not having enough courage to face reality, like when dogs bark at you in the street. In virtual reality, you can leave out the unwanted. But there are those who contend virtual reality can help you face reality better. If a person is made to face dogs in a simulation, he may be able to deal with the situation better in real life. The loaded scene, of dogs barking, could be played and replayed till he overcomes his fear.
Lee A Chelminiak, director of communications and marketing, Red Sox Foundation and Massachusetts General Hospital, a Boston clinic, says they began offering virtual reality exposure to Iraq and Afghanistan veterans in May 2013. Through a headset, the veteran can experience the rumble inside a Humvee, the smell and shock of explosives and the narrowness of Iraq's alleys. This exposure helps him heal. Sergeant William Chagnon, a field medic who lived on a Baghdad base regularly attacked in 2007 and 2008, was put through this treatment. He told The Boston Globe he hadn't made progress in processing troubling memories through talk therapy. With virtual reality - seeing the desert sky, hearing familiar sounds, and feeling the clap of a blast in his seat - it is as if "the song comes on. It all comes right back up."
Jennifer Kanary Nikolov(a) is the founder of Labyrinth Psychotica. The project is about experiencing psychosis (losing contact with reality and seeing things that are not true). "The project changes perceptions of the user into a simulation. This allows one to experience how psychosis blends realities and perceptions." Facial recognition software can make a colleague appear demonic while the user attempts to maintain real-time communication. The project shows the difficulty of orientation and concentrating on everyday matters when constantly distracted by voices and apparitions. "This way, you understand why a person does not react or is slow to react. You understand why strange things are done and said," she says. "As soon as your own senses are under attack, you immediately show similar behaviour. This brings better understanding of psychosis, the only difference is one is able to step out of it." Virtual reality is used for treatment in other ways too. "A project I am working on (related to psychosis) deals with social anxiety. The avatar will walk through a cafe full of people in first-person perspective," says Nikolova.
Mediverse is a virtual reality medical education company. It was founded by doctors Roy Macgregor and Simon Brownleader. They partnered Eelco Osseweijer, a software architect from the Netherlands, and Fee Berry, a virtual world creator from the UK. Mediverse, according to Berry, did a pilot for Haringey Primary Care Trust which aimed to give district nurses the chance to practise their skills at diagnosis and to enable them to make a treatment plan for the elderly. "It only reached the pilot stage because the government's reorganisation of the National Health Service meant Primary Care Trusts ceased to exist in that form," Berry says. Brownleader adds: "A training exercise in the real world, with actors being given parts to play for doctors to see, requires everyone to be in the same space at the same time, and may cost thousands of pounds, and it's a once-only event. A virtual training exercise may take a long time to complete and cost thousands of pounds, but it can be used over and over again by anyone, anywhere."
Some say the biggest competitor to this delusional world could be a bottle of alcohol. The High Fidelity spokesperson believes the largest impact of virtual reality and the company will be to make the world smaller. "Many things we do face-to-face, like meetings or working together, will be done more easily in a virtual world. Virtual reality can remove the travel costs linked to these activities. This means these can be done with a broader set of people." However, it may take some time before virtual reality threatens to engulf the real world. She adds, "We are in early alpha stage, working to build and refine the underlying technology to support many kinds of content developers. We envision a steady evolution towards a consumer experience, with more and more early adopters helping us iron out the bugs and creating a compelling world. We will probably reach beta around this time next year."
Watch out!
