Virtual Reality is Astounding!

Warning: Oculus, the makers of the Rift and the Gear VR, is unfortunately owned by Facebook. My recommendation is to purchase an alternative product such as the HTC Vive which will be coming out soon or the Zeiss VR One


Today I immersed in my second ever virtual reality experience, this time with the Oculus Rift itself, of which there was a demo at another Best Buy store.

Its so intense that there’s a person there to be your guide, because it really is like you are entering another reality. My guide explained to me in advance what to expect when in the VR world and stood next to me the entire time to make sure I was safe.

Because I had already tried the Gear VR headset last week, I wasn’t totally surprised when I first put the Rift on. Because I was only there a few minutes I cannot really tell how much better or worse it was compared with the Gear VR experience last week. Basically you are in the same, immersive, alternate reality that is all around you.

The only way I can explain this is that its like you literally are in another world. The brain feels like its in another world. That’s what’s amazing about it. When you’re playing a game or viewing a “world” on a monitor your brain knows you’re still in this reality. But when you put on a VR headset your brain thinks its in another world. It really does. It really brings home the concept from Buddhist esoteric teachings that everything is like a dream – that its all like images flashing before our eyes which we think is real. Well, when you do this, when you use a VR headset, you really see this in action in a profound sort of way.

For me what is really cool about the VR worlds I experienced today – there were a few of them in the demos – was that basically they are just these fantasy worlds which can be very cool and inspiring aesthetically. I especially like the darker, night worlds. One I really loved is where you’re in this metropolis-type setting standing high up on this skyscraper – it kind of reminds me of the skyscrapers in the night scene on the planet Coruscant in Star Wars II, but of course was way more realistic. You’re standing on this tiny ledge and you can step to the edge and look down and – yes – I felt vertigo as I would in real life/reality (RR?).

The biggest shock to me by far was – taking off the headset. I’m not kidding. Its a huge jolt to the brain to be in this really cool world and then – bang! – you’re standing under fluorescent lights in an electronics store! LOL

Another thing I noticed: Afterwards, when you’re back in the RR, you actually feel like you’ve been somewhere. Imagine having an awesome trip to some cool place. Then you leave there and feel the afterglow of it. I felt the same kind of afterglow. I felt as if I had just been on some really cool journey to a strange, magical place.

So one thing I realize is that I think in the future there are going to need to be rescue teams to rescue people who do not want to leave their VR worlds. They are so immersive and such a cool escape that I can see where a person would just want to stay and stay and stay. I can visualize what it would be like to be on a rescue team and go out to someone’s apartment and try to rescue them. I’m sure it would make for some great scenes in a drama 🙂

Maybe in some future time when the technology is so immersive and advanced it might actually be dangerous to just yank someone out of their VR world, so there would have to be people who go into the worlds of people to help rescue them.

Here’s one other interesting thing also: If you watched the BBC documentary series I wrote about recently called “What We Still Don’t Know” – a series I really like because its so different than the shitty American ones with their shitty theatrical music and overdone bad acting, graphics, and appallingly slow pace of information – at one point they are talking about the future of intelligence and how it may be possible for humans to gradually upload or transfer their consciousness – their selves – into computer hardware. A commentator in the documentary says that if this merging happened gradually, over time so that at no point did anything feel unusual, then it could just gradually happen that one day a person ended up existing as consciousness inside a computer.

This was not the first time I heard about this idea. I think I heard about it in the context of space travel and people saying that the idea of trying to take physical bodies – wetware as its called – into space – with all the ensuing problems related to doing that – is just plain ridiculous. But if consciousness can be transferred to machines – then it would be much, much more feasible to really travel through space and visit other worlds.

However in thinking seriously about this, something about it just seemed kind of repulsive if not appalling to me. The idea of losing one’s precious body just so that one’s consciousness or intelligence could be “more powerful” or whatever seems kind of sick. But after being in a VR world, I wonder now if maybe it would be possible to have consciousness exist like that and still have a full existence. Because we are in our bodies, we have our conditioned set of concepts or feelings about what a full existence might mean, but its possible that it could be entirely different for other beings.

Then again, such things are difficult to know because we can only, as humans, experience these virtual realities from our viewpoints. How would it be possible to gauge how full, happy, or complete the existence of an intelligent, conscious entity that lives in a machine is?


UPDATE: Have been investigating this further. The more I look into it, the more it seems like getting the necessary hardware to run the Rift is doable, if you search ardently and get used components.

A lot of high-end gamers sell their components when they upgrade, so you can find good deals on almost-recent models of stuff. So the cost outlay to get a compatible system may not be too high despite the prevalence of such hype in the press.

That still leaves the cost of the Rift itself. But I know with time – probably in a window of maybe 6 months, we should start to see prices come down and used models on the market.

I’ve only done a couple brief demos of VR headsets, but already I’m hooked and know that this is going to be huge in so many ways. And beyond that, its just really cool and fun!


UPDATE 2: Here’s a good, no-nonsense review of the Gear VR headset:

I like the part where she talks realistically about what it can be used for. For me, here are the salient points:

Games: Virtually no interest
Aesthetic/artistic experiences in VR worlds: High interest
Geo-viewing/streetview: Interest
Potential high-density data interaction/control/learning creative interaction environments: Very high interest

I can imagine things like control rooms, libraries, or learning environments on steroids in VR spaces. For example for systems administration you could just create all these control environments. You could invite other co-workers in and give them tours of the environments (and of course they could be halfway around the world).

When it comes to education, the possibilities are unlimited. I remember having a laptop with me in German class and how convenient it was to be able to quickly lookup words in a dictionary during lectures. Imagine what could be done in VR as just one example.

Imagine math classes with no blackboards but everyone has on a VR headset (and can be anywhere in the world). Imagine organic chemistry class with the molecules visible and floating in 3D as the lecturer is giving a lesson.

I even imagine people getting paid – as people are now paid to shop for others a la Instacart – but instead of shopping they might just be viewing somewhere. There may be people who are immobile or whatever who would be glad to go on an adventure, or be able to give commands and direct the person creating the VR tour where to go. So people creating the VR would be like surrogate “experiencers” under the direction of paying clients.


Check out the #oculus channel on the Freenode IRC server. Its sort of like a ground zero for Oculus and VR-related chat and information (if you need a good IRC client I highly recommend HexChat).


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