Skip to main content

Virtual reality scares me.

Perhaps that is not surprising but you might be surprised to know why it scares me.

I have dreamed about virtual reality and virtual worlds since I was a kid back in the 1970s. The distopian fiction of William Gibson didn't put me off virtual worlds  instead it opened my eyes to the incredible possibilities. Virtual reality would offer humans a chance to escape from physical limitaions and the fictional representations of virutal reality in books, TV and movies whetted my appetite for it. During my formative years in the 1970's and 80's the hardware available could barely host crudely pixelated 2D environments and yet they fed the spark of my enthusiasm. When three dimiensional game worlds became possible with 1990's hardware I got further sucked in and PC gaming became my main hobby. The advent of online multiplayer worlds in the noughties was further proof that this was really going to happen. At the time I thought  / hoped that the mmorpgs might develop over time to be more than just games and instead become fully immersive virtual alternatives to the real world. This didn't happen. The public voted with their wallets for mmorpgs that focussed on being a games rather than being worlds and then most of the public lost interest in the mmorpg genre altogether.

Even though gaming hasn't yet proved to be the path to full virtual reality it has been a driving force behind the development of technology that would underpin full virtual worlds and this development has progressed ever onwards. The release of 3D virtual reality headsets such as the Occulus Rift and HTC Vive this year is an major step. Of course these early products are somewhat crude with high prices, rough edges and somewhat impractical space and supporting hardware demands but they have caught the public imagination. There is a definite feeling out there that virtual reality is going to be the "Next Big Thing". I think it is particularly significant thet many people are looking at applications beyond gaming for virtual reality: in business, education and other fields. If the public show a demand for applications or virtual reality then the march of technology will bring down the price and increase the usability of virtual reality infrastructure.

It may be another false dawn but it may also be the start of virtual reality becoming actual reality. I am excited about this but I am also scared. I am scared because if virtual reality takes off it is likely to render the 2 dimensional gaming that I have spend so much time indulging in obsolete and irrelevant. I am scared because I am not sure that I myself am going to be able to make the transition to fully immersive VR. Despite longstanding enthusaism for virtual reality I have no desire to don a headset and jump around a room while immersed in a 3 D simulation. Pehaps I am too old. Perhaps I am too set in my ways.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

My First Gaming Mouse: Logitech G300

I bought a gaming mouse yesterday a Logitech G300, here my initial thoughts. What is a gaming mouse?  There are a wide variety of devices available classified as gaming mice but a few features  seem common: 1. Wired rather than wireless: Although some high end models are wireless wired connections are just better and faster than wireless so most gaming mice stick with wired. As a bonus wired mice don't need batteries so the mouse is lighter.  2. High response rate: 1 to 2ms response rate so the mouse immediately responds to input.  2. High DPI. Gaming mice invariable boast high DPI numbers from 2,000 DPI upwards. This makes the device very responsive to the smallest movements.   3. Adjustable DPI . High DPI improves responsiveness but reduces precision so gaming mice generally allow you to adjust the DPI down for precise work such as pulling off headshots in sniper mode. Generally the mouse allows dpi to be changed on the fly by pressing a button.  4. Extr

Android Tip 3: Sharing a Folder between multiple users of an Android device

Android has allowed multiple user logins for quite a while now. This is can be very useful for tablets which are shared by family members. Normally Android erects strict Chinese walls between users preventing them from using each others apps and viewing each others files. This is a useful security feature and ensures your kids don't mess up your work spreadsheets when screwing around on the tablet and should also prevent them from buying €1,000 worth of Clash of Candy coins on your account. Sometimes however you really do want to share stuff with other users and this can prove surprisingly difficult. For example on a recent holiday I realised that I wanted to share a folder full of travel documents with my wife. Here are some ways to achieve this. 1. If you have guaranteed internet access  then you can create a shared folder on either Dropbox or Google drive. Either of these has the great advantage of being able to access the files on any device and the great disadvantage of bein

Portal 2 two screen coop on one PC.

I mentioned before that I intended to try Portal 2 in "unofficial split screen co-op mode. Well split screen on a small computer monitor is a recipe for a headache especially when the game defies gravity as much as portal. However a minor bit of extra fiddling allowed us to drive two seperate screens from one PC. The Steam forums describes a complicated method of doing this that I couldn't get working so this simpler method which worked for me might be of use to someone. 1. First I followed the instructions in this post to get split screen multi-player working: http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1847904 A minor issue not mentioned is that you need to enable the console from the keyboard/mouse options menu I am using keyboard and one wired Xbox360 controller as suggested. Getting the controller to switch to channel 2 was tricky at first but as Chameleon8 mentions plugging it out and in again during loading works. The trick for me was to do the plug / p