JOIN USVR: From sci-fi dream to awesome reality
My interest in virtual reality was virtually nil — until last month. When I thought of it, I pictured low-budget sci-fi movies with bad special effects. I thought of those pixellated posters, popular in the mid-1990s, the ones where you would stare at the wall and a three-dimensional vision of an underwater city would slowly emerge from a cluster of purple dots. The whole idea of virtual reality made me want to stifle an actual reality yawn. In short: I was clueless.
But that was before I visited the Virtual Human Interaction Laboratory at Stanford University in Silicon Valley and had a sleek black headset containing an eight-camera infra-red tracking system strapped to my skull. That was before I stood on a floor made from aeroplane steel and fitted with ‘shakers’ that simulated surface motion and before I experienced a spatialised sound system and before I had sensors attached to my wrists that responded to my movements. That was before I’d flown like a superhero.
“Put your arms out to take off,” the laboratory manager Shawnee Baughman says, as if this is all perfectly normal. I do as instructed. There is a whoosh of air, a shudder beneath my feet and then I’m swooping through the sky, arms outstretched into the vast blue beyond as I fly through a computer animated New York City.
Looking down, I can make out the traffic lights and empty streets far below. When I move my arms together, I go faster. When I point them towards the ground, I fly downwards. As I land, my knees vibrate with the impact. There’s nothing like pretending you’re Wonder Woman to counteract your own ignorant scepticism. “The special thing about VR,” says Baughman as she takes the headset from me, “is that the scene responds to the way you are moving. It’s fully immersive.” So immersive that I feel slightly car sick.
Tracing the VR journey
Virtual reality is at a pivotal moment. For years, it has been talked about in the tech community as a sort of holy grail. As far back as 1939, the author Stanley G Weinbaum was writing about a goggle-based virtual reality system with holographic recordings of fictional experiences. By 1968, the American computer scientist Ivan Sutherland had designed a virtual reality head-mounted system that was so cumbersome it had to be suspended from the ceiling and was called, terrifyingly, the Sword of Damocles.
Throughout the 1990s, the concept of VR seemed to be moving ever, but limited computing power ensured these theories remained purely hypothetical. Then everyone got their attention diverted by a more promising prospect: the internet. Today, substantial advances in computer science mean that virtual reality visionaries finally have the technological power to implement their ideas. Major companies including Sony, Oculus and HTC are already developing headsets for use at home that will be on sale in the first quarter of 2016.
Google has developed a flat-pack version made out of cardboard, called Cardboard, which consists of two magnifying lenses that can be inserted into a rectangular holder into which slots your smartphone. “In just a few years, VR has gone from being this science fiction dream to an awesome reality,” said Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg last month. Zuckerberg bought one of America’s leading virtual reality technology companies for $2.3bn last year. Oculus VR is the idea of a 23-year-old wunderkind called Palmer Luckey and its acquisition by Facebook opens up a plethora of opportunities for the social network.
Oculus has big ambitions. When I go along to its second annual developer conference, held in a plush hotel in Hollywood, it is full of men in polo necks speaking into microphone headsets about ‘Twitch streams’ and ‘recommended specs’ to a packed auditorium. I am greeted like some kind of relic from a past age because I’ve never tried the Oculus Rift headset. The Rift is about as good as it gets: a state-of-the-art headset with displays and optics designed specifically for VR.
Afterwards, I talk to Ted Price, the president and CEO of Insomniac Games which he founded in 1994. He makes several attempts to express what virtual reality is like to someone who hasn’t experienced it and then admits defeat. “It’s like talking about how something tastes,” he says. “You can’t understand it unless you try it.” His company is developing a VR game which will put the player in the skin of an Antarctic explorer. Although the gaming market will be the testing ground, there are countless other applications that are also being explored.
The film director Gil Kenan, whose previous work includes the Poltergeist remake and City of Ember, is working on a virtual reality science-fiction movie about an unwanted passenger on an outer space journey.
VR in classrooms too
There are other interesting VR entertainment developments in the pipeline. VRLive, for instance, is a broadcasting company that records concerts in 360-degree virtual reality. In the future, virtual reality could be used for school trips in the classroom. Pupils could more fully experience what it would be like to live in a bygone era, for example, or could travel to far-flung lands without ever leaving their desks.
The most memorable and moving experience I had while trying out various VR demos was one made by Emblematic, an organisation specialising in immersive documentary and non-fiction. One of its films places participants in the midst of a rocket attack in Syria and later in a refugee camp. “One of the things we asked ourselves is how do you break through the torpor of constant media images to trigger a more emotive response,” says Emblematic’s co-founder Jamie Pallot.
“The defining quality of virtual reality is a sense of presence. It tricks your mind into thinking you’re somewhere else and that produces a very strong empathetic response.” He hands me a headset. I watch a short animated film called Kiya which tells the real-life story of two sisters’ attempts to try to rescue their sibling from her abusive ex-boyfriend.
I can sense their fear in a very real way. As the sisters move back outside, I follow them. A shot sounds from indoors and, although I don’t see it, I already know that Kiya has been killed. The last image is from inside Kiya’s home: a fridge covered with photos of her young daughter.
As a journalist, I have often found myself in extreme or sad situations. I have interviewed a terminally ill man, a convicted murderer, the grieving mother of a schoolboy who committed suicide. Each of these stories has moved me deeply because of their visceral reality and truth. But I hadn’t expected a computer animation to provoke this reaction.
When I remove the headset, there are tears in my eyes. I hadn’t noticed I was on the verge of crying until I returned from the virtual world to the real one. “That was quite something,” I say. Jamie nods. It’s not yet clear where this technology will go or what its full potential might be or whether it will take off in the spectacular way promised by its most vehement supporters. But it’s a tantalising prospect nevertheless.
So I was wrong. Virtual reality isn’t boring. I’m actually pretty excited about it, even if it makes me car sick.