What is Digg?71 Comments
- ninjarabbits, on 08/07/2008, -0/+8I thought we had all agreed that we are already living in a virtual reality. Like in The Thirteenth Floor or The Matrix.
In this world I'm playing as a mild-mannered caucasian male who is going prematurely bald. I farm everyday at a place called the office to acquire more and more resources that I spend on females in the vain hope of eventually procreating.
Unfortunately, I am a very good player. - Haoie, on 08/07/2008, -0/+5The closest thing to VR worlds right now are things like Second Life.
It seems real VR is going to be a perverted, perverted place. - KatoHamatsu, on 08/06/2008, -0/+5VR worlds are going to continue to bomb unless there's some sort of game play or goals. These general ones, Google's, are mostly pointless. Dugg for eXistenZ reference!
- greenlight2001, on 08/07/2008, -0/+2Sounds like someone is trying to convince themselves of something....
- Shogi, on 08/07/2008, -0/+2Where the hell is my virtual reality porn!?!?!
- RAGEdemon, on 08/07/2008, -0/+2By far most important sense we rely on is our eyesight. Every other sense comes second. Some might even argue that if having been forced to choose, they would rather lose all of their senses but keep their eyesight rather than lose their eyesight and keep all other senses.
For virtual reality, then, eyesight is the most important and anything that simulates real stereovision is a massive leap towards true virtual reality.
The z800 was relatively inexpensive in its heyday - $700, and it came with some of the best head tracking.
A decent pair of Elsa Revelators on eBay will cost you all of $14.
All you need is an nVidia card.
"too unobtainable" - quite. But current tech is by far good enough for great sense of immersion compared to "flat" ;-) - inactive, on 08/07/2008, -1/+2It turns out that games aren't that important in the real world.
Who'd a thunk it? - pablo0713, on 08/07/2008, -0/+1I dug you up, but, so sick of this assumption that SL is perverted. SL is like a society. People from all walks of life are going to be online at any given moment. Yes, some of them will participate in "perverted" activities while the vast majority of people are there to do other things. Maybe if more people weren't so ignorant about SL and other virtual world platforms, there would be more support for them. Instead, we have lame episodes of CSI which scare people away. Then we have the stupid jock gamers who think SL is lame because they can't go around killing things (although you can if you look for the right places). And we have idiots who think SL is nothing but perverts and furries and pedophiles. SL is the closest thing we've got to a public VR platform. It's just so sad that most Americans (because the rest of the world seems to be embracing SL) are too dumb and unsophisticated to realize the potential of something like SL.
- TEHxINTERWEBS, on 08/07/2008, -0/+1I still have my old Virtual Boy...that's the closest I can get to virtual reality.
- aterimperator, on 08/07/2008, -0/+1Dugg because I'm reading Neuromancer right now.
- Culyt, on 08/07/2008, -0/+1Doesn't sound bad to me.
Firstly you won't need to live in a crowded city, since you can work from anywhere virtually there is no need to cluster people together, people can live in more rural areas and form communities, beaches, mountain tops, boats in the ocean, under the ocean.
Work is less tedious, rather than being stuck in a cube for hours on end slaving away you can be stuck on a beach for hours on end slaving away, without the risk of skin cancer.
VR will likely make working more efficient too, for example there is no need to go down to the photocopier since its digital. We will have a true paperless office. No need to spend time finding someone since you can just teleport to them. No need to rent a large office building, just server time.
In reality VR won't be ready to replace real life any time soon, it won't be immersive enough, chances are by the time it is immersive enough it won't matter if you replace reality with that, since that reality will be basically as real as the 'real' one, and technologies will likely exist to ensure your medial status is good (or just get your brain uploaded). You can always use your VR on an exercise bike, I already do that with my eeepc while watching movies, I'm exercising.
Who cares if the world is 'virtual', everything in the world is just information when it comes down to it and from what I know of quantum physics and string theory (which isn't that much but enough) the real world isn't that real. Hell you already live in a virtual world, its constructed by your brain, even with standard particle physics what you see is made up by your mind, 'solid matter' is %99 empty space and the rest is electric fields, what you see isn't even that only the effect it has on photons when they bounce off it or the vibrations that get transferred to your ear drums though the atoms in the air.
In a VR world you will be a god, and no one will have power over you. - RAGEdemon, on 08/07/2008, -0/+1No! you are mistaken. This is a common misconception.
While it is true that cheap red/blue glasses can be used, most stereo gamers nowadays use shutter glasses which display in full color (E-Dimensional, Elsa Revelators etc), or Head Mounted Displays (eMagin z800, i-Glasses SVGA 3D etc). Or a stereo capable monitor such as an iZ3D and Zalman 3D. I should know - I have owned every one of them except the Zalman.
The picture is in full glorious color, things pop out of the screen and it is so real that you think that you can touch them.
In fact, currently I am playing Race Driver Grid on a 200" projected screen with shutter glasses and the view is just unbelievable.
I have played all the most popular games in stereo as have my fellow stereo gamers. Currently, the problem is raising awareness of the existence of the technology. - RAGEdemon, on 08/07/2008, -0/+1mtbs3d.com
Sigh... We have been playing in 3D Virtual Reality, visually at least - for the last decade. Yes, even a few with "uber" systems have got Crysis to work in "VR" too. We call it Stereo3D and most people with an nVidia card can do it right now with the help of some glasses.
The problem is that most just don't know it even exists. - bitbytebit, on 08/08/2008, -0/+1have you actually died in a dream?
thats ***** up ..what happened next? - aklu, on 08/07/2008, -0/+1second life sucks.
- Ryven, on 08/08/2008, -0/+0It's a bigger step than you think. Most of the technology in the article is brain-controls-computer, not the other way around. Getting feedback from the computer is still going to be monitors (or hologram projectors/goggles/tactile feedback gloves) for a long, long time, as there's currently no private sector development going on with direct computer-to-brain input devices (unless Sony is lying or it's going on in deep secrecy). Brain hacking would be incredibly difficult even with the availability of the machines - brains aren't like computers, which process commands in order. Different areas of your brain are constantly working in parallel, and things like memory and personality depend heavily on individual brain structures and chemical concentrations. Crude emotional control might be possible, but nobody's going to be rewriting memories or taking direct control of behavior for a long, long time (unless the Singularity gets here sooner than I anticipate, in which case it will be only one of a host of new problems).
- toughluck2, on 08/07/2008, -1/+1Yeah, WTF is up with every comment being immediately buried?
- nrose101, on 08/07/2008, -0/+0I would still volunteer to have a chip put in my spine for true VR!
- toughluck2, on 08/07/2008, -0/+0I think the existence of stereoscopic headsets and shutter glasses is well known, but they are generally expensive, and not necessarily "VR" as I've come to define it. It _is_ a very ambiguous term, but I feel that there's more than just stereoscopic 3D involved. Ideally, an HMD which tracks head and eye motion, and some form of less arbitrary control - pressing buttons on a controller won't cut it. The Wiimote is closer, but it's definitely not natural enough. Not to mention, generally with stereoscopic glasses, you're just playing standard games... not so much is going on in terms of designing VR specific games and applications... obviously, because the technology is too unobtainable at the moment.
- ProfessorMurder, on 08/07/2008, -0/+0I just want someone to deliver on the promise of being able to stand on a giant checkerboard and shoot at a pterodactyl in the comfort of my home.
- Ellipsys, on 08/07/2008, -0/+0We have hit a technological wall, as it were, in regards to virtual reality. Sure, we can put on expensive gear that basically maps mouselook to turning your head, but you're pretty much still looking at a screen. Until we can hack the human brain on the firmware level, to tell you you're not sitting at your desk, but rather walking down a secluded trail in the elven highlands, we aren't going to have a true VR experience. There's no holodeck that can make a 10x10 room behave like 50 miles of the Great Wall of China. Rather, as other posters have mentioned, MMO games do provide a sort of virtual reality. You have an avatar under your control who exists in a world with different rules than this one. We can seek as much immersion as possible (say, by using joysticks instead of mice to control our virtual jet fighters and giant robots) but until technology catches up, the promise of complete immersion VR will remain in the land of science fiction.
- xtothepowerofx, on 08/07/2008, -0/+0buried for not actually talking about tron...
@culyt: talk less, say more - kingUssop, on 08/07/2008, -0/+0The companies that survive in gaming are mostly the 'quick fix' people. They're not remotely interested in breaking ground, sadly.
- wynja, on 08/07/2008, -0/+0MMOs are the what happened to virtual reality. Oh, and we've not figured out how to immerse people in a virtual world without cumbersome goggles and specialty rigs for moving about. Article answered. Next.
- solidcube, on 08/07/2008, -0/+0Much of the reason is processing power. The hardware isn't out there yet that can provide an internally consistent world for many people. So we have canned worlds with canned content, MMOs like WOW and Eve.
But it will come. Now we've entered the part of the doubling curve where really insane advances are going to be happening every few years. - SirRealist, on 08/07/2008, -0/+0Obligatory Tron Guy FTW comment.
- Stevethegreat, on 08/07/2008, -0/+0VR is eerily attractive to be just hype. It's only that we're far from the implementation of such technologies. For example not even crysis looks real enough and even that has no hardware to run it properly nowadays. We need at least 10 years for the processing speed and maybe even more for input devices. I say that by 2020s we would find VR finally becoming a logical goal for gaming developers, that's 30 years AFTER the 90s, those people that predicted that the 90s would be the golden era of VR were obviously delusional, but to say that such age will never come is even more so.....
- Druidblue, on 08/07/2008, -1/+1As a former virtual reality developer, much of what we ran into was clients wanting VR when VR wasn't really appropriate for their end needs. Just because something's shiny and new doesn't mean it's the best tool for the job. However, when done not for novelty but for true need, VR can be a powerful tool. We're still a long ways off from the headset-immersion concept though, because a surprising number of people get motion sickness, so that would need a solution first and foremost. I think we'll see holography flush out faster than VR does over the next 20-30 years.
- samury, on 08/07/2008, -0/+0Companies and people saw the potential in Second Life. Companies like Nike, IBM and Toyota put money to develop a presence in Second Life, but it's a marketing dead end. People saw it as a place where they can create whatever they want, but that fell flat too. Sure, we'll see a "hip" professor hold a class in SL, but really, it's not going to last long.
I tried SL for a while to see what's it all about. It's a glorified chat program and it's not a stride to virtual reality. It may be a step towards it, I'll give you that, but it's just a chat program. - toughluck2, on 08/07/2008, -0/+0I remember a very distinct moment in the '90s... sometime after the Virtual Boy and Sega VR failed, after those arcade virtual reality machines stopped showing up so much... when I finally realized, "Hey, wait a minute, all this hype about virtual reality has just been hype! We're not really going to have awesome futuristic virtual worlds like they said we would!" I was crushed.
- inactive, on 08/07/2008, -0/+0I don't know what he's talking about, my PS3 is 4D!
- Rahodeb, on 08/07/2008, -0/+0POV porn. Nuff said.
- datastorageguy, on 08/07/2008, -0/+0Just remember, being Dugg down is a virtual experience. I think that's as far as most of us will get.
- samzero, on 08/07/2008, -0/+0My favorite VR reference is the novel/movie "Disclosure". Aside from the lame plot -- which is essentially an excuse for Demi Moore to hike up her skirt -- the high-tech company that is the subject of the movie builds an extensive, portable, operational VR world that they inexplicably used to find files. You put on the gloves and glasses and then you're walking around a giant room full of file cabinets. They used their 1990's technical genius to make a virtual file room from the '50s. To top it off -- after building this realistic VR world that fit in a suitcase -- they bet the future of their company on a 300ms CD-ROM drive. That movie cracks me up.
- Culyt, on 08/07/2008, -0/+0VRs not dead but the technology just wasn't there back then, its getting there though. Currently computer tech is going down in price quite rapidly, we also need a new way to input into computer and a way to view a 3D image.
There are designs for glasses that beam an image directly into your retina with a laser, otherwise etching micro displays onto glasses or contact lenses might be the way to go. Things like iPods and mobile phones require cheap, small hi resolution LCD screens so its encouraging some of the technology required for normal VR glasses to become smaller and have a usable resolution. The other area is microprojectors, they have shrunk digital projectors down into a box the size of your fist already and there affordable. The next step will be embedding them into pens at which point the glasses with the eye beams look doable.
As far as input is concerned we are starting to see some brain computer interfaces pop up, including commercial ones that you can use to play games with but isn't quite good enough to replace current input systems but brain scanning technologies are exponential like computing power, at some point you will beable to wear a wrist strap and move your fingers in gestures to preform actions or type. Another tech is computer viewing, such as cameras that look at you and see where your hands are and allow you to interact in 3D.
Another step would be haptics, that enabling touching in the virtual world, right now its still far away but you could forinstance make a robot 'arm' with a bunch of 'fingers' that stop your had from moving through a solid object by putting the 'fingers' against your real fingers in the right way. That doesn't make it feel quite realistic but it gives some solidity to the VR world. You can work on making surfaces that feel different too, there already planning on making touch screens that have buttons that morph up so you can feel the keyboard.
Hopefully nanotechnology will take off and we can just use data directly with the brain, although when that starts happening VR might not be so needed since we could start to just 'see' raw data. - mohsenxp, on 08/07/2008, -0/+0"Until we can hack the human brain on the firmware level, to tell you you're not sitting at your desk, but rather walking down a secluded trail in the elven highlands, we aren't going to have a true VR experience."
I don't know about you, but I sure as hell wouldn't want that.
I mean if you managed to actually 100% fool your brain into thinking you are where the VR world wants you to be, then your body will react accordingly, and premature death will ensue after many teens trying jumping off a virtual building! The brain wouldn't be able to handle the shock.
I'm happy enough with virtual reality headsets, knowing I am sat down on a chair. - aklu, on 08/07/2008, -1/+1I AM THE ZERO KILLER.
I dugg you up. - Culyt, on 08/07/2008, -0/+0Just go an set them to 1, you have the powah....
- Druidblue, on 08/07/2008, -0/+0I just wanted to add that many people always associate VR with the headset/immersion variety.
In actuality, non-immersive VR works outstanding for training applications... We created a VR training program for Motorola, for instance, that recreated a page assembly line. Instead of having to fly in trainees from all over the world to train on a million dollar, always broken practice machine, they could instead ship out a small disc to each student. Saved them a full day or so off their training and millions of dollars in costs. This is the type of VR that should continue to be used and developed first and foremost- the fun, holodeck style VR-as-a-game should take the back burner until technology severely increases. - janeofwaves, on 08/08/2008, -0/+0Otherland anyone? Not a bad piece of fiction.
And I do want to be even more immersed in my virtual worlds (such as walking through an elven forest). Why? Beucase it'd be fun :) - CiXeL, on 08/07/2008, -0/+0the big problem is focus. your eyes do not focus the same way staring at a flat screen as they do staring at distant objects in real life so even if everything is 3d you still have a very short depth of things you can focus on which breaks the realism completely.
- NOD32user, on 08/07/2008, -0/+0"What the hell happened to our glistening electronic landscapes?"
In a word - "The Lawnmower Man" - Andrwmorph, on 08/07/2008, -0/+0Dear Mr. Moneybags,
Buy me one too!
Sincerely,
Andrwmorph - D4CH, on 08/07/2008, -0/+0Your PS3 travels in time?
- Ryven, on 08/08/2008, -0/+0Nonsense. Do you sleepwalk every time you dream? Every time you die in a dream, do you die in real life? The brain has built-in capacity for shutting down the link between its motor centers and the rest of the body. (If you've ever awakened suddenly and found yourself unable to move for several seconds, or had an "out of body experience," that's this function at work.) Creating tech to get this behavior on-demand is trivial if you assume we can already create direct-feed simulations so convincing we can't tell if we're in the game or not.
- Ryven, on 08/08/2008, -0/+0Except for sysadmins.
- aptanalogy, on 08/07/2008, -1/+1You failed. The zeros will always win.
- Culyt, on 08/07/2008, -0/+0Thats not really VR, that is just stereoscopic 3D.
They have had that since at least the 1970, it just required those rad Red & Blue glasses, or a ViewMaster
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/View-Master
Does raise the question of what exactly counts as VR since there are many glasses that sell without head tracking or those gloves, but it consists of more that the 3D component. Otherwise you might as well argue the any game is a virtual reality, just in 2D, since the term doesn't really specify 3D is needed. Then again most terms in computer science aren't very well defined, including the term computer science. - ganymede2010, on 08/07/2008, -0/+0According to Ray Kurzweil we'll have vitural reality in 2020 including full visual and auditory immersion. By 2035 we'll have full immersion virtual reality involving the 5 senses. If this comes into fruition there will be no natural sex. Everybody will be having sex with VR machines, because having sex with an overweight, sweaty, and cligy human being will be so yesterday.
- RAGEdemon, on 08/07/2008, -0/+0By far most important sense we rely on is our eyesight. Every other sense comes second. Some might even argue that if having been forced to choose, they would rather lose all of their senses but keep their eyesight rather than lose their eyesight and keep all other senses.
For virtual reality, then, eyesight is the most important and anything that simulates real stereovision is a massive leap towards true virtual reality.
The z800 was relatively inexpensive in its heyday - $700, and it came with some of the best head tracking.
A decent pair of Elsa Revelators on eBay will cost you all of $14.
All you need is an nVidia card.
"too unobtainable" - quite. But current tech is by far good enough for great sense of immersion compared to "flat" ;-) -
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