Augmented / Virtual reality

Required readings:

If you’re completely unfamiliar with modern VR, this article—and specifically its introduction—offers a concise definition:

Virtual reality is a computer-generated environment that lets you experience a different reality. A VR headset fits around your head and over your eyes, and visually separates you from whatever space you’re physically occupying. Images are fed to your eyes from two small lenses.

This article’s also nice because it provides a rapid introduction to the main products currently defining the VR landscape: Google Cardboard, Samsung Gear VR, Oculus Rift, HTC Vive, and PlayStation VR. Be sure to read briefly about each, and maybe also take a few minutes to click through and learn more about each device—videos, in particular, go a long way toward helping understand what these devices are like. (Oh, and the section on the ways you’ll be able to use VR is nice, too.)

It’s funny: this article was written late last year, and much of it already feels dated, if for no other reason than that much of what it discusses in the future tense now already occupies the past.

What doesn’t feel dated, however—and what’s the reason we’re reading it—is because it provides a nice amplification and expansion of the first article. Whereas the CNET piece focused mostly on devices, this one looks more at historical context, near-future possibilities, and future implications.

• A good explanation of the core technological innovation of modern VR, positional tracking: “We react [to VR experiences as if they’re real], experts say, because our brains are easily fooled when what we see on a display tracks our head movements. “We have a reptilian instinct that responds as if it’s real: Don’t step off that cliff; this battle is scary,” Jeremy Bailenson, the founding director of Stanford’s Virtual Human Interaction Lab, told me. “The brain hasn’t evolved to tell you it’s not real.”
• True words: “Much of the excitement about virtual reality has come from the gaming community.”
• “Google is testing Expeditions, a way of sending students to places like the Great Barrier Reef, where they can virtually scuba dive as part of a lesson on marine biology and ocean acidification. Similar approaches may enhance professional training.”
• A lot of the possibilities around telepresence in the article—virtually attending a family gathering or the office—seem hard to imagine to me, at least at present.
• I really like the focus on bringing other senses into VR to create virtual experiences that more and more closely approximate the real world.

Another lesson, another really good Wikipedia entry. Things of note here:

• I like that the top-level description in the entry begins with naming ambiguities. VR is really a short catch-all for a variety of distinct but related experiences.
• Funny (but in many ways appropriate) that the term VR originated in theater scholarship.
• I’d love to check out a Sensorama—wouldn’t you?
• Entirely unsurprising that MIT pioneered many early VR experiences—it’s right in their wheelhouse.
• The bits about the Power Glove probably need review for bias. 🙂
• The largely failed VR gaming experiences of the 90s are perfectly illustrative of the larger tech principle 1 that timing is essential for a technology to take off. In hindsight, it’s easy to see that computing power and other pieces of the tech ecosystem were far too limited to create compelling experiences.
• I’m so excited about the training possibilities of VR—read that section carefully.
• The storytelling possibilities of VR (see the non-required reading below) are fascinating but very much in their early days.
• The breadth and depth of the sections about representations of VR in fiction and film speak to what a compelling idea it really is—people are and have been, justifiably, truly fascinated by the concept.

Augmented reality is a really important variant of VR that it’s worth taking some time to explore.

• “Augmented reality (AR) is a live direct or indirect view of a physical, real-world environment whose elements are augmented (or supplemented) by computer-generated sensory input such as sound, video, graphics or GPS data.”
• “It is related to a more general concept called mediated reality, in which a view of reality is modified (possibly even diminished rather than augmented) by a computer.” The linked article on mediated reality, while not required, is really fascinating, especially the idea of intentionally diminishing a view of reality. You should 2 read it!
• Remember Google Glass? Yeah, fascinating idea, but too early. Apparently, a team within Google (I guess now Alphabet?) is working on a non-terrible version two.
• I really, really want to try Microsoft HoloLens—I was on (and never got off) the waitlist for a demo when I was out in San Francisco.
• If reading the various subsections of the “Applications” sections doesn’t get you excited about AR 3, you might want to see a doctor.