Is VR (Virtual Reality) the start of something massive.

Deleted User 234324

Deleted User 234324

Deleted User 234324

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So I sat down earlier and watched the Matrix for the billionth time and it got me thinking.

VR is likely to take off in a big way this year and I think it will be the start of something HUGE, there is a phrase morpheus uses in the film that makes me wonder, exactly what VR will allow us to do in the future.

That phrase is, "what is real, if real is being able to see, touch and smell something, then real is nothing but a series of electrical signals in the brain". What if VR in the future will be able to manipulate just that, what if VR in the future will allow us to learn an infinite amount of things in an instant, what if VR becomes the main means of education for humans simply by plugging into a device?
 
yes. i see VR as the next big thing that will just keep getting better and better each year. Mobile progress has stalled, each year is just a small improvement of what was before, slighlty more powerful etc and I can't see that changing. VR however i feel will have massive improvements until it becomes as good as real life
 
This has come up with almost everything conversation about VR since its conception and essentially is the end goal of VR.

A VR headset is doing almost exactly what you're saying without having to break the skin to pass that visual information to your brain. The same could be done with smell, touch, anything given time.

Michael Abrash just did a talk brining up this exact quote last week at Facebook F8.
 
You are taking quite a leap from VR into connecting your neuro pathway into electrical signals in a machine.

One is reality, one is fiction.
 
Raymond Lin said:
You are taking quite a leap from VR into connecting your neuro pathway into electrical signals in a machine.

One is reality, one is fiction.
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Some of the aids to help wounded service men and people with various traumas use basic forms of this.
It's quite the extrapolation, but it could occur over time.
 
Raymond Lin said:
You are taking quite a leap from VR into connecting your neuro pathway into electrical signals in a machine.

One is reality, one is fiction.
Click to expand...

Is it such a big leap? Everything was fiction at some point before we learned how to achieve it. Also, we have learned how to trick the visual system into thinking something is real. The feeling of presence has been achieved. Ok, taking the specific "matrix" analogy of being "plugged into a machine that has taken over the world is maybe a step too far, but that's not the point the OP is taking about really.

MadMossy said:
I believe it is something that will within our life times be a huge industry. Want to learn how to play the piano, just buy the "DLC" for your brain and upload it via VR.
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In this example you're not really talking about virtual reality in this sense, although it does raise an interesting question.

VR, as it's being portrayed with the likes of the Oculus Rift etc in 2015, is a virtual world to which you can interact in real time.

Your example is more like a "quick learning" where the knowledge is uploaded or implanted in your brain.

Although, who is to say that this isn't VR... As far as your memory goes you would be able to recall interacting and learning all the skills you learnt. In theory it would be no less real that the world I remember from last week where I learnt to juggle.
 
Yes, it is a big leap from VR to learn things in an instant.

Say goodbye to school, university, doctors, lawyers, pilots, any professions of any sorts. We are all super humans if that happens.
 
MadMossy said:
I believe it is something that will within our life times be a huge industry. Want to learn how to play the piano, just buy the "DLC" for your brain and upload it via VR.
Click to expand...

VR has absolutely nothing to do with that process, the ability to control brain functions has no basis in virtual reality, that is actual reality and would install real knowledge into a brain to be used in the real world.

VR is a joke, we've been told through science fiction that VR means getting to play out the life of say Bond, in complete safety, or being a race car driver, doing everything you have never done but wanted to do but with no risk, no danger.

The reality is, it's an image in front of your face. Sit in a literally pitch black room 2 ft in front of a huge tv... that's VR. It's like motion control games, moving a controller in air isn't the same as punching a real person, there is no physical feedback, there is no touch, no taste, no smell, no reality in VR.

What sets the Matrix or the holodeck apart is they provide for each and every sense, either creating a real object and letting you touch it(holodeck) or generating the same electrical impulses in the brain that would make you feel exactly the same thing. VR, as it currently stands, provides a screen, nothing more or less, no touch, no real movement, no interaction.

VR has come and gone, along with 3d screens, for what 40-50 years time and time again. A helmet mounted screen is still a screen, it's no different to a tv just much more convenient to have a smaller screen on a helmet and block out the space around it that actually have a giant room completely blacked out with a monumentally large screen and sitting incredibly close, aside from that there is no difference.

VR is playing off the concept that a helmet screen somehow is a step closer from a existing screen to a holodeck or Matrix like simulation of life.

Until we can control brain impulses or generate a real world experience, VR as we call it, is a gimmick and almost entirely pointless.
 
drunkenmaster said:
The reality is, it's an image in front of your face. Sit in a literally pitch black room 2 ft in front of a huge tv... that's VR.

A helmet mounted screen is still a screen, it's no different to a tv just much more convenient to have a smaller screen on a helmet and block out the space around it that actually have a giant room completely blacked out with a monumentally large screen and sitting incredibly close, aside from that there is no difference.
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You've not tried the latest Oculus developer kit, their prototype or the morpheus in person have you? Because "sitting in front of a TV" is the exact OPPOSITE from what it's like...

EDIT: Rereading what I've quoted it's so comically inaccurate I'm going to use it in future when doing Rift demos to the public as to what an uneducated view on the experience is like.
 
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seen to many VR attempts in my lifetime to assume the new generation will succeed

but I guess it's more about convincing people to buy them
 
robfosters said:
Lets face it, we're all just waiting for VR porn.
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Not porn per se, but this would be top notch.

ECIISTk.jpg
 
An interesting "quote" (Can't remember who it's by, or the exact wording) goes something like:

Eventually, we will invent a virtual reality that is completely indistinguishable from real life. If this is the case, who is to say it hasn't already happened?
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Another thing to consider with super advanced VR is VR addiction. There is already porn designed to work with the Occulus Rift (Search youtube for SFW reactions, only swearies stopping me posting here.) which apparently is mind blowing. Who's to say that when you can sit down and pop on your Rift and be taken into the world of your dreams, that people aren't going to end up trying to do this for hours and days on end with no food or water, much like people do with video games today?

Also, how would the human brain react to being thrust into a VR world for 24 hours, then waking up into the "real" world?

Sorry, VR is something which has been fascinating me for the past few weeks and just started typing :D
 
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We're already in VR.

Well certainly a societal VR in which we are all manipulated and helplessly controlled subtly by mere exposure to all we interact with.

But it *could* all be a hologram magicked by some dubious corporation. If you allow yourself to believe it for a while, it is interesting to toy with this sort of madness. You start to question what to believe in, your sources of information, how do you *actually* know what you believe to be the truth? Everyone somewhere at some point simply has to rely upon and assume that knowledge passed on from a third party is true.

Here's a paper. It's hilarious.

http://arxiv.org/abs/1210.1847

I think the line of argument generally is that if computing power continues to exponentially grow, then at some point in the future it would be possible fully to simulate a universe.

Leonard Susskind and others discuss (quite poorly actually) in this video how the universe could be a holographic projection of sorts. Not sure if I believe them though, crazy humans and their various motives.
 
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