Remember Virtual Reality games in the early 90s? If you ever played them, you felt amazingly nauseated, and pretty much feeling like the last thing you’d ever want to do is leave your inferior meat sack behind and muck up inside this triangular, low depth, low colour, low resolution, Tron looking piece of crap world.

The graphics were awful, the gameplay was limited, the physics modeling was non existent, the control devices were perhaps the least intuitive things ever, and Lawn Mower Man scared the shit out of everyone for years to come.

… So why didn’t they keep developing this stuff until it worked decently?

Actually you probably don’t know, but they have been. It’s been done by stealth and it’s basically all video games, much like it ever was… but it’s been a bit more subtle than that.

Played Half Life 2? The physics engine in that is pretty damn good. Played 2nd Life? It’s a persistent world with more people in it than New Zealand, where people live out their lives, have adventures & social lives, and some even manage to earn a living while they’re in there… just like New Zealand. Played any Japanese RPG on the Play Station 3? Those graphics are pretty damn good for real time generated simulations. And these are not the only examples.

Fact of the matter is that virtual reality has snuck up on us.

So I’m sure you’re all well aware of the various games that are out there. Let’s face it, with all the media attention, it’s impossible to be unaware of at least World of Warcraft and 2nd Life, although you may not be aware that they were nowhere near the first of these games. That dubious honour belongs to a 1996 Korean title called Nexus: Kingdom of Winds, but the games weren’t made “popular” until 1999 with the release of Everquest, often called “Evercrack”… possibly where the derivative “World of Warcrack” comes from.

Why is this history lesson important? Because people, for the first time, were able to play these games not just to escape their mundane lives, but to actually live their lives through the game. I’m not talking about some sad git pretending to be a half-cow priest full time, but sad gits actually able to make a living through these games by selling in-world items to other players for real world currency, access the “outside” internet through some clever hacks that allowed them to order food (Pizzahut online) and necessities, and basically never have to leave their chairs with the exception of taking acrap or getting another Mountain Dew. For the first time, it was actually possible to not have to live in the real world.

“But it’s not total immersion!” I imagine you crying out, because I often think that people reading these things nearly a week after I actually write them can carry on a conversation with me without the aid of some kind of tachyon beam technology (perhaps something for another post).

Well, sorry, but you’re wrong again.

The only reason why these games aren’t total immersion yet is because you’re poor and can’t be arsed doing decent research.

There are actually several VR headsets, and natural haptic feedback devices already on the market at fairly reasonable prices. Certainly the sort of price range that is well within the reach of an avid gamer that regularly upgrades their computer to be able to run these sort of simulations at the maximum quality.

VR helmets have made leaps and bounds recently as well.

Not only is the price now comparable to that of a high-end monitor, but the nauseating 3D issues appear to have been solved. As it turns out, 25fps is the minimum for simulating motion, but if you want people not throwing up and getting a real sense of the 3rd dminesion while looking through their giant nerd boxes, you need around 120fps… per eye. If these hulking monstrosities pictured don’t sit well with your sense of style, you could always be one Jordie LaForge looking motherfucker and just get the iTheater glasses. The 3D isn’tas good, but you can wear them on public transport without looking like too much ofa freak, and the current ones plug right into an iPhone… so you can watch your World of Whorecraft episodes without being disturbed.

But what of touch? No point playing a game with your sight and hearing fully immersed if it’s going to be shattered by not being able to feel a damn thing because you’re holding onto a mouse and keyboard.

Three words: Haptic Feedback Accessories.

Haptic feedback gloves have been around for years, and were actually developed to help tele-operators get a decent feel for the job that they were doing. Some gloves merely provide resistance so that it feels like you’re holding an object. Others are actually designed to mimic textures in real time. Many are compatible with 3D design programs, and some even work for various games that allow manipulation via in game Hands.

Black & White is one such game, where your god hand can actually be used to pick up in game objects, crush superstitious villagers to death, or pimp slap your avatar… all witha satisfying sense of resistence to each. With the right set of gloves, you can feel the resistance of a gun grip in your hand, and have your wrists jerked back by the recoil as you fire it.

This of course leaves the issue of being able to actually touch anything and feel it. There are a few gloves on the market that actually simulate the feel of various materials. Nano-fibres recreate themselves underneath your palm and fingertips to give the feeling of certain forms of textures, and heat. These are currently not on the domestic market, nor nearly ready o be consumer level technology yet, but give it another game console generation or two, and you might just feel the leather thong criss crossed on your swords pommel as you wildly flail at your enemies, and then feel the blood flow between your fingers as you crush that annoying fairy in the latest installment of Legend of Zelda.

Hell, you can even get a vest that allows you to feel that you’re being shot or hit in game… and it comes in pink for girls.

Perhaps, in the end, we will find ourselves living regular mundane lives in the fantasy worlds we have created for ourselves because it is simply more bearable to do so without all the aches and pains of our real world selves. Not physical of course, but rather mental. After all the pain of falling out with other people is not so much in a virtual world. New others can be found with ease, and the quibbling little trials of our analogue reality simply won’t trouble us there. After all, the grass never needs mowing in your 2nd life… or does it?

You might also like to read:

1. Cyberpunk pt14: Ghosts of the past
2. Cyberpunk pt10: Accelerated Regenerative Tissue
3. Cyberpunk Pt2: Of Cyborgs & Dirty Apes
4. Cyberpunk Pt7: These hour long telecommutes are killing me
5. Cyberpunk Pt19: Erotelecommuting gives a whole new meaning to “Phone a Friend With Benefits”

8 Comments »

1. 

   Excellent post, now I need to create a virtual-reality friendly environment to play Monkey Island in so I can really feel what it’s like to hold my breath underwater for 10 minutes.

   Comment by jaz — October 8, 2009 @ 10:50 am

2. [...] would argue you may as well go into a virtual world, like 2nd Life for this sort of activity, and with the advances espoused by the movie, surely [...]

   Pingback by Cyberpunk Pt7: These hour long telecommutes are killing me | The Goth Club — October 15, 2009 @ 11:15 am

3. 

   haha, I recognize that first image. Although it is from VR created in 2007, the tech is pretty much early nineties I’d like to see you NOT be super impressed when you step into a CAVE though.

   Comment by rgrwkmn — January 12, 2010 @ 4:40 am

4. 

   2007!?!? Jesus Christ dude, were you making it on an antique like an XT using VRML or something?
   But yeah, I love old school CG (Lawnmower man reference in other posts should be the give away, right?). If you want, you’re most welcome to super impress me with some cave graphics, and I’m willing to throw some hackneyed blogginess in your direction for it…

   … Why does that sound like a euphemism?

   Comment by Egofreaky — January 12, 2010 @ 3:34 pm

5. 

   Well, I did all of the programming and 3D modeling myself so I wasn’t about to make Avatar. As for the tech, the language is called Yggdrasil, which programs virtual 3D worlds displayed in a CAVE. They have one at U of Chicago and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. It’s made to projects stereo video streams on all four walls of a room and the floor and ceiling. At SAIC we were using some super old magnetic things called FLOCK that I think were made for Air Force simulations or swomething.

   Wow, you know a programming language is getting old when you can’t find any info on it searching Google! This is all I could pull up:

   http://www2.research.att.com/~bs/applications.html

   Search the page for yggdrasil and you will find some decent info and links. It’s fun stuff, and the sensation of motion you get from stereo images is pretty great.

   Comment by rgrwkmn — January 15, 2010 @ 3:45 pm

6. 

   Forgot to mention that the FLOCK contraptions were for head tracking. When I left the professors who were into the CAVE were postulating on replacing those once multi-thousand dollar machines with a webcam, fiducials, some infrared LEDs and a hacked Wii remote!

   Comment by rgrwkmn — January 15, 2010 @ 3:48 pm

7. 

   The subdirectory is “bs”… That’s just hilarious for all the wrong reasons.
   If you’re interested in VRML, it was originally meant to be for architects to quickly program virtual walkthroughs of buildings to clients.
   Possibly the most well known part of it was Blaxxun’s Cybertown, which was kind of like the precursor to 2nd Life, although you couldn’t make yourself a furry and have sex with seemingly 12 year old avatars… At least, not in the parts of the town I went to.
   Godamn this shit is making me sound way older than I actually am

   The stereo images sound pretty interesting though. With the casting on walls though, I’m assuming that there’s a limited amount of interactivity with the map itself because you’re physically limited by the amount of space you have to walk around in. Or am I totally off, and you can sort of jog on the spot and it’ll move for you? Honestly, I’ve never actually heard of this as a VR tech, so it’s one I’m definitely going to have to look into a bit more.

   Comment by Egofreaky — January 15, 2010 @ 5:01 pm

8. 

   You walk or fly with a game controller direction pad or something to that affect, so you are only physically limited by your physical space in the cave. I had some seriously expansive environments!

   Comment by Roger — January 23, 2010 @ 11:04 am

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