Weekend Thinking: Virtual Reality. It’s Real This Time.
The hype curve for virtual reality has been going on for nearly two decades. But now, after many false starts, it looks like VR is getting real. The disruption will be enormous.
Immersive Entertainment
Entertainment will be the first place that VR changes, starting with video games and films. But what happens when the viewer leads the story, not the director? The New Yorker takes a look at how the first generation of filmmakers are exploring the creative potential of VR. Or think about the emerging field of “mixed reality” where VR elements are imposed on real-world environments, that’s making Magic Leap one of the hottest startups around.
Forget Video Conferencing
“My dream is for us to look back at my dad’s hour-long commute each way in a row of boxes the way we look back smoking in hospital beds,” Jeremy Bailenson, founding director of Stanford University’s Virtual Human Interaction Lab, told Wired.
Why leave the house when all your interactions can be done in VR? Your VR personae will be the idealized presentation of your true self – hair never askew, nicer clothes, better shoes and maybe a few pounds lighter. Why go to the office or even take part in those clunky Skype or Google Hangout chats? Every day the book Ready Player One looks like a prescient glimpse of the future rather than a piece of science fiction. (Watch for the film of that story coming from Steven Spielberg in 2018 – if that’s not a measure of the zeitgeist then what is?)
What Is Reality?
What’s the future look like when Virtual Reality becomes dominant? Filmmaker Keiichi Matsuda takes us there. It’s messy, overwhelming and probably closer to the truth than we’d like to admit.
HYPER-REALITY from Keiichi Matsuda on Vimeo.