The Future of VR Devices
I have SO many ideas… even when I fail to write them down…
Today I’ve been thinking a lot about the future of virtual (and augmented) reality.
This is extra interesting to me because I am currently working at a VR arcade, and want to start my own in maybe 5 years or so. I also want to have (the beginnings) of my own epic MMO sandbox action combat game in development as well. As I think about how I want the game mechanics and action combat to feel like, I realized that it wouldn’t work with controllers or a mouse and keyboard very well… At least not intuitively.
I realized the game won’t just be VR compatible… it would necessarily be exclusive to the full-body free-realm of movement that virtual reality entails!
In addition, the VR gaming industry is growing swiftly! Right now, it’s still saturated with wave shooters and short experience games. But there are quite a few VR exclusive games I’ve played that show how immersion, that ever-buzzy goal for RPGs and MMOs, is truly taken to another level in VR!
It’s not just the fact that you’re IN the game either, it’s the fact that you can interact with the game’s world far more intimately. You can pick up random objects and toss them around (at least in good games), you can peak behind corners and duck for cover and truly feel like you’ve been transported to another place!!
And everyone knows it. Every one that tries VR is almost always wowed. Even those that almost never have played a game in their life, enjoy VR experiences. Businesses and investors know this. Thus why so many companies are actually jumping on the train before its really left the station. Unlike with the smartphone market, companies are developing VR (and AR) hardware even before consumer demand has picked up.
Why?
Well simply because it’s not a gimmick. It’s not even a trend. It’s the future of internet, of human evolution even… and that’s an understatement.
I can go all day talking about why that is… but I wanted to share today is simply a few ideas for how people will experience virtual reality in the decades to come.
For those of us well versed in VR, we know that VR was huge amongst geeks before it was ever even real. Books like Ready Player One and SnowCrash popularized it for the last generation, while animes like Sword Art Online visualized it to the next generation.
Niche series like The Gam3, Legendary Moonlight Saga, and Epic all delved deeply into the concept of VRMMORPGs… I’ve read all of them so I have been fantasizing about what the future of games will be like for a long time.
But in all but the earliest of them, people engaged with VR via not just headsets… but in capsules.
Horizontal pods that people could lay in where machines would directly hook their minds into the game.
This always scared me. Even though I’m a huge proponent of futurism and transhumanism, the idea that humans will direct their own evolution by integrating with technology, I’ve always been paranoid as well. And even to my adolescent brain, I doubted if we could ever develop technology that is able to Jack in and out of our brains with no adverse side affects.
Given how many times my own computer glitched… what would happen if a ‘bug’ happened while you were jacked in to the matrix??
This idea deserves its own post as well. Suffice to say that I’m just not confident in out technology yet to trust direct brain implants.
So… if these fancy brain-jacking capsules won’t be ideal (especially since it looks like you’re putting yourself in some kind of techno coffin), what can we do to utilize the vast immersive nature of VR?
Well… instead of bringing you completely into the game, why not bring the game out to you??
Currently, room-scale VR is the most immersion most people can get. Experiences like Vroom’s physical walls in which can be set up to emulate the game world.
But if we could bring that experience to everyone?
Thus the DaVinci Dimension… or whatever I will call it.
A human-sized sphere with flexible smart material, packed with sensors and haptics, that can change shape to allow a user to fully experience a virtual world.
It can simulate a chair that you can actually sit on in the game world by sitting in real life. It could simulate just about any texture, not just for your hands, but also your feet and any other part of the body. It could solidify into weapons, both for yourself and your foe, so that you can feel the weight of sword and the clanging resistance of your enemy.
No more swinging wildly in the air with no real sense of impact to close combat.
No more forgetting that seat isn’t real and almost falling on your butt, no more having to fake the crunch of gravel under your feet…
The pod must be equipped with air conditioning as well, because VR can get sweaty… so it will also be able to simulate the wind, temperature, and other atmospheric effects. It can be equipped smell machines as well as
Additionally, you would be able to completely control if you feel pain and how much…
Most exciting for me, the pod should be able to suspend you above the ground a bit to make you feel like you are flying!… or falling…
Due to bringing the game world to you, it could even be made in various sizes to allow for groups of people to share the same play space. But if everyone had one, you could even simulate each other.
And…. Of course you can create more … precise features for more explicit experiences, hahahaha!
Already, there are full body haptic suits that are about to be released to the public.
I imagine these body suits actually being more useful for Augmented Reality, where the virtual world is superimposed over the real.
Each one of these Dimension Pods could come with a suit so that if people can seamlessly take their virtual experiences into the real world… or just use the bathroom without having to fully leave the game.
I would personally want to make the pod tell you when you should go outside to get natural sunlight hahaha…
But this suit could be worn under your clothes, or itself be customizable enough to use as your whole wardrobe!
Imagine the amazing world we’d live in when the virtual world, where imagination is fully realized, can be brought so easily into the real!!
Life will be a magical, wondrous place rife with adventure, novelty, and inspiration at every corner!!
