Forbes: In the burgeoning world of virtual reality, to use is to believe. With few exceptions, I’ve found it takes but a quick demo on an Oculus Rift (or one of its growing number of competitors) for skeptics to realize how awesome—and awesomely immersive—the tech can be. Five minutes, and all your held-over-from-the-nineties notions of VR (and, as the show Community recently pointed out, its disastrous effect on nineties cinema) are likely to dissolve into wide-jawed yelps of “Awesome”.
9 comments:
At first glance at the image thumbnail that is attached with this article I was like this is really cool. However, the more I began thinking about it the less cool the product was and became to be honest quite scary. A user of these virtual reality headsets could very easily become immersed in the life going on in their headset that they simply never take it off and are no longer “living” in our current reality. These virtual reality headsets also really annoy me because I am the kind of person that loves living life to its fullest. I feel that when you are living inside a virtual reality headset you are not living for various reasons. All in all, I truly think that this is actually quite a crappy idea that we should not continue to peruse. I am all for technological innovations in society but I think that this might be too much.
I'm not a huge fan of the virtual reality headsets. For one, they are big and bulk and probably not the most comfortable to have on your head. And two, I feel like something like this would blind you from the rest of the world. This headset in particular seems to cover the eyes completely where they can't see anything. So this is just a call for accidents waiting to happen. What if the person has a child or a pet? How will they be able to keep an eye of them when they can't see anything because of these intense goggles. Yes they look cool and futuristic and probably have great features, but what about the world we still live in. I guess if we all had robot maids to take care of everything, we wouldn't have to worry about anything else. But since we don't I think these goggles are only efficient in making you more lazy than you already are.
Distraction is a huge part of our world with the many different types of technology. Most people have multiple electronic devices that they use on a daily basis and they often use them together. People have very short attention spans and need to be occupied by many different tasks. I personally watch tv and play on my phone at the same time because I am not that interested in what I am watching. I also listen to music whenever I am working on something else. With virtual reality it is very difficult to do multiple things at one time. Since there is a screen right in front of your eyes, you cannot look at anything else and be distracted. Virtual reality is very engaging and interesting with many things happening at once all around you. Your mind will rarely get bored of things to look at. Many people use virtual reality multiple times to get the full affect and see as much as possible.
All I see here is a blindfold, something that prevents us from seeing what is really in front of us. virtual reality is fine just so long as we know it is not real or as important as our own lives. Many people today have the problem already of not being able to leave their virtual reality games and or social media. I remember as a kid not being able to leave my elder scrolls game because no matter what i was doing it wasn't as fun as playing that game at the time. in addition social media also plays a factor in virtual reality because it often gives you a false sense of your life. Friends on facebook are not always your friends and neither are twitter followers. once you power down, you are alone. the article is right about the multi tasking nature of the public, i like being able to be on my computer when the tv is playing commercials for a bit, i would hate to feel the forced sense of attention to what was on the screen. I also dont like the fact that you lose your sense of sight when you have this on, you or someone else could get hurt. on the other hand these would be great for a experience you could go and see for a short time.
I don't think this author is incredibly clear about the purpose of VR headsets like the Oculus. Currently, Oculus is generally fitting in to the niche area of hardcore gaming consoles like the PS4 and XBOX One. Both of these consoles are meant for immersive experiences, and are very well received and successful regardless of the fact that they aren't necessarily popular because people multitask while enjoying the experience that they provide. These headsets aren't intentioned to be multitasking compatible, so I don't think it's necessarily fair to judge them on this standard. Even if you take a look at the kinds of people that are buying the headsets, or even the kind of material that is being developed for them in the first place, it comes out relatively clear that these are mostly being used, at least currently, for immersive experiences, or interactive immersive experiences that are intended for gaming.
I think that there are both pros and cons to virtual reality headsets. On the one hand, they could create grand and immersive cinematic experiences. Film is always looking for a way to bring audiences closer to their work and while 3-D has been a huge part of their strategy it hasn’t really done as much as one would expect for the movie going experience. Virtual reality could be game changer for them. This is rivaled by the fact that virtual reality may be to intense for the type of entertainment that is generally consumed by the public. Entertainment with graphic or violent content could easily become unbearable for a large portion of the public or too appealing to another. The idea of being dropped into a different world where all your attention can be focused solely on the content that you are consuming with no interruptions is both amazing and daunting.
With the world we live into day our attention is constantly pulled in so many different direction all wanting our focus. I have always been a huge advocate for virtual reality experience since I knew of its development as a child but for the video game world. It never occurred to me to be able to use virtual reality to hone back in people’s attention to a singular experience, but I think it is absolutely brilliant. The thought of finally being able to once again train ourselves to fully be in the moment will be one of the greatest tools to teaching people what it means to truly live and experience their life. We have grown up in a world and developed habits where we are constantly stuck thinking about the mistakes of the past or worrying about everything we need to do in the future to reach fulfillment and happiness. Sometime we just need to tell our minds stop and just enjoy the part of the journey we are on for the moment and be fully present. I don’t see virtual reality as being too impressive for it’s own good, I see it as rather the biggest thing we need in our lives today.
I never really thought about this argument when it comes to virtual reality headsets. As technology progresses, more and more people tend to gear towards multitasking and the Oculus rift is not designed to be used while multitasking. I think this can be seen as a positive thing. I think that this can be good, specifically for gamers that play games to relax, because it allows you to completely leave your environment and escape to the world of your game. In a world where so many people are doing so many things at once, it can be really nice to just sit down and do one thing. And that can be hard. When I'm watching TV, I find it very hard not to check my phone or computer. But the way this is set up, I have to be completely immersed and there is no chance for outside distractions. That, to me, is very relaxing.
I wasn’t entirely sure if this guy was criticizing or praising VR headsets, it seemed like he said it would be bad to wear them while driving or at the gym, but otherwise they are a great way to view media and are going to draw a huge customer base because of the interactive and dynamic component. He mentioned that the undivided attention factor would be a huge draw for developers and marketers, you can add live entertainment professionals to that list. It has been a growing concern with some theater professionals over the last decade: “Is the audience really paying attention?” With VR some of that would likely be eliminated if it could be successfully incorporated with live performance. Generally, it did not seem to me like he argued that the immersive nature of VR is actually a bad a thing by itself, other than that its distracting.
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