Shared Reality

Old one from the Drafts

Wikipedia entry on virtual reality:

Virtual reality or virtual realities (VR), which can be referred to as immersive multimedia or computer-simulated reality,[1] replicates an environment that simulates a physical presence in places in the real world or an imagined world, allowing the user to interact in that world. Virtual realities artificially create sensory experiences, which can include sight, touch, hearing, and smell.

Currently, virtual reality is accepted as simply the attempt to immerse yourself in a virtual embodiment. For the sake of distinction I’ll refer to the complete state of virtual immersion as virtuality. Naming it in this way helps one to think of it as an extreme on a spectrum, with reality at the other end. In this model, AR and VR are one in the same in the spectrum between virtuality and reality, the only difference being opacity.

If virtual reality is immersion in a simulation of reality, there should be a distinction made for the immersion of another actual reality. For instance, imagine on the other side of the world is a robot that mimics your movement exactly. And imagine it has a set of “eyes” that are equivalent in size and placement to your own. Now imagine transmitting its vision so that you may see through those eyes, and move its arms with your own. It would be as if you were inhabiting that robot, but what you’re experiencing wouldn’t be virtual. The concept of artificially placing yourself in another place in the real world could be called externality.

This could apply to real-time applications. For example if two people in a room wear VR headsets with mounted cameras to swap perspectives, it’s someone as if they are swapping bodies. Or you could consider 360°/VR movies an early version of externality.

But virtual reality video limits immersion by restricting movement. What you are experiencing is pre-recorded, so there is no way to cause a reaction from that medium. That is, until some significant advances are made that allow for the recording of every perspective at once. It is currently possible to turn 360° and in some cases to slightly shift your perspective, but anything beyond that can only currently by done virtually. Which would simply be virtual reality. So for the time being, externality will be limited. Just as virtuality is limited by its lack of touch, force and other physical sensations.

On one hand, you could consider television broadcast and webcams primitive versions of this technology. By this same token, you would have to consider computer games primitive versions of virtual reality. So to make a clear distinction between them, I would say that one to one movement, binocular vision and complete cover of ones field of view are required.

Stopped writing here