Why I’m still excited about VR
The other week I was browsing around for a VR ready laptop (for when I can actually afford one) and after clicking through many links and getting sidetracked I wound up in an article about why the makers of Oculus didn’t like Macs. This article was from a year or 2 ago before Apple announced they were putting out a VR ready Mac, so maybe the opinion has changed as far as Oculus’ devs are concerned. Anyway, so after skimming through this article I wind up in the comment section… you can probably imagine on your own, but there were flame wars aplenty. (I didn’t get sucked into commenting… but here I am writing a blog post about it, so that’s probably worse, you be the judge). One guy defending Apple called anyone who wanted to own a VR machine a basement dwelling neckbeard… and something about escapism…
I grew up on SciFi. All of it. Any of it. Gimme a book or recommend a movie and chances are I’ll love it no matter how cheesy. In the realm of scifi, my favorite genre has always been cyberpunk. I loved it before I even knew it had a name. From the Matrix movies to Ghost in the Shell to the not very great Johnny Mnemonic (still loved it though) and the fantastical Shadowrun games, I couldn’t get enough of it. I loved these before I had ever even heard of Neuromancer (I only read it last year! I immediately felt ashamed that it took me so long to find it.)

All these movies and shows and games vary in the more… creative aspects of their story, from the fantasy creatures in Shadowrun to the incomprehensible weirdness of the last Matrix movie. One thing they all have in common though is our enhanced ability to plug in to computer systems, immersing and oftentimes losing yourself in the vast networks of data shaped to look like familiar (physical) structures.
Enter VR.
For the most part VR has stayed in the realm of games for the past several years since its inception. For that reason, probably the first and sometimes only thing that comes to peoples minds when it comes to VR, is as a gaming system. Lately though companies like Facebook have been pushing for VR to be used as a social lobby, and using web VR applications for things like real estate tours (still photos just don’t give you a feel of the entire space…). And those things are great and all, but all they do for me is leave me wanting something more.
With the creation of VR came an onslaught of crowdfunding projects for VR peripherals (3 treadmills that I know of, at least 5 different gloves or hand trackers, and one bodysuit that lets you feel the sensations of the environment your immersed in).
To sidetrack a bit… I’ve been learning to code for about a year now, and at some point, as with any creative endeavor, you stop and wonder to yourself what it is that you want to put out into the world, and how you want to get there. For many weeks all I could answer with was an underwhelming “I don’t know.” Which is fine, who does know right off the bat? But still, not having an answer to a question like that really starts to bug you after a while. So its a good thing I came across this:
It’s an old video but the implications are all there. The coder has the benefit of being able to type without seeing the keyboard, something I wouldn’t be able to do. But the point is… That. Is. AWESOME. Seeing that video immediately sparked in my imagination all the cheesy VR hacking sequences ingrained throughout my youth… the so close yet so far (but so much closer now!) possibilities predicted by William Gibson all those 33 years ago.
This is where the glove peripherals come in for me (and I’m assuming many others). With a hand tracker that’s accurate enough there is no need to type blindly or with a camera pointing at your hands. With a glove or tracker you really don’t even need a physical keyboard anymore.
Granted, for now programming on a physical keyboard is definitely still faster, but if you think about how fast these technologies have progressed since being invented, how much longer will that be true?
And then there’s gloves like the Dexmo being invented that simulate resistance every time you touch or grab something in VR, with the possibility of integrating it with these apps to mimic the sensation of typing, the glove pulling back slightly to indicate you’ve tapped a button. Beyond that, it would give a certain tangibility to programming that wasn’t there before. Imagine being able to create the VR world around you as you are immersed in it (and not only that, but grabbing hold of the objects you’ve just made, or feeling the fake rain droplets tingle through that fancy bodysuit).
The naysayers (and there will always be naysayers) will most likely accuse me of escapism, and to that I say… meh yeah you’re probably right. But who cares this is great.
