Where are we going with VR and AR

Dreams and potential realities

“Happiness only real when shared” Into the Wild (2007)

Internet has changed the way we interact with people and unless some sort of apocalypse comes, it’s going to stay in our lives for a while if not until the end of humanity.

In the last 20 years technology has evolved a lot and right now millions of people have smartphones. If you have one for a while and used it, then when you don’t have it you feel like something is missing (Comfort Objects, Winnicott).

Smartphone usage is the reason hundreds of apps are being made each year, and the main goal besides making money is to capture phone owner’s attention.

Now we hear rumors about virtual reality devices that are already in the market and something called augmented reality, we just don’t pay too much attention because they are still in that cloud of unknown and of course because of the prices. In the case of virtual reality you don’t hear often, “hey, tomorrow I’ll buy an oculus rift or an HTC Vive just to see how it is”, because what can you get with them? Right now it’s a solitary experience, so yeah, we can see that the biggest production of VR is… video games. Why would a regular non player person want to buy something as expensive like that? The target public is still limited.

That I can feel it in the opinions of my coworkers and friends, Virtual reality sounds rad and is pretty cool, “but..”, and that but ultimately means: “is it ever going to take off?”.

Let me tell you about this dialogue I really like from a science fiction tv show called “Person of interest”, the show starts as a normal procedural show but then it evolves and touches subjects such as privacy, machine learning and free will in an era where everything you said could be recorded. Basically, at the end of the show there’s a war between two artificial intelligences, one that wants to protect humanity, taking into account that all lives matter. The other, is the opposite, if you don’t fit you are erased. Anyways, the episode in which said dialogue takes place is one where one of the heroes has a conversation with a young millionaire in the tech world (kind of like a Mark Zuckerberg persona), the conversation goes like this:

Logan: My dad owned a little camera shop. And he made most of his money developing film. And he insisted on staying the course, all the way until the point that film became extinct. And then he tried to sell digital cameras, but by then it was too late because everyone had one in their phone. It’s like he didn't even see it coming. When the business failed, we lost everything.

John: You think if you’re constantly evolving, this won’t happen to you?

Logan: Of course it will happen. But if you accept change as inevitable, it doesn't crush you when it does. Every technology ages, John. The only thing that never gets old is connecting with people. That’s what everyone wants, a real connection.

We as humans cannot escape that compulsion of wanting to interact with others, obviously there are exceptions but usually we want to be able to share what is happening in our life. This is the success implied in facebook, whatsapp and instagram. So maybe besides making VR and AR more accessible to general public in terms of money, we need to create an app that people cannot live without. Or at least something really useful in their daily lives. Dream my friend. What would you like to have? Can you imagine that killer app?

Anyway, not everything is entertainment, VR and AR, could actually help people and be part of the educational process. We can see interesting projects and apps that promise benefits, for instance, to treat acrophobia (I need this) to help prisoners, help patients alleviate their pain… and the list goes on.

Current state of things:

It seems like the future we have seen and read in all those science fiction movies and books is almost here but what do we need to experience VR and AR at the moment?

As we saw in the previous section, to dive into VR we need headsets, the most popular at the moment are the oculus rift and the HTC VIVE, and they are as we said, expensive.

In the case of AR, we have, our phones and the AR glasses promises from Microsoft (HoloLens) and Magic Leap.

Also, there’s something called WebVR (Web virtual reality) that can be experienced in VR devices, using your phone within a cheap VR mount (Google cardboard for example) or directly in your web browser (just open this, hold click, and move).

As developers how can we approach to some of these if we don’t have the resources? Yes, you guessed, WebVR. You just need a compatible browser, and if you can make a little sacrifice, buy a VR mount (there are ones that cost less than USD 20, Google cardboard is only USD 15 ). Still… what is exactly WebVR? we will discuss this in our next post.

To be continued…