Virtual Reality Helpful but Still Not Complete
Without a doubt, virtual reality can be very beneficial when it comes to learning, training, health, and entertainment. Gaming Between Civic Knowledge and Civic Know-How by Sean Conrey, discusses how using simulation games can help people practice real life situations so much that it almost becomes instinct or what he calls “motility”. This is how VR is used in sports training where players can see the play through a virtual reality over and over so that it is natural instinct when it comes to the game. Military training also uses a similar tactics where they are put into different circumstances, so there are no surprises when it comes to a life or death situation. How Neuroscience Can Pave The Way For VR’s Future by Kris Graft points out how that VR can help with treating phobias, PTSD, acute pain, and strokes. VR can help with a wide variety of things but I believe it is still a long ways out to be widely used in business and other industries. This is for three main reasons, Motion sickness, fear, and cost.
Sorry, PowerPoint: The Slide Deck of The Future Will be in AR by Arielle Pardes discusses how Prezi is working on a new way to display presentations through VR. The goal is to help enable human connections and enable to help people better understand through technology. I don’t think VR is what is going to set Prezi apart from power point. Prezi will surpass PowerPoint once Prezi becomes more accessible for everyone and easier to use. Arielle Pardes talked about how VR could be used in business meetings all over the world. I believe this is still very far out because of the cost involved with supplying everyone with a VR headset. Upscale VR headsets can be very expensive. The lower scale VR models headsets are smaller and have gaps to where you can see outside of the VR with your peripheral vision. Using VR and being able to see outside you peripherals is known to cause motion sickness. I see this common problem of VR motion sickness to be a huge problem when it comes to health care. In class, the presenters talked about how VR can be used for pain management and cure other symptoms for elderly people in the nursing home. I do not think this will be a common practice because of the problem with motion sickness and the elderly’s stubbornness and fear to new technology. It isn’t just the elderly that are afraid of VR. VR can be frightening to a lot of people based on different movies they have watched that show how virtual reality and artificial intelligence can take over the world. People are afraid the VR will become the new reality and people will not be able to escape or be able to tell the difference between real life and VR, similar to a dream.
In VR’s defense, there is always fear when new advances of technology come out. I think VR is ready to make a huge impact on the entertainment industry as well as simulation training for the military and other professions. I don’t think VR is ready for the business world or for the elderly quite yet but could be with improvements of cost effectiveness and motion sickness.
Pardes, Arielle. “Sorry, PowerPoint: The Slide Deck of the Future Will Be in AR.” Wired, Conde Nast, 24 Oct. 2017, www.wired.com/story/prezi-augmented-reality/.
Graft, Kris. “How Neuroscience Can Pave the Way for VR’s Future.” Gamasutra Article, www.gamasutra.com/view/news/306267/How_neuroscience_can_pave_the_way_for_VRs_future.php.
Conrey, Sean (2016). “Gameing Between Civiv Knowledge and Civic Know-How: Direct Engagement and the Simulated City” In Play/Write: Digital Rhetoric, Writing, Games (pp. 255–268). Anderson, SC: Parlor Press.
