I opened my eyes to a barren wasteland of rusty sand and cloudy dust.

Something revved behind me and I turned around. It was a dune buggy with two people inside. The passenger held a large gun and waved it aggressively in the air. The driver had green and black paint smeared around his eyes and laughed violently, as if he had lost his mind. They were driving directly at me and speeding up.

I started moving out of their way but, just as they were approaching, I was pushed from behind and stumbled into their path. I looked up a half second before their car would collide with my face. I shut my eyes.

My heart was pounding.

I took off the headset and opened my eyes. There was no desert, no rusty sand, no dune buggy, and no man waving a gun wildly above his head. There was just a young man wearing thick glasses with a big smile on his face.

“Felt real, right?”

Yeah.

Even though I knew the entire experience was fake, my heart was pounding and my hands were sweating.

In that moment, I became convinced that Virtual Reality is a platform that will impact all our lives. And soon.

This post will explore why and how.

But first, let’s take a moment to look around. We’re standing on a green mat and holding a clunky virtual reality (VR) headset in our right hand. We hand it to the young man with the thick glasses as he explains 8i, his company, and the simulation we just experienced.

As he talks, we look around. We’re in a corner of a Beverly Hills hotel conference hall at an event called Abundance 360. It’s a 3-day futurist event hosted by Peter Diamandis. The focus has been on emerging technologies — where they are now, where they are going, and how they will impact our lives.

Virtual Reality is one of those technologies and that session is about to start. We walk toward the stage and take a seat at a small table near the back.

We sip our coffee as Philip Rosedale and Peter Diamandis walk onto the stage.

“The internet today is 2D. In the future, it will be a cube.”

Over the years, there has been an evolution to the type of content we share, from text to images to videos. Now we’re starting to share 3D videos and, soon, fully immersive experiences.

Rather than sharing a video of your skydiving trip, imagine capturing the entire moment. You could share that moment, just as you experienced it, with friends. You could even relive it yourself.

Virtual reality is the platform that makes this possible. Like the web or mobile platforms before it, VR is about to explode onto the market.

I know VR feels young, but consider this:

• The first website was created in 1991. Today, 25 years later, there are billions of websites.
• The first modern smartphone was released in 2003. Today, 13 years later, there are billions of smartphones.

The first virtual worlds are being created right now. How many do you think there will be in 10 years?

Further fueling the growth of VR is the increasing investments from the top tech companies.

Facebook bought Oculus for $2 billion. 
Google invested $500 million in Magic Leap.
Apple is rumored to be working on a secret VR project.

VR is coming and soon.

What is Virtual Reality?

Virtual Reality (VR) is a computer-simulated, immersive environment that artificially creates sensory experiences.

In simpler terms, it’s like being dropped into a new world. You see what’s in that world. You hear what’s in that world. You experience what’s in that world.

How to connect to VR?

The most common way to connect is through a head-mounted display (HMD) device. In the past year, a handful have already launched and a bunch more are on the way.

How to interact with VR?

You can use your hands to interact with objects in the virtual world.

The Leap Motion is already under $100, about the same price as a mac mouse or trackpad.

Intel has developed Intel® RealSense™ Technology that can track depth and motion, meaning this type of hand-control interaction will soon come in our laptops and devices.

Put these sensors in any object and you can interact with it without a keyboard, knobs, or any traditional control.

Like this:

Other systems use wireless controllers to interact with objects in the virtual world.

Sixense is a wireless motion tracking system that supports trackers worn anywhere on your body, allowing it to mirror your full body’s position and orientation within the virtual world.

Other systems offer fully volumetric 3D experiences, meaning you can walk around the environment.

There are even systems that allow you to walk and run within virtual environments.

And what about Augmented Reality?

Augmented reality is a larger challenge than virtual reality. How do you combine elements of virtual and physical worlds together? How do you make them look seamless?

While not as developed yet as virtual reality, there is still a lot of incredible progress.

Meta 2 brings virtual holograms into the real world and lets you physically interact with them:

Google’s Project Tango is bringing motion and depth tracking to mobile phones so any device can be the window into augmented reality.

Augmented reality may still be in its infancy stage, but it’s growing up very quickly.

One interesting implication of AR is that it eliminates the need for screens and TVs. Anything can be used as a virtual screen.

How is virtual content created?

You can create content by drawing it with your hands.

You can sculpt it with a controller.

You can paint it with a brush.

You can build it from within using virtual builder tools.

You can film it with real people.

Or you can film it yourself.

With a camera like Luna or Samsung’s Gear 360, you can go skydiving and capture the full 360-degree experience. Put on a VR headset and relive that experience or share it with friends.

You’ll soon be creating videos like this (drag and scroll inside the video to look in different directions):

Will virtual reality actually look real?

“The basic technical problem with virtual reality — how to fool the human visual system into perceiving virtual space as real — is nearly solved” 
— Philip Rosedale, founder of High Fidelity and SecondLife

At 4k-8k image/video resolution, your brain will not be able to tell the difference between the real world and the virtual image.

We’re not quite there yet, but we’re close and making quick progress. Just look at these improvements in video quality over the last 17 years:

Imagine what happens in the next 10 years as computing power continues to increase exponentially. Augmented projection and entire virtual worlds will look as real as the world that you currently experience.

You’ll soon be able to walk around virtual environments that are indistinguishable from reality.

But what about the other senses?

A company called UltraHaptics has developed a way to produce tactile feedback by using ultrasound waves. An object doesn’t need to physically exist for you to feel it as though it exists.

TeslaSuit — electro-tactile haptic feedback system gives you the ability to touch and feel objects inside the virtual world.

FeelReal has created a mask that can generate smells (using odor cartridges), cool and hot air, vibrations, and water mists, incorporating more senses into the 3D experience.

What do I look like in VR?

If VR is going to become a platform for face-to-face communication, you’ll need an avatar, a virtual “you” that exists in the virtual world.

But what will that avatar look like?

Human communication is often nonverbal. Important information is hidden in small expressions on our face and movements of our body. For us to communicate effectively in VR, those expressions need to be mirrored exactly by our avatars.

Fortunately, that technology is getting pretty good.

Faceshift, a company recently acquired by Apple, is having a little fun with a similar idea…

There are companies, like Body Labs, working on body scanning as well.

These digital scans can create avatars that look exactly like you.

Imagine having an exact digital replica of your body. You could try on clothes virtually. You could see how your body would change from diet and exercise. You could even see how your body might change during pregnancy.

How will we interact with each other?

Philip Rosedale, founder of High Fidelity and former CEO of the company behind SecondLife, is working hard to bring realistic virtual interaction to life.

Rather than meeting your friends at someone’s apartment, you can meet in a virtual world. There are no constraints to VR space, so you could meet anywhere and do anything — meet inside a virtual game, walk around a virtual mall, or even explore entirely new worlds together.

At the office, rather than having colleagues dial into a conference call, you could all meet “face-to-face” in a virtual world.

What will VR be used for?

If we’re being honest? Porn.

No GIF for this one :-) However, for you curious folk, here are some reactions people had after watching VR porn for the first time (still nsfw).

Education

With VR, you could attend the world’s best schools from anywhere. You could explore history by virtually walking around historical events. You could interact with content in entirely new, engaging ways.

Training

The military uses VR for combat training, exposing soldiers to a wide variety of situations and environments. Pilots use VR flight simulators to train for difficult flight scenarios. Surgeons use VR to practice a variety of surgical procedures.

New Experiences in Gaming

Virtual reality will create a whole new industry of “experience makers”, a term from Chris Dixon’s fantastic write-up on Virtual Reality. At first, gaming will likely dominate these experiences. The Void is one company working on new gaming experiences that blend physical and virtual experiences into something entirely new.

Mindride is another company creating these experiences. Their Airflow simulator lets you experience the sensations of flying.

Virtual Tourism

There will be a demand for 3D content producers to create virtual travel experiences, where you could see another city as though you were actually walking around in it.

Virtual Events

You’ll be able to attend conferences (ex: IoT Slam) and concerts (ex: Coldplay) simply by putting on your VR headset.

Consuming Content

VR will be used for consuming content in new ways. You’ll be able to experience news and shows as if you were actually there within them.

Storytelling

Specular Theory is an experience maker creating 3D stories, often with the ability to watch from multiple perspectives. Their latest, The Midemeanor, allows you to experience an encounter between two young men and two police officers as it spirals out of control. Using a VR headset, you can stand in the shoes of any of those four characters and see the experience from their eyes.

These are just a few of the areas that VR will touch. There will be many more.

And with that, the session comes to a close. As we stand to stretch our legs, Peter and Philip leave the stage.

If you’re like me, your mind is now racing with ideas and questions about our future with VR. Continue that conversation somewhere. Reddit and Product Hunt are good resources. I’d also highly recommend joining the Abundance Insider newsletter, which curates the top news on emerging technologies. Here’s the latest one with a story on real-time virtual 3D teleportation.

Thanks again to Peter Diamandis and the Abundance 360 team for hosting such an incredible event.