Once regarded as a science-fiction cautionary tale of technology gone awry, virtual reality has long represented a gaming Holy Grail: a digital illusion so immersive and complete that gamers are convincingly transported to this artificial world.
And maybe, just maybe, that future arrived earlier this week with the Oculus Rift, a virtual reality headset and gear that literally and figuratively has been turning heads since first demoed a few years ago.
Video game site Giant Bomb, for example, spent hours live streaming their interactions with the device on Monday, and reviews have been quite positive, including this summary line from The Verge: “The headset you can buy today is not Oculus’ most ambitious vision for virtual reality — but it’s a vision that Oculus has successfully delivered on.”
OK, so what is virtual reality?
Well, consider that time during a 3D movie when you jumped back in your seat as an object seemed to burst out of the screen and head toward you. Logically, you know there is no arrow hurtling toward your head, but your eyes and other senses don’t care and you may blink, jump, or try to avoid the object by moving in your seat.
Our senses can be tricked and that’s what VR does.
Virtual reality is also significantly greater than that limited 3D movie experience; for starters, it delivers a 360-degree sensation of a digital world, as opposed to something that’s only in your front vision. It overwhelms the brain to believe something cognitively you know isn’t real but is so engaging it feels real.
And it does this through a headpiece — helmet or visor screen — connected to a device powerful enough to generate this artificial environment.
The idea for virtual reality isn’t new, said Heejoo Kim, assistant professor of digital arts at Bowling Green State University, and who teaches a class on virtual reality.
“Contrary to popular belief, [the concept of] virtual reality has been in existence for centuries; however, the closest current prototype came to life in the 1950s, when a few scientists and artists envisioned the possibility of watching things on a immersive screen,” she said in an email statement. “But the technology wasn’t fully developed or articulated enough to justify their vision.
“Modern virtual reality headsets can make video games into more immersive experiences that offer players an engaging environment and performance. In addition to this, virtual reality, augmented reality, and mixed reality make it possible for game developers to investigate and expand the methods of interaction between players and games.”
Samsung has its own VR with its Gear VR, which is compatible with the Galaxy S7, S7 edge, Note5, S6, and S6 edge phones, and Sony just announced a delayed release date to its PlayStation VR to this fall, which will allow the company to manufacture more headsets. Meanwhile, Microsoft is working on its own VR device, one that uses holograms, the Microsoft HoloLens.
Yet it’s the Oculus Rift that has captured the public’s imagination and media coverage as the launch point of this potential technological revolution, though the device’s almost mythical origin story certainly boosts its appeal:
The Oculus Rift was born as a garage project by a now 23-year-old wunderkind named Palmer Luckey, who wanted to make a virtual-reality device that worked better than anything before it, including the negation of motion sickness, a common and unintended byproduct VR users suffered when navigating the digital world.
As Luckey showed off the device, industry experts and titans themselves became converts to this iteration of a technology that not so long ago seemed more Star Trek warp drive fantasy than practical reality.
Word quickly spread to the masses as well, including a May, 2014, cover story in Wired with a headline teaser that proclaimed, “The Oculus Rift is here, and it will blow your mind.”
Mark Zuckerberg apparently agreed. His Facebook paid $2 billion for the Oculus Rift a few months before the Wired story was published.
As the article noted, shortly after the acquisition Zuckerberg posted this about the potential, beyond that of gaming, for the Oculus Rift:
“Imagine enjoying a courtside seat at a game, studying in a classroom of students and teachers all over the world, or consulting with a doctor face-to-face — just by putting on goggles in your home,” he wrote.
“I’ve seen five or six demos that made me think the world was about to change: Apple II, Netscape, Google, iPhone … then Oculus.”
In fact, those with early access to the Oculus Rift have reported a feeling of vertigo from looking down at the ground from high atop a virtual mountain in one app, or the sensation of movement as they ride a virtual roller coaster in another, and even weightlessness as they float above a virtual Earth in a space simulator app.
These aren’t merely games. These are experiences, and they aren’t cheap.
An Oculus Rift is $600, and includes the headset, sensor, remote, cables, an Xbox One controller, and the app Lucky’s Tale, in addition to the cost of other apps. And to work, the Oculus Rift must be tethered to a computer, which the site oculus.com/en-us/ sells as “Oculus Ready PC bundles” from $950 to $1,000. If you’re willing to pay $1,500 for the entire bundle you can order it now on Amazon.com and have it by no later than next month. Meanwhile, the first runs of Oculus Rifts are sold out, with the device not expected to land in stores until later this summer.
And while the Oculus Rift and VR in general appears to be the next big thing, the important question of “for how long?” remains.
Kim said the Oculus Rift and upcoming VR devices are just the initial wave of “affordable virtual reality.”
“There is huge potential for immersive reality in various industries,” she said.
“This technology will expand our experience in not only games, but also other experiences, such as film, educational training tools, simulations, prototypes, sports, music, theater, and more. The experimentations and implementation of virtual reality have already begun, and reactions are positive.”
That said, let’s pause to remember Nintendo’s innovative but limited Virtual Boy device. Released in 1995, the portable 3D gaming system consisted of a large red visor and controller, and, as part of its stereoscopic method, rendered the games in virtual blood red. Unsurprisingly, Virtual Boy failed to win over gamers and was dropped by Nintendo in less than a year.
Nintendo’s big swing-and-miss is not only a cautionary tale of consumer rejection of technology that was not ready for the masses, but also for the industry’s constant state of motion to survive: the newer, bigger, bolder, and better.
As part of that, video games have a long history of trying to enhance the playing experience by linking what’s on the screen and those controlling it through more lifelike physical connections, including steering wheels and gear shifts, handlebars and periscopes.
The biggest leap in the early days of gaming, though, was Atari’s 1980 arcade tank warfare classic Battlezone, which relied on twin two-way joysticks to move a virtual tank around a vector battlefield to destroy enemy tanks and incoming missiles. There was even a gunsight to look through.
The game was so realistic that, in what sounds like an urban legend but is true, the U.S. Army commissioned Atari to develop a modified version of Battlezone for its soldiers.
And now there’s talk of an Oculus Rift virtual arcade experience app for retro gamers to stroll through and play rows and rows of ’80s-era arcade games.
Imagine playing the tank simulator Battlezone in virtual reality.
That’s a reality-folded-into-itself inter-dimensional twist that requires a still-illegal-in-Ohio substance to fully digest.
And that’s something, at least to this point, VR cannot duplicate.
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