vr essay

Random article
Teaching guide
Privacy & cookies

Virtual reality

by Chris Woodford . Last updated: August 14, 2023.

Y ou'll probably never go to Mars, swim with dolphins, run an Olympic 100 meters, or sing onstage with the Rolling Stones. But if virtual reality ever lives up to its promise, you might be able to do all these things—and many more—without even leaving your home. Unlike real reality (the actual world in which we live), virtual reality means simulating bits of our world (or completely imaginary worlds) using high-performance computers and sensory equipment, like headsets and gloves. Apart from games and entertainment, it's long been used for training airline pilots and surgeons and for helping scientists to figure out complex problems such as the structure of protein molecules. How does it work? Let's take a closer look! Photo: Virtual pilot. This US Air Force student is learning to fly a giant C-17 Globemaster plane using a virtual reality simulator. Picture by Trenton Jancze courtesy of US Air Force .

A believable, interactive 3D computer-created world that you can explore so you feel you really are there, both mentally and physically.

Photo: The view from inside. A typical HMD has two tiny screens that show different pictures to each of your eyes, so your brain produces a combined 3D (stereoscopic) image. Picture by courtesy of US Air Force.

Photos: EXOS datagloves produced by NASA in the 1990s had very intricate external sensors to detect finger movements with high precision. Picture courtesy of NASA Ames Research Center and Internet Archive .

Photo: This more elaborate EXOS glove had separate sensors on each finger segment, wired up to a single ribbon cable connected up to the main VR computer. Picture by Wade Sisler courtesy of NASA Ames Research Center .

Artwork: How a fiber-optic dataglove works. Each finger has a fiber-optic cable stretched along its length. (1) At one end of the finger, a light-emitting diode (LED) shines light into the cable. (2) Light rays shoot down the cable, bouncing off the sides. (3) There are tiny abrasions in the top of each fiber through which some of the rays escape. The more you flex your fingers, the more light escapes. (4) The amount of light arriving at a photocell at the end gives a rough indication of how much you're flexing your finger. (5) A cable carries this signal off to the VR computer. This is a simplified version of the kind of dataglove VPL patented in 1992, and you'll find the idea described in much more detail in US Patent 5,097,252 .

Photo: A typical handheld virtual reality controller (complete with elastic bands), looking not so different from a video game controller. Photo courtesy of NASA Ames Research Center and Internet Archive .

If you liked this article...

Find out more, on this website.

3D-television
Augmented reality
Computer graphics

News and popular science

Apple Is Stepping Into the Metaverse. Will Anyone Care? by Kellen Browning and Mike Isaac. The New York Times, June 2, 2023. Can Apple succeed with the Metaverse where Facebook has (so far) failed?
Everybody Into the Metaverse! Virtual Reality Beckons Big Tech by Cade Metz. The New York Times, December 30, 2021. The Times welcomes the latest push to an ambitious new vision of the virtual world.
Facebook gives a glimpse of metaverse, its planned virtual reality world by Mike Isaac. The Guardian, October 29, 2021. Facebook rebrands itself "Meta" as it announces ambitious plans to build a virtual metaverse.
Military trials training for missions in virtual reality by Zoe Kleinman. BBC News, 1 March 2020. How Oculus Rift and Unreal Engine software are being deployed in military training.
What went wrong with virtual reality? by Eleanor Lawrie. BBC News, 10 January 2020. Despite all the hype, VR still isn't a mainstream technology.
FedEx Ground Uses Virtual Reality to Train and Retain Package Handlers by Michelle Rafter. IEEE Spectrum, 8 November 2019. How VR could help reduce staff turnover by weeding out unsuitable people before they start work.
VR Therapy Makes Arachnophobes Braver Around Real Spiders by Emily Waltz. IEEE Spectrum, 24 January 2019. Can VR cure your fear of spiders?
Touching the Virtual: How Microsoft Research is Making Virtual Reality Tangible : Microsoft Blog, 8 March 2018. A fascinating look at Microsoft's research into haptic (touch-based) VR controllers.
Want to Know What Virtual Reality Might Become? Look to the Past by Steven Johnson. The New York Times, November 3, 2016. What can the history of 19th-century stereoscopic toys tell us about the likely future of VR?
A Virtual Reality Revolution, Coming to a Headset Near You by Lorne Manly. The New York Times, November 19, 2015. Musicians, filmmakers, and games programmers try to second-guess the future of VR.
Virtual Reality Pioneer Looks Beyond Entertainment by Jeremy Hsu. IEEE Spectrum, April 30, 2015. Where does Stanford VR guru Jeremy Bailenson see VR going in the future?
Whatever happened to ... Virtual Reality? by Science@NASA, June 21, 2004. Why NASA decided to revisit virtual reality 20 years after the technology first drew attention in the 1980s.
Virtual Reality: Oxymoron or Pleonasm? by Nicholas Negroponte, Wired, Issue 1.06, December 1993. Early thoughts on virtual worlds from the influential MIT Media Lab pioneer

Scholarly articles

The Past, Present, and Future of Virtual and Augmented Reality Research: A Network and Cluster Analysis of the Literature by Pietro Cipresso et al, Front Psychol. 2018; 9: 2086.
Virtual Reality as a Tool for Scientific Research by Jeremy Swan, NICHD Newsletter, September 2016.
Virtual Heritage: Researching and Visualizing the Past in 3D by Donald H. Sanders, Journal of Eastern Mediterranean Archaeology & Heritage Studies, Vol. 2, No. 1 (2014), pp. 30–47.

For older readers

Virtual Reality by Samuel Greengard. MIT Press, 2019. A short introduction that explains why VR and AR matter, looks at the different technologies available, considers social issues that they raise, and explores the likely shape of our virtual future.
Virtual Reality Technology by Grigore Burdea and Philippe Coiffet. Wiley-IEEE, 2017/2024. Popular VR textbook covering history, programming, and applications.
Learning Virtual Reality: Developing Immersive Experiences and Applications for Desktop, Web, and Mobile by Tony Parisi. O'Reilly, 2015. An up-to-date introduction for VR developers that covers everything from the basics of VR to cutting-edge products like the Oculus Rift and Google Cardboard.
Developing Virtual Reality Applications by Alan B. Craig, William R. Sherman, and Jeffrey D. Will. Morgan Kaufmann, 2009. More detail of the applications of VR in science, education, medicine, the military, and elsewhere.
Virtual Reality by Howard Rheingold. Secker & Warburg, 1991. The classic (though now somewhat dated) introduction to VR.

For younger readers

All About Virtual Reality by Jack Challoner. DK, 2017. A 32-page introduction for ages 7–9.

Current research

Advanced VR Research Centre, Loughborough University
Virtual Reality and Visualization Research: Bauhaus-Universität Weimar
Institute of Software Technology and Interactive Systems: Vienna University of Technology
Microsoft Research: Human-Computer Interaction
MIT Media Lab
Virtual Human Interaction Lab (VHIL) at Stanford University
WO 1992009963: System for creating a virtual world by Dan D Browning, Ethan D Joffe, Jaron Z Lanier, VPL Research, Inc., published June 11, 1992. Outlines a method of creating and editing a virtual world using a pictorial database.
US Patent 5,798,739: Virtual image display device by Michael A. Teitel, VPL Research, Inc., published August 25, 1998. A typical head-mounted display designed for VR systems.
US Patent 5,798,739: Motion sensor which produces an asymmetrical signal in response to symmetrical movement by Young L. Harvill et al, VPL Research, Inc., published March 17, 1992. Describes a dataglove that users fiber-optic sensors to detect finger movements.

Rate this page

Tell your friends, cite this page, more to explore on our website....

Get the book
Send feedback

Virtual Reality (VR)

How it works

Virtual reality has enhance life in all aspects by allowing your senses to feel what your body cannot experience; it allows you to travel, learn, and has a bright future ahead of it. Even though it has experienced obstacles, it is an emerging technology at best. Therefore, what is Virtual reality “Virtual reality is the term used to describe a three-dimensional, computer generated environment which can be explored and interacted with by a person. That person becomes part of this virtual world or is immersed within this environment and whilst there, is able to manipulate objects or perform a series of actions”(Virtual Reality Society, 2017).

Virtual reality has succeeded to enhance life because it exceeds the odds one never expects to meet. “VIRTUAL Reality (VR) is the current frontier in gaming, offering immersion and totally different experiences to what gamers have been used to”(Wilson, 2017). Virtual reality has enhanced this field a lot due to the fact that gamers have a need to feel immersed in the game to feel like their truly there in the action.

Virtual reality has now started to include more and more items to the collection of VR, which is making this reality feel more immersive. Virtual reality gaming still has a long way to go but still has enhanced gaming by a lot already. Another great example of a way Virtual reality has enhanced life if the opportunity to visit locations you have never seen before. “Atlas Obscura is using virtual reality to transport readers to the world’s distant, exotic locations” (Bilton, 2017). To be able to sit in your living room and visit Tokyo would be an exciting adventure. Virtual reality has so many possibilities to enhance your life, and it does not stop at gaming and luxury. The most beneficial enhancement from Virtual reality is education. With virtual reality you now have so much hands on learning capability to train students with this is a true improvement to the education system. On Unimersiv students can enter classes from just about anything from business, science, to physical education. Unimersiv has the most resources to immersive virtual reality content for educational needs online. (Thomas, 2015) Virtual reality has such a big future in education. It is clear that Virtual reality can enhance your life but how did it begin? It begins with a man named Ivan Sutherland and his student Bob Sproul.

Ivan Sutherland was born May 16, 1938; he is an American computer scientist, internet pioneer, and known as a creator of many computer graphics. Bob Sproul Ivan Sutherland’s student was born in 1945; received his master’s degree in computer science and known for working for Oracle Labs (Celebrity Birthdays, n.d.). “In 1968 Ivan Sutherland and his student Bob Sproul created the first VR / AR head mounted display (Sword of Damocles) that was connected to a computer and not a camera. It was a large and scary looking contraption that was too heavy for any user to comfortably wear and was suspended from the ceiling (hence its name). The user would also need to be strapped into the device. (Virtual Reality Society, 2017). Now the reason Ivan thought of Virtual reality was to create the “Ultimate Display” so in 1965 he created a concept that made you view a virtual world to appear realistic. Ivan thought up the ultimate display as a room where you could control matter or the existence of it. If an object were displayed, you would be able to touch it or if something fatal were to appear it would actually cause harm. “With appropriate programming such a display could literally be the Wonderland into which Alice walked” (Virtual Reality Society, 2017).

As great as Virtual reality has come it has went through many hardships through its time lime: Such as price since most VR headsets range from prices of $400-$600 ranges money has become a big obstacle for Virtual reality; “VR right now comes at too high of a price point for many” (Wiltz, 2017). There’s also still way too little information on the side effects VR can cause such as vision problems and seizures; “Many VR side-effects are believed to be temporary and leave no lasting damage, but there have been few long-term studies into use of the technology” (Davis, 2016). Lastly, there is still a major lack of content to take the leap into purchasing a VR device for most struggling households. Therefore, Virtual reality still has many hardships to overcome but the future for VR shines bright. The future of Virtual reality has so many endless possibilities and some of these possibilities are ones we can share with family and friends such as going to the cinema. “If cinema is a shared dream, this is a shared reality(Charara, 2015)” The fact is Virtual Reality can be the source of tons of shared realities. Virtual reality will soon not be restricted to simulated animations due to VRSE. VRSE’s documentaries have outnumbered short films on the mobile, and soon will own a 180 or 360-degree video section to rival the VR movie companies with bigger budgets. During this time Facebook has been excitedly encouraging these changes since the owning of Oculus.(Charara, 2015) Then there’s places looking into VR theme parks; therefore, all those thrill seeking lovers can truly get the thrills they desire. The February of 2016, China’s Shanda Group declared they were investing $350 million in collaboration with The Void to build a VR theme Park. While Starbreeze a Swedish game studio expects to work with the chain of IMAX theaters to bring premium virtual reality ideals to various commercial locations.

Theirs also amusement parks that are also beginning to implement virtual reality into their previous and future rides such as Six Flags. The summer of 2016 Six Flags had begun updating nine of their coasters to have a Virtual Reality design. (Adi Robertson, 2016) The future virtual reality also shines bright for the sports industry not only is it a way better experience to watch on a VR device but Virtual reality can also assist in training in the future. “This helps football teams prepare players for games without requiring their excessive presence on the field, where they risk being injured and exposed to summer heat. Teams can thus increase practice time without breaking the stringent rules that both the NFL and NCAA (college football) place on outdoor practice”(Dickson, 2016). We also see a chance of new sports coming out of Virtual reality. Therefore, VR is having a big impact on the future of the sports industry. Traveling in a completely new way for people who cannot really do what they use to. “A startup called Rendever is working towards a future where the physical limitations many seniors face won’t prevent them from traveling – virtually. (CBS News, 2016)” At Brookdale Senior Living Community a group of men and woman were allowed to test out Rendever’s new technology.

Thanks to this technology, Virtual Reality will allow many to take trips and explore the world without leaving the comfort of the building. (CBS News, 2016) The future of Virtual reality will really assist the elderly and handicapped in so many ways to continue giving them the life experiences they want to experience. It is hard for people to explore places due mobility, income, and disabilities; Virtual reality is giving these kinds of people the opportunity to feel like they can do whatever they want. The education system has already started putting some VR into how students learn but in the future, it is believed that VR and AR will take over. Virtual reality is the future for education a big success is fieldtrips. Teachers can now create the perfect trip for their class without leaving their classrooms.

With just basic computer knowledge and a concise lesson plan, you will have the required resources for a Virtual trip of success.(Ivy, 2017) With this hands-on training, you can truly immerse your students in their work therefore making them more interested and have a better understanding. The newer generation connect with technology making this a huge improvement in the education system a big leap in the future. Virtual reality is the enhancement of the future we have all needed. “When you consider the inevitable improvements that are to come for this technology, as well as the still-growing library of content for VR, it’s safe to say that? after decades of attempts? virtual reality is no longer something only found between the pages of a science fiction novel” (Kumar, 2016). VR will bring entertainment to a completely new level with gaming, cinemas, sports, etc. While the future of education is going to allow students to be entirely immersed making information easier to grasp, and learning skills and trades at a younger age possible. Lastly, Virtual reality will provide enjoyment in the purest form with friends and family wherever you may be. Virtual reality has succeeded to enhance life because it exceeds the odds one never expects to meet.

Cite this page

Virtual Reality (VR). (2020, Jan 22). Retrieved from https://papersowl.com/examples/virtual-reality-vr/

"Virtual Reality (VR)." PapersOwl.com , 22 Jan 2020, https://papersowl.com/examples/virtual-reality-vr/

PapersOwl.com. (2020). Virtual Reality (VR) . [Online]. Available at: https://papersowl.com/examples/virtual-reality-vr/ [Accessed: 3 May. 2024]

"Virtual Reality (VR)." PapersOwl.com, Jan 22, 2020. Accessed May 3, 2024. https://papersowl.com/examples/virtual-reality-vr/

"Virtual Reality (VR)," PapersOwl.com , 22-Jan-2020. [Online]. Available: https://papersowl.com/examples/virtual-reality-vr/. [Accessed: 3-May-2024]

PapersOwl.com. (2020). Virtual Reality (VR) . [Online]. Available at: https://papersowl.com/examples/virtual-reality-vr/ [Accessed: 3-May-2024]

Don't let plagiarism ruin your grade

Hire a writer to get a unique paper crafted to your needs.

Our writers will help you fix any mistakes and get an A+!

Please check your inbox.

You can order an original essay written according to your instructions.

Trusted by over 1 million students worldwide

1. Tell Us Your Requirements

2. Pick your perfect writer

3. Get Your Paper and Pay

Hi! I'm Amy, your personal assistant!

Don't know where to start? Give me your paper requirements and I connect you to an academic expert.

short deadlines

100% Plagiarism-Free

Certified writers

Help | Advanced Search

Computer Science > Human-Computer Interaction

Title: virtual reality: a definition history - a personal essay.

Abstract: This essay, written in 1998 by an active participant in both virtual reality development and the virtual reality definition debate, discusses the definition of the phrase "Virtual Reality" (VR). I start with history from a personal perspective, concentrating on the debate between the "Virtual Reality" and "Virtual Environment" labels in the late 1980's and early 1990's. Definitions of VR based on specific technologies are shown to be unsatisfactory. I propose the following definition of VR, based on the striking effects of a good VR system: "Virtual Reality is the use of computer technology to create the effect of an interactive three-dimensional world in which the objects have a sense of spatial presence." The justification for this definition is discussed in detail, and is favorably compared with the dictionary definitions of "virtual" and "reality". The implications of this definition for virtual reality technology are briefly examined.

Submission history

Access paper:.

Other Formats

References & Citations

Google Scholar
Semantic Scholar

DBLP - CS Bibliography

Bibtex formatted citation.

Bibliographic and Citation Tools

Code, data and media associated with this article, recommenders and search tools.

Institution

arXivLabs: experimental projects with community collaborators

arXivLabs is a framework that allows collaborators to develop and share new arXiv features directly on our website.

Both individuals and organizations that work with arXivLabs have embraced and accepted our values of openness, community, excellence, and user data privacy. arXiv is committed to these values and only works with partners that adhere to them.

Have an idea for a project that will add value for arXiv's community? Learn more about arXivLabs .

Introduction to Virtual and Augmented Reality

First Online: 12 January 2022

Cite this chapter

Ralf Doerner 5 ,
Wolfgang Broll ,
Bernhard Jung ,
Paul Grimm ,
Martin Göbel &
Rolf Kruse

5503 Accesses

9 Citations

What is Virtual Reality (VR)? What is Augmented Reality (AR)? What is the purpose of VR/AR? What are the basic concepts? What are the hard- and software components of VR/AR systems? How has VR/AR developed historically? The first chapter examines these questions and provides an introduction to this textbook. This chapter is fundamental for the whole book. All subsequent chapters build on it and do not depend directly on one another. Therefore, these chapters can be worked through selectively and in a sequence that suits the individual interests and needs of the readers. Corresponding tips on how this book can be used efficiently by different target groups (students, teachers, users, technology enthusiasts) are provided at the end of the chapter, as well as a summary, questions for reviewing what has been learned, recommendations for further reading, and the references used in the chapter.

Dedicated website for additional material: vr-ar-book.org

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Available as PDF
Read on any device
Instant download
Own it forever
Available as EPUB and PDF
Compact, lightweight edition
Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Azuma R (1997) A survey of augmented reality. Presence Teleop Virt 6(4):355–385

Article Google Scholar

Bell B, Feiner S, Hoellerer T (2002) Information at a glance. IEEE Comp Gr Appl 22(4)., July/August, 6–9

Google Scholar

Bricken W (1990) Virtual reality: directions of growth. Notes SIGGRAPH ‘90 Panel (HITL Technical Report R-90-1), University of Washington, Seattle

Bryson S (2013). Virtual Reality: a definition history – a personal essay. ArXiv , abs/1312.4322

Caudell TP, Mizell DW (1992) Augmented reality: an application of heads-up display technology to manual manufacturing processes. In: Proceedings of 25th Hawaii International conference on system sciences, Vol. 2, 659–669

Feiner S, MacIntyre B, Höllerer T (1997) A touring machine: prototyping 3D mobile augmented reality systems for exploring the urban environment, digest of papers. In: First International Symposium on Wearable Computers, pp 74–81

Fuchs H, Livingston MA, Raskar R, Colucci D, Keller K, State A, Crawford JR, Rademacher P, Drake SH, Meyer AA (1998) Augmented reality visualization for laparoscopic surgery. In: Wells WM, Colchester A, Delp S (eds) Medical image computing and computer-assisted intervention — MICCAI’98, LNCS, vol 1496. Springer, Berlin/Heidelberg

Held RH, Durlach NI (1992) Telepresence. Presence Teleop Virt 1(1):109–112

Kato H, Billinghurst M (1999) Marker tracking and HMD calibration for a video-based augmented reality conferencing system. In: 2nd IEEE and ACM international workshop on augmented reality (IWAR), pp. 85–94, IEEE

Mann S (1999) Mediated Reality. Linux Journal, Article No 5, Issue 59

Mann S, Furness T, Yuan Y, Iorio J, Wang Z (2018) All Reality: Virtual, Augmented, Mixed (X), Mediated (X,Y), and Multimediated Reality. https://arxiv.org/abs/1804.08386

Milgram P, Takemura H, Utsumi A, Kishino F (1995) Augmented reality: a class of displays on the reality-virtuality continuum. Proc SPIE 2351:282–292

Mine MR, Brooks Jr FP, Sequin CH (1997) Moving objects in space: Exploiting proprioception in virtual-environment interaction. In: Proceedings of SIGGRAPH 1997, pp 19–26

Paradiso JA, Landay JA (2009) Guest editors’ introduction: cross-reality environments. IEEE Perv Computing 8(3):14–15

Rekimoto J, Nagao K (1995) The world through the computer: computer augmented interaction with real world environments. In: Proceedings of UIST ‘95, pp 29–36

Rheingold H (1991) Virtual reality. Summit Books, New York

MATH Google Scholar

Sadowski W, Stanney KM (2002) Presence in virtual environments. In: Stanney KM (ed) Handbook of virtual environments: design, implementation, and applications. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates Inc, Mahwah

Sheridan TB (1992) Musings on telepresence and virtual presence. Presence Teleop Virt 1(1):120–125

Sherman W, Craig A (2003) Understanding virtual reality. Morgan Kaufmann, San Mateo

Slater M (2003) A note on presence terminology. Presence Connect 3:3

Slater M (2009) Place illusion and plausibility can lead to realistic behaviour in immersive virtual environments. Phil Trans R Soc B 364(1535):3549–3557

Slater M, Wilbur S (1997) A framework for immersive virtual environments (FIVE): speculations on the role of presence in virtual environments. Presence Teleop Virt 6(6):603–616

Slater M, Spanlang B, Corominas D (2010) Simulating virtual environments within virtual environments as the basis for a psychophysics of presence. ACM Trans Graph 29(4):92

Stone RJ (1993) In: Earnshaw RA, Gigante MA, Jones H (eds) Virtual reality systems. London, Academic

Sutherland IE (1965) The ultimate display. Proceedings of the IFIP congress, 506–508

Sutherland I (1968) A head mounted three dimensional display. In: Proceedings of the AFIPS fall joint computer conference. Thompson Books, Washington, DC, pp 757–764

Witmer BG, Singer MJ (1998) Measuring presence in virtual environments: a presence questionnaire. Presence Teleop Virt Environ 7(3):225–240

Download references

Author information

Authors and affiliations.

Department of Design, Computer Science, Media, RheinMain University of Applied Sciences, Wiesbaden, Germany

Ralf Doerner

You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Ralf Doerner .

Editor information

Editors and affiliations.

Department of Computer Science and Automation / Department for Economic Science and Media, Ilmenau University of Technology, Ilmenau, Germany

Wolfgang Broll

Department of Media, Darmstadt University of Applied Sciences, Darmstadt, Germany

Institute for Informatics, TU Bergakademie Freiberg, Freiberg, Germany

Bernhard Jung

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

About this chapter

Doerner, R., Broll, W., Jung, B., Grimm, P., Göbel, M., Kruse, R. (2022). Introduction to Virtual and Augmented Reality. In: Doerner, R., Broll, W., Grimm, P., Jung, B. (eds) Virtual and Augmented Reality (VR/AR). Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-79062-2_1

Download citation

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-79062-2_1

Published : 12 January 2022

Publisher Name : Springer, Cham

Print ISBN : 978-3-030-79061-5

Online ISBN : 978-3-030-79062-2

eBook Packages : Computer Science Computer Science (R0)

Share this chapter

Anyone you share the following link with will be able to read this content:

Sorry, a shareable link is not currently available for this article.

Provided by the Springer Nature SharedIt content-sharing initiative

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Find a journal
Track your research

Home — Essay Samples — Information Science and Technology — Virtual Reality — The Concept of Virtual Reality

The Concept of Virtual Reality

Categories: Virtual Reality

About this sample

Words: 689 |

Published: Feb 12, 2019

Words: 689 | Pages: 2 | 4 min read

Introduction, application.

Entertainment

Cite this Essay

Let us write you an essay from scratch

450+ experts on 30 subjects ready to help
Custom essay delivered in as few as 3 hours

Get high-quality help

Dr. Karlyna PhD

Verified writer

Expert in: Information Science and Technology

+ 120 experts online

By clicking “Check Writers’ Offers”, you agree to our terms of service and privacy policy . We’ll occasionally send you promo and account related email

No need to pay just yet!

Related Essays

6 pages / 2649 words

3 pages / 1474 words

3 pages / 1370 words

2 pages / 985 words

Remember! This is just a sample.

You can get your custom paper by one of our expert writers.

121 writers online

Still can’t find what you need?

Browse our vast selection of original essay samples, each expertly formatted and styled

Related Essays on Virtual Reality

Virtual Reality (VR) has emerged as a transformative technology in recent years, offering immersive experiences that take users to new realms and blur the lines between the digital and physical worlds. As VR continues to [...]

Virtual reality (VR) is a groundbreaking technology that allows users to engage with computer-simulated environments, whether real or perceived. While most VR experiences are primarily visual, with displays ranging from computer [...]

In a world inundated with an overwhelming amount of information, pressures, and expectations, many individuals seek an "escape from reality" to recharge, reflect, and sometimes, to protect their mental health. The act of [...]

Virtual reality is a 3D virtual world generated by the use of a computer. This phenomenon has been incorporated into the gaming world with the gamers experiencing a touch with the reality albeit virtually. This invention has [...]

Atonement is a 2001 novel written by Ian McEwan regarding the need for individual atonement. This novel is set in three time periods, 1935 England, Second World War England and France, and present-day England, it involves an [...]

Virtual reality is a computer technology that immerses a user in an imagined or replicated world (like video games, movies, or flight simulation), or simulates presence in the real world (like gliding through the canals on a [...]

Get Your Personalized Essay in 3 Hours or Less!

We use cookies to personalyze your web-site experience. By continuing we’ll assume you board with our cookie policy .

Instructions Followed To The Letter
Deadlines Met At Every Stage
Unique And Plagiarism Free

Reference Manager
Simple TEXT file

People also looked at

Opinion article, the ethics of realism in virtual and augmented reality.

1 Digital Catapult, London, United Kingdom
2 Event Lab, Department of Clinical Psychology and Psychobiology, University of Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain
3 Institute of Neurosciences, University of Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain
4 Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, University College London, London, United Kingdom
5 Magic Leap, Plantation, FL, United States
6 Dimension – Hammerhead VR, Wimbledon, United Kingdom
7 BBC, London, United Kingdom
8 HTC Vive, Slough, United Kingdom
9 Facebook AR/VR, London, United Kingdom
10 Jigsaw, New York, NY, United States
11 Facebook AR/VR, Menlo Park, CA, United States
12 Nesta, London, United Kingdom

“That which is hateful to you, do not do to your fellow. That is the whole Law; the rest is the explanation; go and learn it.” (The Golden Rule of Reciprocity, Negative Form, Hillel).

Introduction

The golden rule of reciprocity (“treat others as you would have them treat you”) is present in most philosophical traditions and religions, and can be thought of as a fundamental human moral imperative. The first and most positive aspect of virtual reality (VR) is that it is possible to give people the experience of the golden rule in operation. For example, VR can place people virtually in the body of another, such that an “ingroup” member can temporarily occupy the body and position of an “outgroup” member: a person with pale skin can temporarily have dark skin ( Maister et al., 2013 , 2015 ; Peck et al., 2013 ; Banakou et al., 2016 ) or vice versa, an adult can become a child ( Banakou et al., 2013 ; Tajadura-Jiménez et al., 2017 ), and someone can experience a world where they are taller or shorter than their real height ( Yee and Bailenson, 2007 ; Freeman et al., 2013 ).

Besides changing bodies, VR enables one to have a myriad of possible experiences from a first-person perspective. One can for instance be exposed to a virtual representation of a phobic agent (for example spiders), the participant knowing it is not real but feeling it as if it were. Thanks to this, VR has become increasingly used for therapeutic purposes including pain management ( Matamala-Gomez et al., 2019 ) and treatment of phobias and anxiety disorders ( Freeman et al., 2017 ). The therapeutic potential in other realms has already been experimentally tested, such as for physical rehabilitation, for example, ( Levin et al., 2015 ), for the rehabilitation of violent offenders ( Seinfeld et al., 2018 ), and for the assessment of symptoms and neurocognitive deficits in people experiencing or at risk of psychosis ( Rus-Calafell et al., 2018 ). Its use for training purposes in several areas including military, medicine, surgery, and disaster response, among others, is also gaining popularity ( Spiegel, 2018 ; Vehtari et al., 2019 ). All these advantages rely on the extent to which the experience is perceived as real. It is reasonable to imagine that more realism in these VR scenarios increases their effectiveness.

In augmented reality (AR), virtual features are added to the real environment through some sort of device (for example goggles or a smartphone) and the information presented often requires the actual location of the user. For instance, when visiting some ruins, one could see a depiction of what the site used to look like superimposed over the remains. This is useful not only for historical representations but also for educational purposes (for example architects and engineers). With AR, one can also visualize a product before purchasing it—even try it on virtually—or see relevant information on the car windshield. AR also offers a huge value for companies that employ it for marketing aims. Similar to VR, augmenting the realism of AR technology is likely to boost its impact.

In addition, VR and AR (XR) systems can be employed for data visualization, for industrial design in architecture and urban planning and, naturally, for entertainment—the gaming industry has enormous potential in this field ( Brey, 1999 , 2008 ; Wassom, 2014 ). Moreover, it is commonplace today to be able to have a conversation in a virtual (VR) or real (AR) space with another person who is physically somewhere else but whose virtual representation is in that same space, which eventually might reduce the need to travel for meetings.

Despite all the benefits, however, XR technology also raises a host of interesting and important ethical questions of which readers should be aware. For instance, the fact that XR enables an individual to interact with virtual characters poses the question of whether the golden rule of reciprocity should apply to fictional virtual characters and, with the development of tools that allow for more realism, whether this should also extend to virtual representations of real people.

Thus, along these lines, is it wrong to do immoral acts in VR? This is explored in a play called “The Nether” (2013) by Jennifer Hayley 1 , where in a fully immersive virtual world a man engages in pedophilia. When confronted by the police in reality (in the play), he argues that this is a safe way to realize his unacceptable drives without harming anyone at all. As stated by Giles Fraser writing in The Guardian newspaper 2 , “Even by watching and applauding the production I felt somehow complicit in, or at least too much in the company of, what was being imagined. Some thoughts one shouldn't think. Some ideas ought to be banished from one's head.” But on the other hand, “Policing the imagination is the ultimate fascism. Take Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four. But the point is surely this: imagination is not cut off from consequence. We all end up being shaped by what we imagine.”

The latter point was part of an argument by Brey (1999) , who considered ethical issues associated with virtual reality. Following Kantian Duty Ethics (a version of the golden rule), he argued that it is a fundamental moral principle “that human beings have a duty to treat other persons with respect, that is, to treat them as ends and not as means, or to do to them as one would expect to be treated by others oneself.” But does this apply to virtual characters? He gave two arguments suggesting that it does. First, following Kant in relation to treatment of animals, we should treat virtual characters with respect because if not we may end up treating people badly too (note that this is a philosophical rather than an empirical argument). Second, if we treat virtual characters with disrespect or act violently toward them, this may actually cause psychological harm to people that those characters might represent. Of course, this happens in movies all the time (think of the “bad guys” in movies, they are often typified as members of particular ethnic groups or social class). In XR this is different though—in movies it is other people who treat other people badly whereas in XR it could be ourselves doing so, or other (virtual or online) people may treat us badly. While this already takes place in video-games, particularly when the character in the video-game is seen and controlled from a first-person perspective, XR goes one step further in the sense that it can feel more real if the participant is fully embodied as that character. Therefore, Brey concludes that designers of VR applications—also applicable to AR—must take into account the possible immoral actions that they might depict or allow their participants to carry out.

It should be noted that causing harm in itself may not always be objectionable. For example, there has been considerable discussion in law about whether consensual harm, where a perpetrator claims that the victim agreed to the harm, can be exonerating ( Bergelson, 2007 ). As another example, children may be required by law to be vaccinated against an illness, for the greater good, even if the parents consider this to be potentially harmful to the children. The utilitarian philosophy of choosing actions that maximize happiness and minimize pain for the greatest number can also justify the causing of harm, again for the greater good. There is, however, also research suggesting that moral judgements may depend not on the outcome but the action involved in achieving the outcome. For example, in the famous trolley problem ( Thomson, 1985 ) a runaway trolley car on a track is about to kill 5 unaware people, but could be diverted onto another track where it would kill just 1 person, thus saving the 5. Utilitarianism would suggest that diverting the trolley is the right action, even though it involves harming the one person. However, people find personally pushing a “heavy man” off a bridge to block the trolley ( Hauser et al., 2007 ) more objectionable than pulling a lever to throw the heavy man off the bridge, even though both actions would result in exactly the same outcome. Several experiments that demonstrate this result are discussed in Miller et al. (2014) . What is interesting is that VR is proving to be an excellent method for finding out how people might behave in practice in these types of circumstance, rather than how they think that they might behave in answer to a questionnaire ( Pan and Slater, 2011 ; Navarrete et al., 2012 ; Friedman et al., 2014 ; Skulmowski et al., 2014 ).

Ethics of XR Use

Before we delve into the ethics of a specific aspect of XR—superrealism—we should consider ethical matters that have already been debated concerning XR use in general. As discussed later on, some of these issues are exacerbated with increasing realism of the virtual experience.

In a scientific context, the use of XR technology is controlled by ethics guidelines and laws that vary across countries but that tend to abide to some general principles. In the United Kingdom, for example, typical research ethics requirements in a scientific context include respect for autonomy and dignity of persons, scientific value, social responsibility, and maximizing benefit and minimizing harm 3 .

On top of the risks in research in general (for example exposure of vulnerable people, exposure to sensitive topics, data-related issues, impact on the physical and psychological well-being, and on the social standing of the participants), XR research must also take into account risks specific to this technology. Behr et al. (2005) summarizes these risks in VR research as follows: (i) motion sickness; (ii) information overload; (iii) intensification of experience (any feeling may be intensified in a VR environment, potentially straining the participants' coping abilities thereby instigating adverse responses), and (iv) cognitive, emotional and behavioral disturbances after re-entry into the real world following the VR experience. Although these were described for VR, they are as well valid for AR (especially ii–iv).

The above though refers to what takes place in a scientific laboratory under strictly controlled conditions, subject to review and oversight by authorities. However, XR is on the verge of becoming a mass consumer product, and since we know that presence, first-person experience and agency are very powerful cues to the brain that “this is really happening,” careful attention needs to be paid to the presentation of violence or abusive behavior in these contexts.

There is already some literature on the ethics of VR and AR use. Some authors discuss this in detail and raise a number of issues of importance to XR industry and practitioners, and ultimately for regulatory authorities at various levels to consider ( Wassom, 2014 ; Madary and Metzinger, 2016 ):

• Virtual embodiment can lead to emotional, cognitive, and behavioral changes. Although those investigated to date have been for what would generally be regarded as beneficial to the individual and society (for example against racial discrimination) there is the possibility that the same technique might be used for harmful applications.

• Exiting from VR may be problematic in some circumstances where individuals had been living in a virtual fantasy world with an enhanced virtual body. This is the downside of positive transfer effects known to occur from psychological therapy that employs VR.

• Long-term and frequent use of XR might lead to people prioritizing the virtual world over the real one.

• It should be clear what the legal and ethical responsibilities are for actions carried out at a distance if embodied in a virtual body or a remote robot controlled by some interface. Suppose the remote representation causes psychological or physical harm to others. Who is responsible—especially in a case where the participant might argue that her or his intentions were not properly realized through the interface, so that the harmful behavior was not intended? In the case of a physical robot, under which legal jurisdiction does the issue fall—that of the participant, the robot or the robot's manufacturer?

• It will be possible in XR to represent situations that might cause psychological harm such as the representation of deceased relatives with whom one will be able to interact. It is not clear whether this will affect, for example the process of acceptance after a loss or whether it could engender feelings like grief or anger.

• XR technology is highly persuasive—that is the whole point and that is how it exerts its benefits (for example training for disaster response in a virtual setting is a form of persuasion). Persuasion can nevertheless be used for ill-intended purposes, for example to incite someone to do something they would not naturally do or even to do something illegal or immoral.

• Personal data acquisition, use, and sharing with third parties is a vast topic that deserves careful attention. Because large amounts of personal data may be collected, so this data can be hacked and/or used for malicious reasons. Of particular relevance are data collection, including for example face recognition, data sharing policies (should the government or other third parties have access to what you do virtually?), scams that use someone's data or identity, and fake commercial transactions (for example you buy a product through a fake virtual store that steals your bank details).

• Virtual violence and pornography will be readily available—as they are currently in video games and on the internet—and it will feel more real. This might have significant social consequences.

The point of this list (and there are other issues) is to pose the challenges. Some of these are completely novel issues. While XR has been mostly confined to the lab, the clinic, and training/education institutions, these issues could be considered as worthy of academic and business discussion. Now that XR is about to become a tool widely used in society, they may become pressing problems. A particular problem set may be caused by what we refer to as “ superrealism ” where elements and even experiences in virtual or augmented reality may become indistinguishable from reality.

Superrealism

Very high quality visual and behavioral realism of virtual humans is becoming increasingly likely and available in the near future. For example, Facebook has been carrying out research and development in this area with impressive results 4 , and similarly Dimension Studios 5 . This will only improve over time as increasing resources are applied to this issue by researchers and companies. In this section we consider some of the implications.

High-Quality Sensory Feedback

In a hypothetical superrealism we require first that sensory rendering becomes of such high quality that it becomes indistinguishable from reality. Advances in computer graphics such as real-time ray tracing, radiosity and, most powerful of all, light field rendering have reduced the gap between photographic realism and virtual realism enormously over the past three decades. However, the evidence (such as there is) suggests that in the context of how people respond to events and situations within XR, the level of such visual realism is not so important as might be imagined. People found VR compelling even in the late 1980s and 1990s when the quality was orders of magnitude worse than now, and, for example, people became anxious talking to a poor-quality rendering of an audience ( Pertaub et al., 2002 ), or standing in front of a virtual pit ( Usoh et al., 1999 ). Zimmons and Panter (2003) found that participants exhibited the same level of anxiety in front of a pit irrespective of which of five levels of rendering were used (ranging from wire frame through radiosity). In two experiments ( Slater et al., 2009 ; Yu et al., 2012 ) it was again found that higher quality rendering (real-time ray tracing or a light-field based method), compared to lower quality rendering, did not influence the responses of participants. However, dynamic elements of the rendering, such as real-time shadows and reflections that moved with the movements of the participant, did enhance anxiety in response to an event within the virtual environment.

In today's XR systems, enhanced visual realism is increasingly facilitated by stereoscopic vision, head tracking and eye tracking to attain synchronization with the person's eye movements. Immersive sound rendering can also be highly realistic. However, there is still a massive way to go with haptic rendering; handshakes and light touches on the shoulder can be done, but not in a way that is going to be available to consumers in the near future. Advances in recent years have included air vortex generation to produce tactile feedback from a distance ( Sodhi et al., 2013 ) and skin integrated wireless interfaces that present a potentially remarkable advance in tactile feedback ( Yu et al., 2019 ). However, tactile feedback is only one half of the haptic interface. There is also a requirement for force feedback (for example, a virtual human character pushes you). Whilst there are advances in force feedback haptic devices in particular domains such as health care and surgery—e.g., ( Vaughan et al., 2016 ; Rose et al., 2018 ), the problem with force-feedback haptics is the requirement for bulky and expensive robotic devices, and its lack of generality. With vision or sound, in principle, it is possible to render anything. Wherever participants look in VR they will see and hear something. However, an accidental collision of their knee with a moving virtual object requires a device that can generate contingent effects anywhere on the body. This is unlikely to be realized as a consumer product in the near future. Olfactory (odor) cues are also not available at the consumer level and are unlikely to be for some time, although there are advances toward this ( Niedenthal et al., 2019 ; Yanagida et al., 2019 ). Therefore, primarily we are concerned with the visual and behavioral aspects of superrealism.

Sensory input and synchronization are far from being the only aspects of superrealism. For example, if humans are represented then not only must they look real (for example in terms of geometry, light reflection, light scattering, etc.) but their behavior must be realistic, ranging from subtle changes in facial expression, eye movements, body movements and gestures, to changes in folds of clothing as the characters move. Realism includes characters apparently seeing and looking at the participant, being able to engage in meaningful interactions even if not conversations. This is becoming possible to some extent with volumetric capture and rendering of people—certainly on the rendering side, if not yet with respect to interaction.

The Device-Gap

Even if all this were achieved, there is still the further problem: the virtual representations in VR must be displayed through a device. Head-mounted displays (HMD) today, and into the foreseeable future, cannot display at a resolution anywhere near that of natural vision, together with the well-over 180-degree horizontal field-of-view and around 150-degree vertical field-of-view that humans have. Moreover, the fact of putting on the HMD itself demarcates reality from virtual reality—so that unless participants are induced to somehow forget that they are wearing the HMD, they will not believe that the virtual scenario is a real one. We refer to this as the device-gap , which provides a clear demarcation between reality and VR through the act of donning devices.

AR may be different with respect to the device-gap. We can imagine a future where AR devices become as ubiquitous as smartphones are today, with people typically wearing devices for long periods, for example in the street. Since “reality” would be experienced through the device, then virtual aspects may become indistinguishable from the real—assuming though that there are significant advances with respect to field-of-view and resolution. Accordingly, the device-gap is arguably diminished or may even be eliminated in an AR system where a “known ground truth” (the real world) is merged with virtual content that obeys the laws of physics and with which the participant can interact. AR systems thus create a paradox of visually validated truth comprised by the simultaneous appearance of real truth and possible (virtual) truth, possibly further challenging the separation of real and virtual worlds. This concept could introduce a variant to superrealism in which what the participant believes he/she knows about the real world can be altered in the virtual experience. On the other hand, the very reality of the ground truth may enhance the realism of virtual aspects apparently present in the physical reality.

Physical vs. Psychological Realism

Despite the advances in realism in XR, it is extremely important to distinguish between belief and illusion . We do not envisage in the foreseeable future that people are actually going to believe that virtual situations and events are real. There are many studies over the past 25 years that show that people do nevertheless respond realistically in virtual environments, even when they know with certainty that nothing real is happening ( Slater and Sanchez-Vives, 2016 ). Hence, many of the issues arising with respect to superrealism are likely to also apply even to today's XR systems. For example, someone may automatically, without thinking, try to sit on a virtual chair that has no counterpart in reality, possibly resulting in harm.

It is therefore worth noting that there is a difference between physical and psychological realism, the former referring to the physical appearance of the virtual features and the latter to the psychological sensation that what happens virtually in an XR world could be happening in reality. It is expected that (physical) superrealism in XR systems achieved through advances in computer graphics enabling more photographic realism, improvements in sensory feedback, and the possibility to interact with virtual elements, among others, also increases the sensation that the virtual experience is real, i.e., the psychological realism.

Worst Case Ethical Problems of Superrealism

In this section we outline some possible ethical problems in XR that are exacerbated by the improvement in realness owing to superrealism. In other words, the issues described below might occur to a certain extent with the use of XR systems but are likely to be aggravated due to the sensation that what is happening virtually could be really happening. It is to be emphasized that these are worst case scenarios, based not at all on evidence, but on speculation . The intention here is to provoke debate and to highlight the need for further research as these represent concerns ahead of facts. The issues fall into a number of categories and we consider each in turn: the vulnerability of certain groups of people, the after-effects following XR use, the discrimination between real and virtual, data issues, XR as an interface to inflict physical harm, and the potential psychological and social implications. The ordering does not reflect levels of importance.

Vulnerable Populations

An implicit assumption in the introduction was that participants in a virtual environment would typically be drawn from adult and non-patient groups, and generally non-vulnerable populations. However, as XR devices and applications become consumer products, there is no guarantee whatsoever of that being the case, unless subject to some regulatory controls (for example, like those applied to cigarette purchase, X-rated movies, and so on). For example, children or adolescents may not distinguish well between reality and virtual reality. This may also be the case for certain patient groups, such as those prone to psychosis. With such populations it is a reasonable assumption that even the device-gap would not necessarily operate, perhaps most especially for very young children. We have limited evidence regarding these possibilities although one study that concentrated specifically on postural stability and simulator sickness amongst children concluded that VR led to no changes from baseline ( Tychsen and Foeller, 2018 ), supporting the idea that young children do not discriminate VR from reality as adults do.

After-Effects

In the grand majority of use cases, the primary point of XR is to provide people with an experience that is apparently happening personally to them in the space in which they seemingly are right now. So although the experience is based on virtual sense data and virtual actions, it is nevertheless real as an experience . For example, when a virtual character smiles at a participant and the participant automatically smiles back—the “being smiled at” and the smiling—are real experiences ( Chalmers, 2017 ). We change through our experiences: experiences produce changes in the body and the brain. In other words, just as real-life experiences have after-effects, so virtual experiences may have physical, emotional, and cognitive after-effects which may be beneficial or harmful. For instance, motion sickness after XR use may result in an accident, or being insulted by a virtual character—be it fictional or an avatar controlled by a real person—may influence the person's well-being in real life. Some of the consequences may be long-lasting.

Another key subject is how the perception of our body can be manipulated with XR—and the ensuing repercussions. In VR it is possible to give people the illusion that they have another body ( Yee et al., 2009 ; Slater et al., 2010 ), and that their body has changed in some fundamental way. For example, adults can have the illusion of having a child body ( Banakou et al., 2013 ), or white people a black body ( Peck et al., 2013 ; Banakou et al., 2016 ), and these experiences change the participants—for example parents changing their behavior toward their children ( Hamilton-Giachritsis et al., 2018 ), white people becoming more ( Groom et al., 2009 ) or less implicitly biased against black ( Maister et al., 2015 ), domestic violence offenders improving their recognition of fear in the faces of women after being embodied as a woman subject to abuse by a virtual man ( Seinfeld et al., 2018 ), and so on. Scientific research has tended to explore positive benefits such as these. However, continued exposure to such embodied experiences may also cause confusion in people about their real body, leading to a type of body dysmorphia. The body may be changed in a dramatic way such as having a tail ( Steptoe et al., 2013 ) or an additional limb ( Laha et al., 2016 ), or a very long arm making the body asymmetric ( Kilteni et al., 2012 ). It has been found that the disappearance of a virtual arm may elicit some cortical reorganization (for example changes in brain connections) after a short exposure ( Kilteni et al., 2016 ). It is possible that repeated exposure to extra limbs or other dramatic body transformations may bring about unwanted changes, or even pain (inducing virtually caused phantom limb pain). However unlikely, such outcomes should be considered.

As people spend more and more time online in XR, their virtual bodies may tend to be evaluated as more beautiful or preferable in various ways in comparison to their real bodies. Just as present day social media such as Snapchat is apparently leading to higher rates of body dysmorphia (body dissatisfaction) leading to greater demands for cosmetic surgery 6 ( Rajanala et al., 2018 ), so the same may occur with respect to future virtual bodies.

Is It Real?

To the extent that a VR system supports natural sensorimotor contingencies (being able to use the body to perceive in a manner similar enough to perception in everyday reality) it will typically lead to participants experiencing “place illusion,” the illusion of being in the place depicted by the virtual reality. A VR system may support (i) credible responses to the actions of the participant, (ii) contingent events that are directed specifically and personally toward the participant (for example a virtual human character smiles at the participant), and (iii) scenarios that are faithful to expectations when they simulate events that could occur in reality in a domain in which the participant has expertise. To the extent that these three are supported, the VR experience may become a plausible one, where participants have the illusion that the depicted events are really happening (to them). These two illusions, place illusion and plausibility, provide the basis for people responding realistically in virtual environments ( Slater, 2009 ). In AR, these illusions may be more easily attained because the virtual components are superimposed or inserted into the real world.

Imagine now repeated exposures to XR with strong place illusion and plausibility. The following are possible negative outcomes:

• Uncertainty of past and current events : Participants remember virtual events as if they had been real, and fail to distinguish over time events that really happened and those that happened in XR. This could also lead to mistrust of events that are actually occurring in reality. After spending some time in a scenario people forget the device-gap and become unsure about whether they are experiencing reality or virtual reality.

• False attribution toward a specific group of people : An event may have occurred in XR where a participant has a negative interaction with a representation of a particular type of person (for example another race or gender). Although this only happened in XR the participant generalizes beyond this, and attributes, for example harmful intents to real people of that type. This may occur even with representations of individual people known to the participant (see Identity hacking below).

• Dangerous presuppositions leading to physical harm : People carry out some physical action in XR that has no counterpart in the real world in which the XR is embedded. We have previously mentioned the chair problem where someone attempts to sit on a virtual chair that has no physical counterpart. Imagine that in VR or AR a participant sees others diving into a swimming pool, and decides to follow suit—and in reality they dive into a hard floor.

• Difficult real-world transition : After an intense and emotional experience in XR, you take the headset off, and you are suddenly in the very different real world. We are not good at rapid adjustment of behavior and emotion regulation. Re-entry to the real world ( Behr et al., 2005 ; Lanier, 2017 ), especially after repeated XR exposure, might lead to disturbances of various types: cognitive (did something happen in XR or in real life?), emotional (cause of emotions is not real , for example your avatar was insulted by a fictional virtual character), and behavioral (for example actions accepted in XR may not be socially accepted in the real world).

XR as an Interface to Physical Assault

A type of “VR” is typically used in drone strikes. The operator, thousands of kilometers away from an intended target, uses an interface to guide a drone which fires a weapon at designated hostile personnel. There is a debate in the military ethics literature about the ethical standing of such strikes ( Braun and Brunstetter, 2013 ), with some arguing that they follow the doctrine of proportionality (since typically there is less “collateral damage”) and others arguing that it nevertheless violates the principle of justice of force short of war ( jus ad vim ). Less dramatically than drone strikes, studies have been done where participants through VR become embodied in, and control in real-time, a remote physical robot. Such robots could also be used to inflict harm. One can also imagine in AR that a person is convinced by others, or by the situation, that a superrealistic avatar seen in physical space can be attacked, because it is only an avatar—yet it turns out to be a real person. It is not clear that these examples are ethical problems in the domain of XR. In the drone strikes, a type of VR is used solely as an interface. The case of a remote robot is just a modern version of a teleoperator system. The VR interfaces are used to deliver sensory information from the remote robot to the participant, and to track the participant to deliver movement instructions to the remote robot. Is this an ethical problem intrinsic to VR itself? The bigger problem may be the distancing and dehumanizing effects. In the AR example, it may happen by accident, or may be by design that a real person is attacked because the attacker had believed that the person was only virtual.

Privacy and Data Issues

Superrealism can be enhanced by collecting personal data such as location, body movements, preferences, and actions in the virtual or semi-virtual environment. This has great implications for a number of applications, from storytelling to advertising to health, but it also raises important ethical issues related to privacy, data sharing, and the misuse of personal data for hacking and other criminal purposes.

Personal Data

With the increase in realism may come an increase in personal data acquisition by the XR system, for instance to better articulate movements of a virtual representation of the participant, to personalize advertising or to enable features relevant to the geographical location in which you are. Traits including motor actions, patterns of eye movement, and reflexes (a person's “kinematic fingerprint”) and information about preferences, habits and interests may be recorded ( Spiegel, 2018 ). This type of personal data is not commonly collected by non-XR current products or experiences on the market today, and so new thinking and consideration will be required to address data collection specific to XR. It is also a critical issue for the uptake of XR. If by default XR devices collect and log such personal data, even if anonymously, then it would not be possible to use such systems in places such as hospitals without violating data protection rules, and in Europe especially the strict regulations of GDPR would have to be followed.

The right to privacy is the right to one's identity in any form (including name, image, voice, preferences) remaining private, that is, not becoming publicly disclosed. Brey (2008) contrasts the right to privacy to the right to free speech, freedom of the press, and freedom of artistic expression. Whereas, the latter three deserve their own attention, it is crucial to maintain the right to privacy of individuals given that disclosure of private information may be seriously harmful to the psychological well-being and social standing of the affected person. Legislation may have to be changed in order to accommodate the type of individual data that can be stored as a result of XR use. An example of misuse of disclosed private information is identity hacking, described below; another example could be misuse of deeply personal data, such as someone's phobias, for blackmail or other illegal purposes.

Data Protection and Data Sharing

As happens with current technologies, so will data collected by XR systems be shared with third parties. The implications are similar to those already existing today in other forms of media except that the amount and type of information may put the individual whose data are being shared at a higher risk (as described in the next paragraphs). Additionally, because of the realism in XR worlds, if, for example, someone carries out an act in XR that would be illegal in reality and if that has been monitored and recorded, it might be later used in evidence about the character of that person in legal proceedings relating to acts in the real world.

Identity Hacking

With superrealism it will be possible to make virtual “copies” of people that look, act, talk like a real person, even demonstrating aspects of personality (for example through the use of machine learning applied to behavior based on recordings of the real person). In this case, some potentially nefarious uses of this would include:

• Fake news : People could be portrayed as carrying out actions and saying things that they did not do. This is already powerful enough in photos and videos, but in XR could be even more dangerous because plausibility includes the automatic attribution of realness to virtual humans. Once having experienced a virtual rendition of someone carrying out an action, it may be difficult to remove this from memory, and may stimulate implicit changes of attitude toward that person. One step further is defamation , whereby a person is depicted in XR doing something immoral or ridiculous, consequently negatively affecting their social standing or reputation.

• Deliberate mistaken identity : In XR you are in a private conversation in your living room or in a virtual space with a significant other who is physically remote but apparently in the same space as yourself. You talk about private information or security issues that you would never mention to someone else. However, although the representation is of the significant other, in fact it is someone else who has hacked the avatar of that person.

• Identity theft : The same technique could be applied to virtual renditions of ourselves that are not “owned” or controlled by ourselves. We could be portrayed as carrying out virtual actions that we would never do in reality, with negative consequences in our relations with others generally, or with employers, or other authorities.

• Body swapping : The technique of body swapping in VR, where one person converses with themselves by successively occupying two different virtual bodies has thus far been used for positive means, such as solving personal problems, for example, people can alternately switch between describing a personal problem while embodying a virtual body closely resembling themselves, and offering themselves counseling while embodying a virtual representation of Dr. Sigmund Freud ( Osimo et al., 2015 ; Slater et al., 2019 ). It is possible—if unlikely—that the same technology could be used to gain insight into another person's mind, insofar as the mind reflects in some sense the physical body, and thereby gain advantage. This could be very similar to role-play, and might not be considered an ethical problem intrinsic to VR.

Psychological and Social Implications

Using XR entails modifying our current perception of reality: entering VR necessarily involves paying little attention to physical reality (other than obvious aspects such as gravity and physical constraints such as walls), and using AR does the same albeit perhaps to a lesser extent since the virtual features are embedded in the real world. This is not particularly new—the same could be (and has been) said about TV viewing or playing of computer games. However, it could be argued that place illusion, plausibility, and transformed agency puts XR in a special category where the following should be considered:

• Social isolation : If the frequency of XR usage were to match or come close to current mobile use for example, it is possible that people's ability to interact in real life may be strongly hampered.

• Preference for virtual social interactions : Perhaps social interaction in XR could become more enjoyable and desirable than real-life interaction so that people withdraw from society (an extreme case being Hikikomori in Japan). Taking this to its extreme, we could eventually become an abstract society , as Karl Popper defines it, in which people never meet face-to-face ( Popper, 2012 , Chapter 10). As with any new technology that gains widespread use (for example, television, games, social media) questions will arise about the potential negative effects on mental health and social norms, and XR is expected to be no different.

• Body neglect : Extreme cases have been reported of people who have spent so much time playing video games that they end up neglecting their body and even their children—sometimes culminating in death 7 , 8 . With more realism and more desirability for the virtual life, it is possible that body neglect also occurs in people who would overuse XR.

• Imitative behavior : The power of virtual experiences might encourage behavior that the person would not normally carry out in reality. This could be through exposure—for example, it may be difficult for a person to carry out their first act of violence in XR, but eventually it becomes easy, and leads to a greater propensity for violence in reality—or it could also occur through copycat behavior—mimicking the harmful behaviors of other virtual characters, for example, peer group pressure seems to operate in VR ( Neyret et al., 2020 ).

• Persuasion : VR and AR are necessarily persuasive in the sense that they provide the participant with an alternative experience that seems real and that can even change their perception, and even more so if the virtual world is superrealistic; however, persuasion directed at modifying someone's emotions or behavior for detrimental ends is highly unethical. Everyone may be at risk and particularly vulnerable populations.

• Unexpected horror : As part of, for example, an artistic virtual environment people may be exposed to horrors that they did not expect and of which they were not forewarned, resulting in a kind of post-traumatic stress response or, conversely, in desensitization for obscene sights.

• Pornography and exposure to violence : People will undoubtedly be exposed to realistic scenes with pornographic or violent content (this is already a fact in other forms of media). The consequences of such images being more realistic and being experienced from a first-person perspective (as already happens in video-games) is likely to have consequences for society. Nonetheless, these seem to be more attributable to pornography and violence themselves and not so much to XR technology.

• Extreme violence and assault : The realistic depiction of very obscene scenes portraying extreme acts of physical or sexual assault, including the representation of virtual characters with childlike features involved in any kind of sexual context, raises critical ethical concerns. Whether this would increase or decrease obscene behavior in real life is not clear and is very difficult to assess experimentally. On the one hand, engaging in or observing these acts carried out by virtual characters may trigger desensitization, which could normalize and thus increase these acts in real life; on the other hand, it may suppress the urges of aggressors to engage in such actions in the real world.

• Lack of common environments : Social science teaches us that our environment gives us norms for behavior and identity (defined, for example, by advertising in the media or fashion industry). The environments that we experience in XR may become the new normal, if we use XR enough. The particular ethical challenge here is that other people do not know or have access to an individual's XR environment, whereas everyone can see real-world environments and have public debates about them. Prolonged XR use on a large scale might challenge the normal public and societal mechanisms for monitoring, discussing, and improving the environments that we live in. The combination of immersion and personalisation could lead to a fracturing of what social and political thought calls “the public sphere.”

• Lack of ground truth : There are risks associated with the power of XR to provide convincing sensory evidence that people take as ground truth. For example, in legal settings, a witness may say “I saw the suspect leave the suitcase at the station entrance, look around, and then quickly walk away.” The visual experience of the witness is crucial for justice, and the law court trusts that the visual experiences of witnesses generally correspond to ground truth. XR potentially allows the people who control the system (i.e., the generated sensory data and possibilities for interaction) to control, reorganize, and manipulate the sensory experiences of others. Society is based on the premise that sensory experiences give ground truth. XR at societal scales has the capacity to decouple sensory experience from ground truth, potentially undermining some core elements of social fabric.

• Persuasive advertising : Potential negative manifestations of advertising content in XR should be considered. Up until recently advertising was public: everyone watching the same material on TV or reading the newspapers would see the same adverts. Later advertising on the web and social media became personal so that one person would see a set of personalized ads based on their own online profile and history. However, such advertising can be easily ignored. Now with AR it is possible that as we go about our daily lives (wearing AR headsets) we might be bombarded by advertising where virtual human characters continuously approach us acting out advertising scenarios, selling products, and directly trying to persuade us. It is also possible that we may not know that we are being actively persuaded in this manner. This cannot be ignored, and could be highly persuasive. Perhaps following certain types of web and games advertising, people will have to pay to stop such bombardment.

Principles for Action

Rather than try to deal with each of the above raised issues separately, here we outline some general principles that might be applied to each type of problem. Note that these principles are particularly relevant to superrealism in the context of XR rather than XR per se .

Minimizing Potential Harm of Immoderate Use

First of all, it is essential to distinguish between the risks originating from immoderate use and those emanating from the content of XR applications. Spending 2 h a week in a virtual world is clearly not the same as devoting most of one's waking hours to creating and living in a virtual life. Indeed, a study of adolescents showed that moderate use of social media is not inherently harmful and may even be beneficial ( Przybylski and Weinstein, 2017 ), so the same may be true about XR use. However, there is not yet a societal norm for what constitutes a reasonable frequency of use, or indeed an understanding of who is responsible for limiting or indeed enforcing the amount of time the user spends in XR. For example, withdrawal from the public sphere of shared reality into a “private world” of individual experience that (although not real) is lived as if it is a private reality could be a real risk for the well-being of XR users. Yet, is living in this private world a right ? Can we require people to be part of a shared public sphere? Can we justifiably prevent XR providers from providing the world into which they withdraw?

In fact, social norms are helpful here: we normally do not allow providers to supply a potentially harmful product and then devolve all of the ethical risk to the user. Instead, we regulate the supply of the product to ensure that the use is appropriate. For example, if a product is potentially addictive, we are cautious about providing it (think about tobacco or alcoholic beverages). It is therefore essential that developers are aware of the ethical implications that can arise as a consequence of how their products are constructed, that they recognize they have a major role in preventing dangers of immoderate use and that they must accept evidence-based regulation to minimize harm. Together with legal authorities, providers have a huge impact on how the use of their products is perceived by society. However, it is also recognized that, in order to do this, developers and authorities alike need access to more research on which to base their response and recommendations.

Minimizing Content-Induced Risk

The other critical factor involves the risks posed by the content of XR applications. Again, one cannot compare racing cars with committing extremely violent crimes in XR. This is relevant particularly for how applications are designed, such as games, products for training or therapy, or applications for research. Brey states that designers should consider what kinds of actions are made possible within XR, how these actions are represented, and whether these actions are encouraged or dissuaded ( Brey, 1999 , 2008 ). In a game or another application in which killing is possible, for example, is this action encouraged or is it dissuaded? Is it rewarded or is it punished? Is the depiction of such action realistic or is it toned down ? Is a specific social group (for example, a specific race) the target of such action? Whether one particular event taking place in XR is moral or immoral depends on multiple factors, some of which have been described here, and not on the event per se . Some authors have suggested that developers disclaim the potential effects of the content on the users. If developers are transparent, and openly and understandably transmit the possible effects on their users, they limit their legal liabilities on top of protecting individuals from potential harm ( Brey, 2008 ; Spiegel, 2018 ).

In fact, certain principles that apply to other forms of media—such as broadcasting—are also appropriate for XR technology. For instance, many aspects relevant to XR systems are covered by existing BBC editorial policy guidelines 9 . In conventional media, there are clear warnings, for example, that what is being shown is a reconstruction, or that some material contains images that may be disturbing to some, so that people are not caught off-guard or misinterpret the veracity of what they observe. Trust is critical; if the BBC reconstruct something (for example, a crime scene), this has to be very clearly labeled—to show visually that this is not the reality. However, XR has a different level of intensity—and often a different objective—that calls for the development of new conventions and sometimes the modification of existing ones (for example, clear depictions of violence may be necessary in military training with XR, and principles or guidelines intending to ameliorate the distress of the participants may not apply in this case). Clear warnings are always advisable and minimum age requirements may be adequate in some instances. Moreover, the short- and long-term effects are unknown; hence, guidelines of XR use will need to be modified as research unravels new findings.

Selecting Levels of Deception

Along with the expectations from the XR industry, we should consider the nature of XR tools as well as which type of use society gives them. VR and AR are intrinsically “deceptive” in that they deliver virtual sense data that may be perceived by people as an alternate reality, and they provide the means to interact within that reality. Although this is “deceptive,” it is the point of XR. People are freely able to choose to enter into this deception, and there is an implicit contract with the designer of the virtual experience where the participant says “I want to experience your virtual world,” and the designer/implementer says “Suit-up in this way with these devices and you will experience it.” The question is then: how much should the contract go beyond this?

To reduce the level of realness, implementers (for example, researchers) and participants may be able to select a level of deception. For example, level 10 means that the XR should try its absolute best to completely convince participants that what they are experiencing is real. Level 1 might be “give me some experience, but do your best to keep reminding me that this is not happening, it is not real.” How this might be done is already problematic—for we have seen that, for example, rendering everything in wire frame (i.e., something that clearly appears unrealistic) in itself is almost certainly not sufficient to completely diminish place illusion and plausibility. An example might be that participants in AR may want to have a setting where virtual human characters are always with (for example) a halo, so that they always know that they are not real. What would the settings between 1 and 10 mean? We have no data that could shed light on this question. It would be important to uncover factors that influence the probability of people being able to distinguish real from virtual when they are wearing the device, and after they no longer wear the device again distinguish between real and virtual memories. Confusion is the heart of the problem given that the very idea of XR involves confusion. A simpler alternative to selecting the level of deception within an XR application would be to at least be aware of how realistic it is, perhaps based on some sort of standardized rating scale that allows users to select an XR application based on the level of deception. Broadcast and film have well-known and understood ratings but there is no known rating system for VR and AR.

Educating Implementers and Participants

Education of implementers and participants about the power of the technology should be a fundamental principle and responsibility of producers of material. Realism is certainly vital in extremely important applications such as for training (flight simulators are a good example of this). However, as well as emphasizing the positive aspects, potential negative effects should also be considered. Perhaps we may apply the same principles as for medicine: we take it for positive effect, but we are also warned of potential side-effects. Education should also take into account that although XR can result in surreptitious influences on behavior, this is nothing new. There are innumerable attempts in everyday life to influence our attitudes and behavior. The question though is whether people know that this is occurring. For example, in the 1950s there were attempts at subliminal advertising in cinemas (flashing an advert so fast it could not be consciously seen), which was eventually discovered and banned.

Education also includes training of end users. For example, when watching TV or playing a video game, if the content becomes uncomfortable or distressing to the viewers they can simply look away and immediately see the real world. In XR, the most obvious thing to do when in trouble would be to close your eyes and take off the device. However, it may not be so easy to disengage—precisely because place illusion and plausibility may lead some participants to simply forget that they can do this. Some form of training to remind users of their ability to “opt-out,” or else a stop button may therefore be an important concept, in order to always respect the participant's right to stop. Additionally, some kind of post-experience “cleansing” may be needed.

As well as education, a related and fundamental issue is trust. Some people might be afraid of a hypothetical case in which reality and XR are not discernible, for example, they might be afraid about themselves or others becoming confused by using superreal XR before even trying it. This would be evidently assumed out of lack of experience but can nonetheless be resolved if there is trust. How can consumers of virtual experiences be assured that they can trust the content? A way forward on this is to develop industry standards or even a cross-industry code of conduct to which producers of virtual content must adhere. A technological solution may involve some concept such as a “watermarking” equivalent of XR. For any approach toward avoidance of negative influences, there have to be standards developed that are agreed upon across industry, with education amongst participants about what particular effects mean. As a simple example, if virtual characters always have a halo, then the meaning of this convention needs to be understood.

Protecting Personal Information

Finally, data issues should be carefully addressed. Some authors have proposed that companies publicly disclose what kind of personal information they obtain and share with third parties, some encouraging “no share” data laws or options for the user to opt out ( Pase, 2012 ; Spiegel, 2018 ). In Europe this is almost certainly already covered by the GDPR legislation, in particular Article 6 10 . The benefits of these legal restrictions, they defend, would outweigh the harm imposed on personal liberty, like the right to privacy. In the context of superrealism in which large amounts of personal data may be used, this option seems at the very least cautious. If this were to be done, the disclosures for the lay public should be made simple and comprehensible.

In all cases, it seems that legal authorities in particular may benefit from considering the implementation of the precautionary principle , whereby discretionary measures are taken when the consequences of a new situation are not yet known; in this case, the effects of XR use are not yet fully understood, it is not clear how the content, and in particular superreal content, may influence individuals and society as a whole, and data issues remain a debatable topic. Research is thus warranted to bring insights into these matters.

Scientific Questions

As we have seen, there is essentially no data that can help in addressing these ethical issues. The problem is that while XR was confined to the lab and industry, it was under tight control through the standard ethical procedures of the institutions, which were guided by the rules and principles briefly outlined in the introduction. Now that XR technology is being released for mass consumption, there are no controls, and no relevant data.

Moreover, it is important to understand that ethical problems do not end with a particular experience—what happens in the longer term is critical. An after-effect might be prolonged. Even a single traumatic episode can have lasting consequences. After watching a movie, you move around in real space where other people are visible, you interact with the real world, and maybe that process diffuses the experience. But it might be the case that this does not work in XR—since as we argued earlier, an XR experience is a real and personal experience, even though the source of the experience is virtual. What was experienced was not about someone else (as it is in a movie) but personal.

Short-term after-effects should be experimentally tractable now. Suitable behavioral tests and measures could compare participant behavior in simple cognitive and social tasks immediately after a brief period in VR or AR, perhaps comparing two XR scenarios that elicit contrasting emotions.

Long-term acculturation effects are not easy to study experimentally, at least not at the moment. We do not know how much exposure is required, and we cannot control for the additional stimulation the participant gets while not in the XR.

Sensory grounding could be studied now. This could start by investigating whether VR or AR can be successfully used to manipulate memory for an event. In a pre-test, for example, I might experience that Bill gave me an apple, and Jane asked to borrow my phone. Can a subsequent session of XR overwrite, erase, or change those memories? This type of research has huge ethical implications for the field of “false memory” and historic child abuse, and would generate a lot of ethical discussion. It would be highly morally and politically sensitive. It would open up a debate on whether AR and immersive VR should or should not be used in situations of recovered memory and historic child abuse; if this use is not yet present, it seems likely to develop. It would be important to involve appropriate academic and clinical researchers in any experimental work, and to think carefully about stakeholders.

We can consider additionally the following issues for experimentation, presented as a series of questions:

• Do people trust virtual characters more if they are more realistic?

• Does greater realism lead to greater confusion between the real and the virtual?

• Does greater realism lead to greater behavioral and emotional impact?

• Does greater realism lead to a greater chance of negative after-effects?

• Can people already today be confused between reality and virtual reality?

• Will there be greater plausibility (illusion that the events are really happening) in interactions with superrealistic characters?

• What, if any, are public perceptions of these issues today?

• How can there be longer term follow-ups of the effects of a virtual experience?

• What are the long-term cultural effects of superreal XR usage?

The other way to think about this might be to explore the concept of discernment in virtual environments. We are familiar with the uncanny effects of viewing avatars and even though animation is capable of producing more and more lifelike figures, we can still tell what is real and what is not real. So, is there a skill of discernment that allows people to learn to distinguish between the real and the virtual? Under some circumstances, some consumers might be more able to discern than others, some might be able to be taught to recognize—just as some people can be taught to tell fake news from real news online—but many would not. There may be longer term questions about the speed with which such education could be developed and extended into the community: what might the lag be between creation of virtual content and development of discernment skills?

Conclusions

The development of increasingly realistic virtual worlds allows for advancements in XR technology to be used in training, education, psychotherapy, physical and mental rehabilitation, marketing, entertainment, and for further applications in research. The benefits of superrealism are clear: realistic virtual scenarios can make XR applications more efficacious. For example, aviators can be better trained because the virtual simulation in which they operate is more accurate and closer to reality; exposure therapy in which a patient is presented with a realistic virtual version of the agent they are afraid of (for example, a spider) may be more efficient if the agent seems real, and so on. As occurs with most things in the world, with benefits come potential misuse, abuse or neglect, all of which bring about ethical concerns.

We started with a version of the golden rule: “That which is hateful to you, do not do to your fellow. That is the whole law; the rest is the explanation; go and learn it.” This is not at all about “empathy,” but very practical guidance. When we construct experiences for others, we need to think about whether we would want to have this experience—without prior warning, education, training, and assured compliance with a generally agreed and debated code of conduct. The challenge now is for researchers, content creators, and distributors of XR systems to determine what should be within this code of conduct.

Author Contributions

MS wrote the first draft of the paper. PH and CV provided further first-hand writing. CG-L systematically contributed to, edited, and organized the paper. All other authors contributed to and reviewed the paper. The ideas of the paper were formulated through a series of meetings to which all authors contributed.

This work was initiated and funded by Digital Catapult, London, UK. Individual members of Digital Catapult took part in the research and writing. MS was Immersive Fellow at Digital Catapult, and CG-L was employed by Digital Catapult for this purpose. Digital Catapult has no financial interest in the publication of this paper.

Conflict of Interest

MS was a consultant for the company Digital Catapult as Immersive Fellow in the carrying out of this work. CG-L was a consultant for Digital Catapult in the carrying out of this work. CV was employed by the company Magic Leap. RG-C and JS were employed by the company Digital Catapult. SJ was employed by the company Dimension – Hammerhead VR. ZW was employed by the BBC. GB was employed by the company HTC Vive. RS, WS, and SH were employed by the company Facebook. DS was employed by the company Jigsaw. DF was employed by the foundation Nesta.

The remaining author declares that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Acknowledgments

This paper was produced as a result of meetings of the Digital Catapult Working Group on Ethics of Realism in XR. In addition we thank Andrew Fitzgibbon of Microsoft Cambridge UK for valuable input, and Naima Camara, Paul Childs, Mandy Mazliah, Cordelia O'Connell, and Philip Young of Digital Catapult for editing. MS led this work while Digital Catapult Immersive Fellow. MS is also supported by the ERC Advanced Grant MoTIVE (#742989).

1. ^ http://www.thenetherplay.com

2. ^ http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/belief/2015/mar/06/virtual-reality-paedophilia-not-harmless-victimless (“Virtual-reality pedophilia is not victimless or harmless”, March 6th, 2015).

3. ^ http://www.bps.org.uk/sites/default/files/documents/code_of_human_research_ethics.pdf , Code of Human Research Ethics, British Psychological Society, 2010.

4. ^ https://www.wired.com/story/facebook-oculus-codec-avatars-vr/

5. ^ https://www.dimensionstudio.co/work

6. ^ https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2019/jan/23/faking-it-how-selfie-dysmorphia-is-driving-people-to-seek-surgery

7. ^ http://www.cnn.com/2015/01/19/world/taiwan-gamer-death

8. ^ http://www.newsweek.com/2014/08/15/korean-couple-let-baby-die-while-they-played-videogame-261483.html

9. ^ https://www.bbc.co.uk/editorialguidelines/

10. ^ https://gdpr.eu/article-6-how-to-process-personal-data-legally/

Banakou, D., Groten, R., and Slater, M. (2013). Illusory ownership of a virtual child body causes overestimation of object sizes and implicit attitude changes. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 110, 12846–12851. doi: 10.1073/pnas.1306779110

PubMed Abstract | CrossRef Full Text | Google Scholar

Banakou, D., Pd, H., and Slater, M. (2016). Virtual embodiment of white people in a black virtual body leads to a sustained reduction in their implicit racial bias. Front. Hum. Neurosci. 10:601. doi: 10.3389/fnhum.2016.00601

Behr, K.-M., Nosper, A., Klimmt, C., and Hartmann, T. (2005). Some practical considerations of ethical issues in VR research. Presence 14, 668–676. doi: 10.1162/105474605775196535

CrossRef Full Text | Google Scholar

Bergelson, V. (2007). Consent to harm. Pace L. Rev. 28, 683–711. Available online at: https://heinonline.org/HOL/LandingPage?handle=hein.journals/pace28&div=37&id=&page=

Google Scholar

Braun, M., and Brunstetter, D. R. (2013). Rethinking the criterion for assessing CIA-targeted killings: drones, proportionality and jus ad vim. J. Milit. Ethics 12, 304–324. doi: 10.1080/15027570.2013.869390

Brey, P. (1999). The ethics of representation and action in virtual reality. Ethics Inf. Technol. 1, 5–14. doi: 10.1023/A:1010069907461

Brey, P. (2008). “Virtual reality and computer simulation,” in The Handbook of Information and Computer Ethics , eds K. Himma and H. Tavani (Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.), 361–384.

Chalmers, D. J. (2017). The virtual and the real. Disputatio 9, 309–352. doi: 10.1515/disp-2017-0009

Freeman, D., Evans, N., Lister, R., Antley, A., Dunn, G., and Slater, M. (2013). Height, social comparison, and paranoia: an immersive virtual reality experimental study. Psychiatry Res. 213, 348–352. doi: 10.1016/j.psychres.2013.12.014

Freeman, D., Reeve, S., Robinson, A., Ehlers, A., Clark, D., Spanlang, B., et al. (2017). Virtual reality in the assessment, understanding, and treatment of mental health disorders. Psychol. Med. 47, 2393–2400. doi: 10.1017/S003329171700040X

Friedman, D., Pizarro, R., Or-Berkers, K., Neyret, S., Pan, X., and Slater, M. (2014). A method for generating an illusion of backwards time travel using immersive virtual reality-an exploratory study. Front. Psychol. 5:943. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2014.00943

Groom, V., Bailenson, J. N., and Nass, C. (2009). The influence of racial embodiment on racial bias in immersive virtual environments. Soc. Influ. 4, 231–248. doi: 10.1080/15534510802643750

Hamilton-Giachritsis, C., Banakou, D., Garcia Quiroga, M., Giachritsis, C., and Slater, M. (2018). Reducing risk and improving maternal perspective-taking and empathy using virtual embodiment. Sci. Rep. 8:2975. doi: 10.1038/s41598-018-21036-2

Hauser, M., Cushman, F., Young, L., Kang-Xing Jin, R., and Mikhail, J. (2007). A dissociation between moral judgments and justifications. Mind Lang. 22, 1–21. doi: 10.1111/j.1468-0017.2006.00297.x

Kilteni, K., Grau-Sánchez, J., Veciana De Las Heras, M., Rodríguez-Fornells, A., and Slater, M. (2016). Decreased corticospinal excitability after the illusion of missing part of the arm. Front. Hum. Neurosci. 10:145. doi: 10.3389/fnhum.2016.00145

Kilteni, K., Normand, J.-M., Sanchez Vives, M. V., and Slater, M. (2012). Extending body space in immersive virtual reality: a very long arm illusion. PLoS ONE 7:e40867. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0040867

Laha, B., Bailenson, J. N., Won, A. S., and Bailey, J. O. (2016). Evaluating control schemes for the third arm of an avatar. Presence 25, 129–147. doi: 10.1162/PRES_a_00251

Lanier, J. (2017). Dawn of the New Everything: Encounters With Reality and Virtual Reality . London: Vintage Publishing.

Levin, M. F., Weiss, P. L., and Keshner, E. A. (2015). Emergence of virtual reality as a tool for upper limb rehabilitation: incorporation of motor control and motor learning principles. Phys. Ther. 95, 415–425. doi: 10.2522/ptj.20130579

Madary, M., and Metzinger, T. (2016). Real virtuality: a code of ethical conduct recommendations for good scientific practice and the consumers of VR-technology. Front. Robot. AI. 3:3. doi: 10.3389/frobt.2016.00003

Maister, L., Sebanz, N., Knoblich, G., and Tsakiris, M. (2013). Experiencing ownership over a dark-skinned body reduces implicit racial bias. Cognition 128, 170–178. doi: 10.1016/j.cognition.2013.04.002

Maister, L., Slater, M., Sanchez-Vives, M. V., and Tsakiris, M. (2015). Changing bodies changes minds: owning another body affects social cognition. Trends Cogn. Sci. 19, 6–12. doi: 10.1016/j.tics.2014.11.001

Matamala-Gomez, M., Donegan, T., Bottiroli, S., Sandrini, G., Sanchez-Vives, M. V., and Tassorelli, C. (2019). Immersive virtual reality and virtual embodiment for pain relief. Front. Hum. Neurosci. 13:279. doi: 10.3389/fnhum.2019.00279

Miller, R. M., Hannikainen, I. A., and Cushman, F. A. (2014). Bad actions or bad outcomes? Differentiating affective contributions to the moral condemnation of harm. Emotion 14, 573–587. doi: 10.1037/a0035361

Navarrete, C. D., Mcdonald, M. M., Mott, M. L., and Asher, B. (2012). Virtual morality: emotion and action in a simulated three-dimensional “trolley problem”. Emotion 12, 364–370. doi: 10.1037/a0025561

Neyret, S., Oliva, R., Beacco, A., Navarro, X., Valenzuela, J., and Slater, M. (2020). An embodied perspective as a victim of sexual harassment in virtual reality reduces action conformity in a later milgram obedience scenario. submitted.

Niedenthal, S., Lundén, P., Ehrndal, M., and Olofsson, J. K. (2019). “A handheld olfactory display for smell-enabled VR games,” in 2019 IEEE International Symposium on Olfaction and Electronic Nose (ISOEN) (Fukuoka: IEEE), 1–4. doi: 10.1109/ISOEN.2019.8823162

Osimo, S. A., Pizarro, R., Spanlang, B., and Slater, M. (2015). Conversations between self and self as sigmund freud – A virtual body ownership paradigm for self counselling. Sci. Rep. 5:13899. doi: 10.1038/srep13899

Pan, X., and Slater, M. (2011). “Confronting a moral dilemma in virtual reality: a pilot study,” in BCS-HCI '11 Proceedings of the 25th BCS Conference on Human-Computer Interaction (Swindon), 46–51. doi: 10.14236/ewic/HCI2011.26

Pase, S. (2012). “Ethical considerations in augmented reality applications,” in Proceedings of the International Conference on e-Learning, e-Business, Enterprise Information Systems, and e-Government (EEE): The Steering Committee of The World Congress in Computer Science, Computer (Las Vegas, NV), 1.

Peck, T. C., Seinfeld, S., Aglioti, S. M., and Slater, M. (2013). Putting yourself in the skin of a black avatar reduces implicit racial bias. Conscious. Cogn. 22, 779–787. doi: 10.1016/j.concog.2013.04.016

Pertaub, D.-P., Slater, M., and Barker, C. (2002). An experiment on public speaking anxiety in response to three different types of virtual audience. Presence 11, 68–78. doi: 10.1162/105474602317343668

Popper, K. (2012). The Open Society and Its Enemies. London; New York, NY: Routledge. doi: 10.4324/9780203439913

Przybylski, A. K., and Weinstein, N. (2017). A large-scale test of the goldilocks hypothesis: quantifying the relations between digital-screen use and the mental well-being of adolescents. Psychol. Sci. 28, 204–215. doi: 10.1177/0956797616678438

Rajanala, S., Maymone, M. B., and Vashi, N. A. (2018). Selfies—living in the era of filtered photographs. JAMA Facial Plast. Surg. 20, 443–444. doi: 10.1001/jamafacial.2018.0486

Rose, T., Nam, C. S., and Chen, K. B. (2018). Immersion of virtual reality for rehabilitation-Review. Appl. Ergon. 69, 153–161. doi: 10.1016/j.apergo.2018.01.009

Rus-Calafell, M., Garety, P., Sason, E., Craig, T. J., and Valmaggia, L. R. (2018). Virtual reality in the assessment and treatment of psychosis: a systematic review of its utility, acceptability and effectiveness. Psychol. Med. 48, 362–391. doi: 10.1017/S0033291717001945

Seinfeld, S., Arroyo-Palacios, J., Iruretagoyena, G., Hortensius, R., Zapata, L. E., Borland, D., et al. (2018). Offenders become the victim in virtual reality: impact of changing perspective in domestic violence. Sci. Rep. 8:2692. doi: 10.1038/s41598-018-19987-7

Skulmowski, A., Bunge, A., Kaspar, K., and Pipa, G. (2014). Forced-choice decision-making in modified trolley dilemma situations: a virtual reality and eye tracking study. Front. Behav. Neurosci. 8:426. doi: 10.3389/fnbeh.2014.00426

Slater, M. (2009). Place Illusion and Plausibility can lead to realistic behaviour in immersive virtual environments. Philos Trans R Soc Lond. B. Biol. Sci. 364, 3549–3557. doi: 10.1098/rstb.2009.0138

Slater, M., Khanna, P., Mortensen, J., and Yu, I. (2009). Visual realism enhances realistic response in an immersive virtual environment. IEEE Comput. Graph. Appl. 29, 76–84. doi: 10.1109/MCG.2009.55

Slater, M., Neyret, S., Johnston, T., Iruretagoyena, G., Crespo, D. L. C., Alabèrnia-Segura, M., et al. (2019). An experimental study of a virtual reality counselling paradigm using embodied self-dialogue. Sci. Rep. 9:10903. doi: 10.1038/s41598-019-46877-3

Slater, M., and Sanchez-Vives, M. V. (2016). Enhancing our lives with immersive virtual reality. Front. Robot. AI. 3:74. doi: 10.3389/frobt.2016.00074

Slater, M., Spanlang, B., Sanchez-Vives, M. V., and Blanke, O. (2010). First person experience of body transfer in virtual reality. PLoS ONE 5:e10564. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0010564

Sodhi, R., Poupyrev, I., Glisson, M., and Israr, A. (2013). AIREAL: interactive tactile experiences in free air. ACM Trans. Graph. 32:134. doi: 10.1145/2461912.2462007

CrossRef Full Text

Spiegel, J. S. (2018). The ethics of virtual reality technology: social hazards and public policy recommendations. Sci. Eng. Ethics 24, 1537–1550. doi: 10.1007/s11948-017-9979-y

Steptoe, W., Steed, A., and Slater, M. (2013). Human tails: ownership and control of extended humanoid avatars. IEEE Trans. Vis. Comput. Graph. 19, 583–590. doi: 10.1109/TVCG.2013.32

Tajadura-Jiménez, A., Banakou, D., Bianchi-Berthouze, N., and Slater, M. (2017). Embodiment in a child-like talking virtual body influences object size perception, self-identification, and subsequent real speaking. Sci. Rep. 7:9637. doi: 10.1038/s41598-017-09497-3

Thomson, J. J. (1985). The trolley problem. Yale Law J. 94, 1395–1415. doi: 10.2307/796133

Tychsen, L., and Foeller, P. (2018). Effects of immersive virtual reality viewing on young children: visuomotor function, postural stability and visually induced motion sickness. JAAPOS 22, e5. doi: 10.1016/j.jaapos.2018.07.011

Usoh, M., Arthur, K., Whitton, M. C., Bastos, R., Steed, A., Slater, M., et al. (1999). “Walking > walking-in-place > flying, in virtual environments,” in Proceedings of the 26th Annual Conference On Computer Graphics And Interactive Techniques (SIGGRAPH) (New York, NY), 359–364. doi: 10.1145/311535.311589

Vaughan, N., Dubey, V. N., Wainwright, T. W., and Middleton, R. G. (2016). A review of virtual reality based training simulators for orthopaedic surgery. Med. Eng. Phys. 38, 59–71. doi: 10.1016/j.medengphy.2015.11.021

Vehtari, A., Simpson, D. P., Yao, Y., and Gelman, A. (2019). Limitations of “limitations of bayesian leave-one-out cross-validation for model selection”. Comput. Brain and Behav. 2, 22–27. doi: 10.1007/s42113-018-0020-6

Wassom, B. (2014). Augmented Reality Law, Privacy, and Ethics: Law, Society, and Emerging AR Technologies. Waltham, MA: Syngress. doi: 10.1016/B978-0-12-800208-7.00003-X

Yanagida, Y., Nakano, T., and Watanabe, K. (2019). “Towards precise spatio-temporal control of scents and air for olfactory augmented reality,” in 2019 IEEE International Symposium on Olfaction and Electronic Nose (ISOEN) (Fukuoka: IEEE), 1–4. doi: 10.1109/ISOEN.2019.8823180

Yee, N., Bailenson, J. N., and Ducheneaut, N. (2009). The Proteus effect: implications of transformed digital self-representation on online and offline behavior. Communic. Res . 36, 285–312. doi: 10.1177/0093650208330254

Yee, N., and Bailenson, J. N. (2007). The Proteus effect: the effect of transformed self-representation on behavior. Hum. Commun. Res. 33, 271–290. doi: 10.1111/j.1468-2958.2007.00299.x

Yu, I., Mortensen, J., Khanna, P., Spanlang, B., and Slater, M. (2012). Visual realism enhances realistic response in an immersive virtual environment - Part 2. IEEE Comput. Graph. Appl. 32, 36–45. doi: 10.1109/MCG.2012.121

Yu, X., Xie, Z., Yu, Y., Lee, J., Vazquez-Guardado, A., Luan, H., et al. (2019). Skin-integrated wireless haptic interfaces for virtual and augmented reality. Nature 575, 473–479. doi: 10.1038/s41586-019-1687-0

Zimmons, P., and Panter, A. (2003). “ The Influence of Rendering Quality on Presence And Task Performance in a Virtual Environment ,” in Proceedings of IEEE Virtual Reality (Los Angeles, CA: IEEE), 293–294.

Keywords: virtual reality, augmented reality, ethics, realism, VR, AR, XR

Citation: Slater M, Gonzalez-Liencres C, Haggard P, Vinkers C, Gregory-Clarke R, Jelley S, Watson Z, Breen G, Schwarz R, Steptoe W, Szostak D, Halan S, Fox D and Silver J (2020) The Ethics of Realism in Virtual and Augmented Reality. Front. Virtual Real. 1:1. doi: 10.3389/frvir.2020.00001

Received: 19 November 2019; Accepted: 11 February 2020; Published: 03 March 2020.

Reviewed by:

Copyright © 2020 Slater, Gonzalez-Liencres, Haggard, Vinkers, Gregory-Clarke, Jelley, Watson, Breen, Schwarz, Steptoe, Szostak, Halan, Fox and Silver. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY) . The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

*Correspondence: Mel Slater, melslater@ub.edu

† Present address: Rebecca Gregory-Clarke, StoryFutures Academy: The National Centre for Immersive Storytelling, London, United Kingdom

To revisit this article, visit My Profile, then View saved stories .

Backchannel
Newsletters
WIRED Insider
WIRED Consulting

Peter Rubin Jaina Grey

The WIRED Guide to Virtual Reality

All hail the headset. Or, alternatively, all ignore the headset, because it’s gonna be a dismal failure anyway.

That’s pretty much the conversation around virtual reality (VR), a technology by which computer-aided stimuli create the immersive illusion of being somewhere else—and a topic on which middle ground is about as scarce as affordable housing in Silicon Valley.

VR is either going to upend our lives in a way nothing has since the smartphone, or it’s the technological equivalent of trying to make “fetch” happen . The poles of that debate were established in 2012, when VR first reemerged from obscurity at a videogame trade show; they’ve persisted through Facebook’s $3 billion acquisition of headset maker Oculus in 2014, through years of refinement and improvement, and well into the first and a half generation of consumer hardware.

The truth is likely somewhere in between. But either way, virtual reality represents an extraordinary shift in the way humans experience the digital realm. Computing has always been a mediated experience: People pass information back and forth through screens and keyboards. VR promises to do away with that pesky middle layer altogether. As does VR's cousin augmented reality (AR), which is sometimes called mixed reality (MR)—not to mention that VR, AR, and MR can all be lumped into the umbrella term XR, for "extended reality."

VR depends on headsets, while AR is (for now, at least) more commonly experienced through your phone. Got all that? Don't worry, we're generally just going to stick with VR for the purposes of this guide. By enveloping you in an artificial world, or bringing virtual objects into your real-world environment, "spatial computing" allows you to interact more intuitively with those objects and information.

Now VR is finally beginning to come of age, having survived the troublesome stages of the famous "hype cycle"—the Peak of Inflated Expectation, even the so-called Trough of Disillusionment. But it's doing so at a time when people are warier about technology than they've ever been. Privacy breaches, internet addiction, toxic online behavior: These ills are all at the forefront of the cultural conversation, and they all have the potential to be amplified many times over by VR and AR. As with the technology itself, "potential" is only one road of many. But, since VR and AR are poised to make significant leaps in the next two years (for real this time!), there's no better time to engage with their promise and their pitfalls.

What is Virtual Reality The Complete WIRED Guide

The current life cycle of virtual reality may have begun when the earliest prototypes of the Oculus Rift showed up at the E3 videogame trade show in 2012, but it’s been licking at the edges of our collective consciousness for more than a century. The idea of immersing ourselves in 3D environments dates all the way back to the stereoscopes that captivated people's imaginations in the 19th century. If you present an almost identical image to each eye, your brain will combine them and find depth in their discrepancies; it's the same mechanism View-Masters used to become a childhood staple.

When actual VR took root in our minds as an all-encompassing simulacrum is a little fuzzier. As with most technological breakthroughs, the vision likely began with science fiction—specifically Stanley G. Weinbaum’s 1935 short story “ Pygmalion’s Spectacles ,” in which a scientist devises a pair of glasses that can "make it so that you are in the story, you speak to the shadows, and the shadows reply, and instead of being on a screen, the story is all about you, and you are in it."

Moving beyond stereoscopes and toward those magical glasses took a little more time, however. In the late 1960s, a University of Utah computer science professor named Ivan Sutherland—who had invented Sketchpad, the predecessor of the first graphic computer interface, as an MIT student—created a contraption called the Sword of Damocles.

The name was fitting: The Sword of Damocles was so large it had to be suspended from the ceiling. Nonetheless, it was the first "head-mounted display"; users who had its twin screens attached to their head could look around the room and see a virtual 3D cube hovering in midair. (Because you could also see your real-world surroundings, this was more like AR than VR, but it remains the inspiration for both technologies.)

Sutherland and his colleague David Evans eventually joined the private sector, adapting their work to flight simulator products. The Air Force and NASA were both actively researching head-mounted displays as well, leading to massive helmets that could envelop pilots and astronauts in the illusion of 360-degree space. Inside the helmets, pilots could see a digital simulation of the world outside their plane, with their instruments superimposed in 3D over the display; when they moved their heads the display would shift, reflecting whatever part of the world they were "looking" at.

None of this technology had a true name, though—at least not until the 1980s, when a twenty-something college dropout named Jaron Lanier dubbed it "virtual reality." (The phrase was first used by French playwright Antonio Artaud in a 1933 essay.) The company Lanier cofounded, VPL Research, created the first official products that could deliver VR: the EyePhone (yup), the DataGlove, and the DataSuit. They delivered a compelling, if graphically primitive, experience, but they were slow, uncomfortable, and—at more than $350,000 for a full setup for two people, including the computer to run it all—prohibitively expensive.

Yet, led by VPL’s promise and fueled by sci-fi writers, VR captured the popular imagination in the first half of the 1990s. If you didn't read Neal Stephenson's 1992 novel Snow Crash , you may have seen the movie Lawnmower Man that same year—a divine piece of schlock that featured VPL's gear (and was so far removed from the Stephen King short story it purported to adapt that King sued to have his name removed from the poster). It wasn't just colonizing genre movies or speculative fiction: VR figured prominently in syndicated live-action kiddie fare like VR Troopers , and even popped up in episodes of Murder She Wrote and Mad About You .

Thinking About Buying a Hybrid Car? Listen Up

Lauren Goode

Get Ready for Monster Hurricanes This Summer

Charlie Wood

In the real world, virtual reality was promised to gamers everywhere. In arcades and malls, Virtuality pods let people play short VR games (remember Dactyl Nightmare ?); in living rooms, Nintendo called its 3D videogame system "Virtual Boy," conveniently ignoring the fact that the headsets delivered headaches rather than actual VR. (The Virtual Boy was discontinued six months after release.) VR proved unable to deliver on its promise, and its cultural presence eventually dried up. Research continued in academia and private-sector labs, but VR simply ceased to exist as a viable consumer technology.

Then the smartphone came along.

Phones featured compact high-resolution displays; they contained tiny gyroscopes and accelerometers; they boasted mobile processors that could handle 3D graphics. And all of a sudden, the hardware limitations that stood in the way of VR weren't a problem anymore.

In 2012, id Software cofounder and virtual-reality aficionado, John Carmack, came to the E3 videogame trade show with a special surprise: He had borrowed a prototype of a headset created by a 19-year-old VR enthusiast named Palmer Luckey and hacked it to run a VR version of the game Doom . Its face was covered with duct tape, and a strap ripped from a pair of Oakley ski goggles was all that held it to your head, but it worked. When people put on the headset, they found themselves surrounded by the 3D graphics they'd normally see on a TV or monitor. They weren't just playing Doom —they were inside it.

Things happened fast after that. Luckey's company, Oculus, raised more than $2 million on Kickstarter to produce the headset, which he called the Oculus Rift. In 2014, Facebook purchased Oculus for nearly $3 billion. ("Oculus has the chance to create the most social platform ever, and change the way we work, play and communicate," Mark Zuckerberg said at the time.)

In 2016, the first wave of dedicated consumer VR headsets arrived, though all three were effectively peripherals rather than full systems: The Oculus Rift and the HTC Vive each connected to high-powered PCs, and the PlayStation VR system ran off a PlayStation 4 game console. In 2018, the first "stand-alone" headsets hit the market. They don't connect to a computer or depend on your smartphone to supply the display and processing; they're self-contained, all-in-one devices that make VR truly easy to use for the first time ever.

In 2020 the world of VR is going to be defined by these stand-alone headsets. The tethered-to-a-desktop headsets are still a high-end option for die-hards looking for the highest fidelity experiences possible, but an untethered stand-alone headset delivers on the promise of deeply immersive VR in the way previous tethered versions just haven’t—at least not without spending serious cash on hardware and accessories. The first next-gen stand-alone headsets are starting to hit store shelves already. Oculus released its version, the Oculus Quest , back in May 2019, and HTC is poised to release a modular competitor, the Vive Cosmos Play , later this year.

What all this is for is a question that doesn't have a single answer. The easiest but least satisfying response is that it's for everything. Beyond games and other interactive entertainment, VR shows promising applications for pain relief and PTSD, for education and design, for both telecommuting and office work. Thanks to "embodied presence"—you occupy an avatar in virtual space—social VR is not just more immersive than any digitally mediated communication we've ever experienced, but more affecting as well. The experiences we have virtually, from our reactions to our surroundings to the quality of our interactions, are stored and retrieved in our brains like any other experiential memory.

Yet, for all the billions of dollars poured into the field, nothing has yet emerged as the iPhone of VR: the product that combines compelling technology with an intuitive, desirable form. And while augmented and mixed reality are still a few years behind VR, it stands to reason that these related technologies won't remain distinct for long, instead merging into a single device that can deliver immersive, shut-out-the-world VR experiences—and then become transparent to let you interact with the world again.

That may end up coming from Apple; the Cupertino company is reportedly at work on a headset that could launch as early as 2020. However, incredibly well-funded and even more incredibly secretive company Magic Leap has recently emerged from years of guarded development to launch the first developer-only version of its own AR headset; the company has said its device would be able to deliver traditional VR as well as hologram-driven mixed reality.

But even with that sort of device, we're at the beginning of a long, uncertain road—not because of what the technology can do, but because of how people could misuse it. The internet is great; how people treat each other on the internet, not so much. Apply that logic to VR, where being embodied as an avatar means you have personal boundaries that can be violated, and where spatialized audio and haptic feedback lets you hear and feel what other people are saying and doing to you, and you're looking at a potential for harassment and toxic behavior that's exponentially more visceral and traumatizing than anything on conventional social media.

And then there's the question of authentication. The internet has given us phishing and catfishing, deep fakes, and fake news. Transpose any one of those into an all-encompassing experiential medium, and it's not hard to imagine what a bad actor (or geopolitical entity) could accomplish.

Those are the darkest timelines, for sure—and despite what the creators of Black Mirror seem to think, there's no guarantee things will swing that way. But if we've learned anything from how our lawmakers think about technology, it's that they don't think about it hard enough, and they don't think about it soon enough. So it's better to have these conversations now before we find ourselves trying to answer questions no one saw coming.

Besides, the way things are going, there's going to be a lot of good coming at us in the next few years. Let's try to keep it that way.

Updated March 2020: We've added some commentary about the state of VR in 2020 to reflect changes in the landscape.

The Untold Story of Magic Leap, the World’s Most Secretive Startup When the first wave of high-end VR headsets landed in 2016, they realized a decades-long dream—but there was another technology already on the horizon.
The Inside Story of Oculus Rift and How Virtual Reality Became Reality When the Oculus Rift first showed up at a videogame trade show in 2012, it was meant to be a Kickstarter project for a few VR die-hards. Turns out reality had other plans.
Coming Attractions: The Rise of VR Porn Like many new technologies over the years, VR found an early foothold in the adult-film industry. But the results may upend everything you thought you knew about porn.
The Display of the Future Might Be in Your Contact Lens AR is moving from our smartphones to eyeglasses and now contact lenses. This new company is at the frontier.
What a Real Wedding in a Virtual Space Says About the Future They met in VR. They grew close in VR. They got married in VR, surrounded by their friends from around the world.
As Social VR Grows, Users Are the Ones Building Its Worlds VR's growth hinges on the creativity of the people wearing the headset as much as it does on the technology powering it.
Facebook's Bizarre VR App Is Exactly Why Zuck Bought Oculus When Facebook announced its social VR app, Spaces, it gave people their first look at why the company paid $3 billion to acquire the headset maker.

Enjoyed this deep dive? Check out more WIRED Guides .

Madeline Ashby

Jennifer M. Wood

1994 Was the Last Good Year&-and It's Still Going

Angela Watercutter

Jerry Seinfeld, Hacks, and the Future of Comedy in a Digital World

Marah Eakin

The Future of Video Games Is ... Reality TV?

Megan Farokhmanesh

Nas’ Illmatic Was the Beginning of the End of the Album

C. Brandon Ogbunu

The 25 Best Movies on Max (aka HBO Max) Right Now

ESSAY SAUCE

FOR STUDENTS : ALL THE INGREDIENTS OF A GOOD ESSAY

Essay: Virtual reality (VR)

Essay details and download:.

Subject area(s): Information technology essays
Reading time: 2 minutes
Price: Free download
Published: 16 October 2015*
File format: Text
Words: 470 (approx)
Number of pages: 2 (approx)

Text preview of this essay:

This page of the essay has 470 words. Download the full version above.

Virtual reality (VR) is not a new concept, attracted much attention in the past few years. A large amount of media interest is rapidly growing. Very few people, however, actually know that VR is that its basic principles and open problems. In this article, a historical overview of virtual reality are, basic terms and classes of VR in the list, and then the introduction of this technology in science, work, and recreation centers. Virtual Reality, meaning a false environment, but it can make people feel just like real-world. Using a variety of hardware and software to manipulate human senses to receive messages, helping the brain construct a fact capable of creating bogus real Maya, which is produced using high-tech virtual world a temporal or spatial variable,People in Virtual Reality and interact with virtual items, characters, and other computer technology, the biggest difference is in interactive, that is, between humans and machine has a feedback effect. The success of a virtual reality system, needs to also have high fidelity, interactive and interesting to the user feeling. In the early 1990s, development in the field of virtual reality has become much more stormy and the term virtual reality has become extremely popular. We can hear about virtual reality in all kinds of media, people use this term very often and they abuse in many cases also. The reason is that this new, promising and fascinating technology captures people’s best interests that for example, computer graphics. The consequence of this State is that nowadays the border between 3D computer graphics and virtual reality becomes blurred. Virtual Reality will undoubtedly attract people’s interest in the last few years. As a new user interface paradigm offers great advantages in many applications. It provides an easy, powerful, intuitive method of human-computer interaction, the user can view and manipulate the artificial environment in the same way we do in the real world, without any need to learn how complex user interface works. Therefore, many applications, such as flight simulators, architectural guidance or data visualization systems have been developed relatively quickly. Modeling of virtual reality provides the possibility to watch in real time and in real space, that of the modeled object would look like.For interior designers, who have their thumbnails. They can change the colors, textures, and position of objects, watching instantly as everything around is going to look like. Virtual Reality has also applied successfully to the modeling of surfaces. The advantage of this technology is that the user can see and even feel the surface shaped under his/her fingers. Although these works are pure laboratory experiments, it is to believe that large applications are possible in the industry for example, by the construction or improvement of forms of car or body of the aircraft directly in the virtual wind tunnel!

...(download the rest of the essay above)

About this essay:

If you use part of this page in your own work, you need to provide a citation, as follows:

Essay Sauce, Virtual reality (VR) . Available from:<https://www.essaysauce.com/information-technology-essays/essay-virtual-reality-vr/> [Accessed 03-05-24].

These Information technology essays have been submitted to us by students in order to help you with your studies.

* This essay may have been previously published on Essay.uk.com at an earlier date.

Virtual Reality: The Technology of the Future

Virtual reality (VR) is a technology that permits the user to maintain contact with a computer-simulated ambiance whether it is an actual or perceived one. Most of the contemporary virtual reality environments are fundamentally visual encounters, shown either on a computer screen or using particular or stereoscopic displays; however, some simulations encompass more sensory input like sound using speakers or headphones. Some improved versions include tactile feedback, recognized as force feedback. It is true in medical and gaming matters. Subscribers can interact with virtual mediums either using standard input tools or by multimodal devices.

The simulated environment may be just as it is the actual world or it may be at variance with reality. Pragmatically speaking, it is impossible to make a high fidelity virtual reality experience, overwhelmingly due to technical restrictions. It is being hoped that these shortcomings would be eventually fixed as processors; imaging and data communication sciences become more refined and less costly. There are unlimited uses of virtual technology.

The advantages of virtual reality are of diverse types and wide-ranging and engulf everything from games to assist in indoctrinating doctors the expertise of surgery or making pilots aware of the skill of flying aircraft safely. It can be exploited for traffic management, medicine, entertainment, workplace, and industrial layouts. However, along with the credit side, the debit side must also be mentioned which includes its use for the destructive objectives. It can easily be employed in the world of crime and the actual state of war.

The notion of virtual reality first came to the fore in the 30s, when scientists generated the first flight simulator for the preparation of pilots. They aspired to position the pilot in the actual; condition before he or she was capable of flying. Virtual reality has a bundle of positive implications. It provides the crippled people with the ability to do the works which otherwise could not be undertaken by them.

In the virtual world, people in wheelchairs have the maneuverability of freedom that is not found in the real world. “VR models of buildings can be used for several purposes; document management, interior design option analyses by end users, operations planning, evacuation simulations etc. Construction practitioners expect rather widely that vr model can be the user interface to complex data and models in near future. For example by pointing a particular object in the building model the user can obtain all documentation relevant to that object. This feature means that in the nearby future the instructions for service and use can take full advantage of virtual reality technology”. (Timothy Leary, Linda Leary, 2007).

Though currently, the technology is not accessible to every person due to the price factor, however, as has been the fate of every technology, it will evolve with time and its price will come within the range of all people. It is expected to enter the homes of everybody as limelight helmets and supercomputers are developed. Virtual reality has so many implications in the realm of all shapes of architecture and industrial layouts.

Computer-aided design has been a significant device since the middle of the 70s, as it permits the user to have three-dimensional images on the screen of the computer. However, till the time of having the VR helmet and glove to initiative the images onto, it would not be possible to be absorbed in the virtual world. Virtual reality has given a phenomenal uplift in the aviation business as it prevents the requirement to have many diverse prototypes.

Each time, an engineer thinks of fresh aircraft or helicopter a model has to be coined to guarantee that it works whether it will fly efficiently and it is beneficial for the personnel and the passengers. If the model is wrong, the designer has to return to the drawing, alter it and then have another one. This is a very costly and time taking process. By employing, virtual technology, designers can draw, construct and evaluate their aircraft in a virtual ambiance without having real aircraft. It also facilitates the designers to employ different ideas. All the details can be viewed in detail and they can pick up the most feasible one. NASA has exploited virtual reality to have a helicopter and Boeing has employed it to design their innovative aircraft.

By the use of virtual reality, doctors have access to the inside of the human body.

Doctors have even been able to make their way into the thorax and to ensure that radiation beams required to deal with the cancer were in the actual position. “Application of these technologies are being developed for health care in the following area: surgical procedures (remote surgery or telepresence, augmented or enhanced surgery; medical therapy; preventive medicine and patient education; medical education and training; visualization of the massive medical database; skill enhancement and rehabilitation; and architectural design for health care facilities” to date, such applications have improved the quality of health care and in future, they will result in substantial costs savings. Tools that respond to the needs of present virtual environment systems are being refined or developed.

However, additional large scale research is necessary for the following areas; user studies use of robots for telepresence procedures, enhanced system reality, and improved system functionality” (Giuseppe Riva, 1997).

Doctors will in the immediate future be capable of investigating and studying tumors very well and in three dimensions rather than from scans and X-rays. In America, an assassin who was killed on an electronic chair gave his body to science. His corpse was torn into small pieces and was exploited for the objective of using the virtual body for research. It is also hoped that in near future, students will be capable to instruct virtual bodies rather than real patients that would assist in overcoming so many medical problems.

On the minute level, it is being exploited in drug research. Scientists have remained successful in the making of molecules, envision and ‘feel’ how they interact with each other. Before the use of this technology, it was extremely slow and intricate.

Therefore there is a strong probability that virtual reality will influence the pace with which innovative drugs and cures are being coined and facilitate treatment in the future as far as their actualization in real life is concerned. “On a microscopic level, virtual reality is being used in drug research. Scientists at the University of North Carolina are able to create the molecules and then visualize and ‘feel’ how they react with each other. Before the use of virtual reality, this process was very slow and complicated. Therefore, it is likely that virtual reality will have a strong impact on the speed with which new drugs and remedies are developed and become available in the future” (Thinkquest, 2004).

Virtual reality is significant in that it has the potential to envision the unseen or the elusive which in other words is called unpredictable. This would lead to virtual reality executing the repairs in space with the assistance of a robot. In a technique, virtual puppetry a robot is managed by an expert operator and imitates all the movements of the operator.

The options for virtual technology are huge. Future inhabitants of the new towns will be capable of walking in the virtual streets, shops, and other places before even they have been built. There are hopes that big capital cities of the western world will be redesigned while exploiting this technology. Although virtual technology is still at the embryonic stage, its roots can be traced back to the invention of supercomputers.

Though the entertainment industry is renowned for the use of virtual technology, several other industries also exploit the same technology on a much bigger scale. Modern-day meteorologists use this technology to prophesize the weather conditions and help people hailing from different industries for the betterment of their outputs. Now the weather is being predicted in a way that was never available before, more and more precisions have resulted after the use of this legendary technology. The technology helps in foretelling the early warning for severe weather conditions.

Diverse intricate situations have been simulated. One of the biggest single simulations in use in the present times is that of the universe. Scientists are making their utmost endeavors to gauge the formulation of the universe. Chemical and molecular prototyping is being done with the assistance of virtual technology. More efficient car engines can be made with the help of this miraculous technology. The processes by which proteins interact with each other are being unearthed by biologists only after the employment of this technology.

The realm which is expected to benefit most from this technology in education. With the accession of computers, simple lessons can easily be delivered by the computers. More established topics were impossible owing to the incapacity of facilitating face-to-face experience. Currently, driving simulators are being used for the preparation of the drivers for driving automobiles. Many difficult academic subjects can be taught now and it is possible because of virtual technology.

The crippled people can co-exist with their environment. The motorized wheelchairs are being used in a better way by the paralyzed children after being versed with this usage of this technology. The children make progress as they accumulate skills with the aid of the virtual worlds. The kid faces great resistance in crossing the street exploiting the pedestrian signals and thus saving him or herself in the traffic. Completion of each world makes the child aware of the expertise and arms them with the contentment and confidence which they need the most.

The medical industry has substantially benefited from virtual technology. Doctors are employing it to the appropriate cure of some of the most intricate diseases. “They can study images of a cancer patient’s body structure to plan an effective radiation therapy technique. Doctors also commonly use surgical modeling to learn how an organ responds to a given surgical instrument. This allows doctors to master surgical procedures without having to endanger anyone by learning on-the-job.

Some doctors even use virtual reality to cure patients of certain phobias. For example, people with acrophobia (the fear of heights) are often treated with virtual reality. The patient is subjected to a virtual world that exercises their fear. In the acrophobia example, they could be looking over the side of a cliff in their simulation. The patient is usually able to overcome their fear due to the fact that they know the situation is only computer simulated and can not actually harm them” (Keith Mitchell, 1996).

Another domain in which it is getting appreciation is the Internet. Virtual reality can be made available to reinforce its interface to convert it into an actual ‘cyberspace’. The web revolution will be able to sustain its radicalism by multiplying the ability to add three-dimensional interactive graphics. This could be made practical only after the development of VRML. It is combined with java that permits the whole interactive world to be made from a single web page. It helps people to be interacting with others even from far-off places in the virtual world from the central website.

Though the fundamental parts of the technology have been present for two decades back, they were not combined and used with great intensity until recently. Currently, the use of this technology is in the expansionist mode. From scientific research to video games and the internet, everyone appears to have recourse to it. It is one of few genres of technologies that are limited by imagination. The variety of applications in different domains has immense promises and the future of virtual technology seems to be very bright.

Along with the aspirations, virtual technology has been attacked for being an inept method for spearheading nongeographical knowledge. Currently, the conception of ubiquitous computing is very renowned in user interface design and this may be considered as a reaction against virtual reality and its encumbrances. In actual practice, these two forms of interfaces have different objectives and are mutually reinforcing. The end of ubiquitous computing is to induct the computer in the world of the computer rather than impose on the user for entering the world of computer inside. The contemporary inclination in virtual reality is to combine the two user interfaces to generate an immersive and combined experience.

Giuseppe Riva (1997), Virtual Reality in Neuro-Psycho-Physiology. IOS Press. Page, 3.

Timothy Leary, Linda Leary (2007), Computing Essentials. Career Education.

Mitchell (1996), “ Virtual Reality ”. UNIX-guru. Web.

Thinkquest (2004), “virtual relaity”. Web.

Cite this paper

Chicago (N-B)
Chicago (A-D)

StudyCorgi. (2021, October 12). Virtual Reality: The Technology of the Future. https://studycorgi.com/virtual-reality-the-technology-of-the-future/

"Virtual Reality: The Technology of the Future." StudyCorgi , 12 Oct. 2021, studycorgi.com/virtual-reality-the-technology-of-the-future/.

StudyCorgi . (2021) 'Virtual Reality: The Technology of the Future'. 12 October.

1. StudyCorgi . "Virtual Reality: The Technology of the Future." October 12, 2021. https://studycorgi.com/virtual-reality-the-technology-of-the-future/.

Bibliography

StudyCorgi . "Virtual Reality: The Technology of the Future." October 12, 2021. https://studycorgi.com/virtual-reality-the-technology-of-the-future/.

StudyCorgi . 2021. "Virtual Reality: The Technology of the Future." October 12, 2021. https://studycorgi.com/virtual-reality-the-technology-of-the-future/.

This paper, “Virtual Reality: The Technology of the Future”, was written and voluntary submitted to our free essay database by a straight-A student. Please ensure you properly reference the paper if you're using it to write your assignment.

Before publication, the StudyCorgi editorial team proofread and checked the paper to make sure it meets the highest standards in terms of grammar, punctuation, style, fact accuracy, copyright issues, and inclusive language. Last updated: October 12, 2021 .

If you are the author of this paper and no longer wish to have it published on StudyCorgi, request the removal . Please use the “ Donate your paper ” form to submit an essay.

Virtual Reality Versus Augmented Reality Essay

Advantages of virtual reality, disadvantages of virtual reality, comparison between virtual reality and augmented reality.

Virtual Reality (VR) refers to a high-end user computer interface involving real-time interactions and stimulations that use several sensorial channels which include visual, auditory, tactile, smell and taste. Virtual Reality should not just be taken as a high-end user interface or a medium.

This is because it includes applications that help in providing solutions to problems in different areas for instance in military, medicine and engineering. The ability of a given application to provide a remedy to certain challenges depends on human imagination (Burdea & Coiffet, 2003).

On the other hand, Augmented Reality (AR) aims at supplementing the real world with a virtual world instead of replacing it altogether. In order to achieve this, Augmented Reality makes use of objects generated by a computer and appears to coexist together with the real world (Klopfer, 2008). Many researchers are interested in Augmented Reality for different reasons.

Some of the reasons include enhancing the perception and interaction with real world and undertaking improvement of different tasks in the world. Augmented Reality can also be applied in different areas such as in the medical practices, commerce, engineering, design and inspection, entertainment as well as military field. Classifying the AR system can be done basing on display, tracking and application viewpoint.

According to Yeon Ma and Choi (2007), there are quite a number of positive implications associated with virtual reality. For instance, VR can be used in the medical field during simulated surgery. It can be used train medical students and new doctors.

The use of flight simulators in the military field can serve as an effective way of providing realistic and advanced situations when undertaking military training. Yeon Ma and Choi (2007) are unanimous that in businesses and corporations, virtual Reality provides a convenient form of communication and at the same facilitates a faster collection of data.

Certain stereoscopic displays and computer screens are used to display virtual reality environments. Headphones and speakers can also be used to boost simulation of the environment (Burdea & Coiffet, 2003). In fact, this amounts to one of the merits of a virtual reality environment.

Moreover, advanced virtual environments can now incorporate a force feedback system that provides some of tactile information. This latest integration of virtual reality environment is mainly made use of in gaming applications. The medical field has also benefited greatly from this new mode of a virtual reality environment. The whole system is heptic in nature (Burdea & Coiffet, 2003).

Another merit of a virtual reality set up is that individuals in remote locations can indeed facilitate some virtual presence of each other through telexistence and telepresence modes. A wired glove or the ordinary mouse and key board components of a computer can be used as virtual artifacts in this case in order to enable remote communication between two or more parties.

In a virtual reality set up, the new environment created can be made to appear like a real world. On the other hand, a virtual reality environment can be significantly altered to resemble the world with slight differences. A case example of this type of virtual reality is the Virtual Reality games (Burdea & Coiffet, 2003).

The main disadvantage of Virtual Reality is with regard to the technology needed to carry out a natural or an immersive experience. it has been found out that for a relatively long period of time, the procedure has remained unsuccessful. Some of the systems that allow articulated presence or provide the expected feedback are at times clumsy. This increases the chances of causing problems when using the system.

Another disadvantage of Virtual Reality relates to the negative social impacts caused by immersive environments to the people and the psychological effects that result from the process due to prolonged usage (Yeon Ma & Choi, 2007).

In terms of demerits, it has proved to be cumbersome to develop a virtual reality environment with high-fidelity. Some of the factors that limit this possibility include communication bandwidth, image resolution, and processing power.

Differences between Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality are based on the level of immersion of the system. A major difference between the two is that a Virtual Reality system aims at reaching a fully immersive virtual environment and uses factors generated by a computer.

This is the environment where the user performs his or her task. On the other hand, an Augmented Reality aims at combining both the virtual and real world. This is mainly aimed at assisting a given user to perform a task from a physical setting (Johnson & Sasse, 1999).

Another difference between the two is that Virtual Reality usually limits the physical movement of the user, whereas Augmented Reality requires the system to be portable especially when dealing with the outdoor augmented reality systems.

However, it is pertinent to note that Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality share some common features. For example, they both share three dimensional images and interactivity and can be applied in similar fields (Yeon Ma & Choi, 2007).

Burdea, G., & Coiffet, P. (2003). Virtual Reality technology . Hoboken, N.J: J. Wiley Interscience.

Johnson, C., Sasse, M. A. (1999). International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction & Interact: Human-computer interaction . Amsterdam: IOS Press.

Klopfer, E. (2008). Augmented Learning: Research and Design of Mobile Educational Games .New York: MIT Press.

Yeon Ma, J. & Choi, J.S.(2007). The Virtuality and Reality of Augmented Reality . London: Academy Publisher.

Chicago (A-D)
Chicago (N-B)

IvyPanda. (2023, December 7). Virtual Reality Versus Augmented Reality. https://ivypanda.com/essays/virtual-reality-versus-augmented-reality/

"Virtual Reality Versus Augmented Reality." IvyPanda , 7 Dec. 2023, ivypanda.com/essays/virtual-reality-versus-augmented-reality/.

IvyPanda . (2023) 'Virtual Reality Versus Augmented Reality'. 7 December.

IvyPanda . 2023. "Virtual Reality Versus Augmented Reality." December 7, 2023. https://ivypanda.com/essays/virtual-reality-versus-augmented-reality/.

1. IvyPanda . "Virtual Reality Versus Augmented Reality." December 7, 2023. https://ivypanda.com/essays/virtual-reality-versus-augmented-reality/.

Bibliography

IvyPanda . "Virtual Reality Versus Augmented Reality." December 7, 2023. https://ivypanda.com/essays/virtual-reality-versus-augmented-reality/.

The Effortlessness in Amy Choi's "There's Nothing Effortless About Being a Woman"
"A Catalog of Biases in Questionnaires" by Choi and Pak
Roy Choi’s Restaurant and Xiaomi’s International Marketing
Virtual and Augmented Reality in Education
Virtual and Augmented Reality Enhances Our Perception
Augmented Reality Technology
Augmented Reality Application Analysis
Augmented Reality in Document Detection
Asian Horror in "A Tale of Two Sisters" (2003)
Bilingual and Immersive Educational Strategies
How podcasts differ from radio
Multimedia Hardware Key Devices
Creating an Access-Security Balance in the Information and Communications Sector
Technological impact of the Samsung NC215S Netbook
Current and Past Technology

Play episode

#1292: Pioneering the VR Essay with “Shadowtime” Critiquing Sci-Fi Dystopic Aspirations of VR

I interviewed Shadowtime co-directors Sister Sylvester (Kathryn Hamilton) and Deniz Tortum at Venice Immersive 2023. See more context in the rough transcript below.

This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon.

Music: Fatality

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Rough Transcript

[ 00:00:05.412 ] Kent Bye: The Voices of VR Podcast. Hello, my name is Kent Bye, and welcome to the Voices of VR podcast. It's a podcast that looks at immersive storytelling, experiential design, and the future of spatial computing. You can support the podcast at patreon.com slash Voices of VR. So continuing on my series of looking at different experiences from Venice Immersive 2023, this is episode number 22 of 35, and number 2 of 10 of looking at the contextual domain of ideas and adventure. So this piece is called Shadow Time by Sister Sylvester, a.k.a. Katherine Hamilton, and Dennis Tortum. So this is a VR essay, one of the first VR essays that I've seen that is using the medium of virtual reality to talk about the medium of virtual reality. This is a piece that actually learned a lot more about listening to the creators talk about the piece. And I highly recommend if you do have a chance to see the piece to go see it, because we will be unpacking lots of different nuances of the piece. And there's certainly going to be certain elements of spoilers to unpack different aspects of what the piece is doing. That's kind of true for each of the different experiences and certainly for some of these experiences they may not be available to see and I think there's still a lot of provocative ideas that are worth exploring as well as the process of experience design. So it's always kind of a tricky balance of trying to comprehensively cover what's happening in the medium of virtual reality, especially at the edges of innovation and pieces like this. especially because they're not always easy to see. So with all that in mind, we're going to be doing a deep dive into both the history of computer graphics, a lot of philosophical ideas, and a little bit of a critical take of the medium of virtual reality. So there's a piece that I'd recommend folks check out called Our Arc. I'll put a link in the description. That's a film that both Dennis and Sylvester did previous to this experience. where they dive into unpacking different aspects of Elon Musk and the simulation theory and they kind of have some twists in that piece where there's some similar twists within shadow time that they continue to speak from a voice that isn't always necessarily their authorial voice. They're kind of like Doing these interesting little twists where they're doing this reverse psychology brainwash propaganda type of stuff of arguing for certain things that they don't necessarily fully believe themselves and so part of this conversation for me was decoding what was being said in the experience in versus what their deeper beliefs and convictions of the authors themselves because They're taking quite a critical look at the medium of virtuality overall generally but also being at the same time quite compelled to the power of the medium and And so there's a catalyzing article that's worth checking out. It's from Wired Magazine by Wagner James Au from February 25th, 2016. It's called VR Will Make Life Better or Just Be an Opiate for the Masses. And so this is an article where Wagner James Au actually gets some quotes from both John Carmack as well as Palmer Luckey where they're talking about different potentials of the virtual reality medium. And so Palmer Luckey says, everyone wants to have a happy life, but it's going to be impossible to give everyone everything they want. continues on to say, virtual reality can make it so anyone anywhere can have these experiences. I'm not sure if some of these different experiences in the article were things that Palmer is saying or things that Wagner is saying, because Wagner says, but VR can provide billions of people with virtual versions of everything the wealthy take for granted. Turning the Louvre sailing the Sun dappled coast of California or simply sitting in a meadow beneath a clear blue sky free of smog and pollution So it's a little unclear as to what are all the different things that Palmer is saying versus what things that are being added in from Wagner but nonetheless, I think the gist of this article is that there's a deeper critique of trying to push back from a Some of these ideas that are from dystopic science fiction and kind of being exalted as a virtue of the medium of virtual reality itself and so critiquing the larger Economic and political and cultural context around some of these media and taking a little bit more of a critical look so in shadow time you're kind of taking through the history of computer graphics and there's kind of an evolution of a seeing this box as a metaphor of the very first virtual object of the box and kind of expanding that out and to Able to go into all these different worlds and then slowly over time the experience kind of gets taken over By a little bit more of a sinister force and it kind of ends of this real creepy uncanny experience with you and a lot of different virtual avatars that are kind of Looking at you in a way that it's just trying to amp up the uncanny valley. Let's say So this is a piece that's in the center of gravity of ideas and very much exploring these philosophical concepts and taking very much a critical take but also a deep dive into history in a lot of ways. It's taking you through a lot of the history of computer graphics and the center of gravity of presence is very much into this mental presence of exploring different dimensions of these ideas and these concepts and taking these critical takes and you kind of have to really pay attention closely to piece together all the different puzzle pieces of the narrative and then actually through the conversation to get a lot of additional context for what the creators were intending with some of the different aspects of their piece. There's a lot of different dimensions of interactivity as you're kind of engaging with these different objects to kind of progress through the experience, but also having this deep sense of embodied presence as you have these hand tracking and also using the environment around you to really tell different aspects of the story as well. It's also worth mentioning that there's a quite exquisite camera obscure installation that they had where as you walk into this experience you see a inverted projection of the water that's just outside of this island of the VR island there at Venice and really quite beautiful installation that you get to see as a part of like sitting down in this room So there's a component there that's also a camera obscura that was very much also inspiring different aspects of their work as well that we kind of got into this Descartes dualism that they unpack more in the course of this conversation. So that's what we're covering on today's episode of the Voices of VR podcast. So this interview with Dennis and Catherine, aka Sister Sylvester, happened on Sunday, September 3rd, 2023 at Venice Immersive in Venice, Italy. So with that, let's go ahead and Dive right in!

[ 00:06:15.351 ] Deniz Tortum: Studying at MIT and also was a researcher at the Open Documentary Lab and that's when I started researching VR and practicing VR and that's when my journey started and that's also kind of like around the time where Katherine and I met as well.

[ 00:06:33.648 ] Sister Sylvester: Hi, I'm Catherine. I go by Sister Sylvester. My background is in performance and I actually started writing about VR, not making VR, and I was writing about how much I disliked VR. I was living in Istanbul at the time, working with a friend. We had a commission to make a performance piece, but the EU wouldn't give the friend a visa, so we started looking into ways of kind of remote presence and obviously VR I guess it was around 2014 and VR, you know 360 video was really blowing up online, but we noticed that the kind of like 360 video around refugee content was quadrupling overnight every night and it was really kind of weird stuff that was it was like every organization in the world decided to parachute in and and make these videos that would be super unethical if they were in any other medium. But somehow because it was 360 video and there weren't any rules, these really weird things were being made. So I started writing about what I was seeing around that, and in the course of it began researching more what was going on in VR. And a mutual friend told me that I had to look at the work of one Dennis Torton, who was doing really interesting things, but also kind of approaching it in a critical way. And so I interviewed Dennis for that article and started to look at his work and read his thesis that he had written at MIT. And it was one of the first moments that I was like, oh, wait, maybe I'm not just feeling completely critical of this medium. Maybe there's actually some interesting stuff here that, like a way to approach it that I am kind of excited about. So, yeah.

[ 00:08:05.647 ] Kent Bye: And I'd love if each of you could give a bit more context as to your background and your journey into working with the medium of VR.

[ 00:08:13.179 ] Deniz Tortum: Yeah, my background is in film and not necessarily narrative film but also experimental film and non-fiction, especially experimental forms of non-fiction. And I think kind of like my first Step into VR was through interactive media and also kind of art games and I guess like right around like 2013-14 when making films I was also kind of looking into art games and especially there was this creative duo studio called Tale of Tales. They did amazing games like Graveyard and I thought their work was very cinematic but also pushing this visual language in ways that almost experimental cinema did in the 60s and 70s. And from there on I got more into media theory, interactive art, and that's how I found myself. MIT Open Documentary Lab and when I was there it was kind of like the VR hype was starting and I started researching that and all the festivals started programming VR, there were a lot of talks I think Nani de la Peña's piece at Sundance was like the year before so I guess 2014, 15, 16 there were all these first VR exhibitions in the festivals And kind of following this cultural moment, I also started writing on VR and I think I had two things in mind. One is that what is specific to the medium of VR, especially when it comes to its kind of narrative core and also its formal qualities. And I think in my research and in my thesis I took, in a way, a very modernist approach, kind of similar to what Rudolf Arnheim did for cinema in the 20s and 30s of looking at VR and being like, okay, what is very, very specific to this medium? What can this medium do? that any other medium cannot do and what is the unique affordances of this medium and I kind of started writing my thesis through that but also on the other hand there was like also the cultural moment which was that I think there were several things happening One was the main discourse around VR back then was that VR is this empathy machine and it was kind of clear that this was a, you know, kind of almost like a marketing discourse and its depth didn't really go that deep and kind of like started trying to, you know, unearth that a bit and also try to see what other cultural ideas there is in VR and I think one of the, also the, maybe the founding encounters of Shadow Time is also this interview from 2015. It's an interview that was published in the Wired magazine with Palmer Luckey. And in that interview, the interviewer asks Palmer Luckey, saying, what do you think VR is good for? What do you think VR can do? And Palmer Luckey, at this point, he's young, naive, but also kind of like he puts almost his thoughts on this interview very transparently and also I think with him there is, Carmack was there with Palmer Luckey as well, but Palmer Luckey in this interview says that you know the world has a lot of problems, it's a messed up place, there's a lot of inequalities, there's a lot of things that is not right but we can solve all of these. But if we perfect VR, we can give everyone the lives of the rich. We can provide everyone with a lot of experiences. And if you live a happy life in VR, you are living a happy life, period. And this interview actually, you know, it was kind of a shocking interview because he takes kind of dystopian ideas, which was like presented in Matrix 15 years ago, and which was like kind of the cultural moment, like even 15, 20 years ago, and then kind of represented as utopian ideas and I don't think many people had trouble with this that much and we kind of like started thinking through that of like okay what is what are the core ideas that in VR that might be distracting us or that might be giving us like false promises false futures and how can we talk about this how can we explore these further Yeah, so kind of I think my thesis then did it in a more formal slash narrative way of how can we actually break the presence of VR and how can we imagine it as a more like self-reflective medium where like also there's more critical agency for the user And then afterwards, I did two VR pieces. One is called September 1955. It's a historical reenactment of the Istanbul pogrom. It's a piece I did with Çağrı Zaman and Nil Tuzcu. And I did another 360 video called Flood Plane, which was at Venice Immersive in 2018.

[ 00:13:07.892 ] Kent Bye: A bit more context. It's your background and journey into VR.

[ 00:13:13.467 ] Sister Sylvester: Yeah, so my background, like I said, is in performance and I had been making a lot of work that was kind of lecture performance-y, video essay kind of influenced and a lot of it had been about technology. I mean, I think that the kind of empathy machine narrative was really like the biggest provocation for me in like wanting to write about how much I hated what was going on in VR and then became this point of discussion that we had in common where we were like, what else can it be? What else can we do? And also why is no one kind of rigorously attacking this completely false notion of what this thing is? Yeah, this kind of like marketing spiel around what this medium is that seems to, you know, just so much writing that can, like we've been through that, we've gone there, like Susan Sontag has happened, you know what I mean? We don't need to go back to thinking that this thing can put you in someone's shoes and that that somehow creates a moral response or that that somehow is like an ethical thing to do. But yeah, I've been making live performance work, but not usually characters or actors or anything like that. So weirdly this, in VR, this is the first time that I've ever done a piece with a fictional character speaking fictional words, despite the fact that I've always worked in like theatre and live performance. A lot of the work that I do in performance is playing with different technologies, maybe super lo-fi or like weird kind of tinkering type technologies, putting things together in strange ways. And what else to say? Like the encounter with VR, like I said before, was really through, like I was making live performance, these kinds of performative essays, but I was also writing essays and articles. And it began with this attempt to critique the medium. And then it became exciting to try and think of what a kind of video essay in VR would be, what a way of critiquing the medium from within would be. And then the other thing that also, I think, drew me to it and this kind of created this love-hate relationship with it is that My dad actually worked on simulation training programs in the 90s. So he was a soldier in the British military and he was working with the group that when the Americans created their simulation training program first and then the British wanted a version of it and so he was kind of like looking at things seeing what happened and when I was researching the article I was also researching militaristic roots of it and what You know, we have a lot of Ivan Sutherland in our piece. Looking at that very first, the article that Sutherland writes in 1966, where he kind of anticipates a lot of the computer-human interfaces, ways of relating, but he also has this really, really strange paragraph at the end. where he talks about the ideal display being a kind of mathematical wonderland where the laws of the world can be suspended and he talks about in an ideal situation there would be a chair, handcuffs and a gun and the chair would be solid enough to sit in, the handcuffs would be confining and the bullet would be fatal. and he said something like, this would truly be the wonderland in which Alice walked. And I just thought this like, at the end of this technical paper, this super cryptic, weird paragraph that harks back to the kind of militaristic roots of the technology, but also is infused with all this like weird 1960s thing and like the space that he was imagining was this kind of noir-ish interrogation room. Yeah, I don't know, there was something in that that was so strange and kind of enticing to start to pick apart. So yeah, I think like Dennis said, that cultural moment where you had this idea that, you know, these dystopian ideas of if we all live a good life in a headset, we're living a good life, it doesn't matter, there's no difference. There was that, there was Zuckerberg talking to the UN and those super weird photos of all these like dudes in suits at the UN with headsets on, while Zuckerberg wanders among them. And then there was Elon Musk saying that there's the one billion chance that we live in base reality and all these things were kind of entering the dialogue, entering cultural conversation at the same time and kind of became the things that we were trying to pull apart in this piece. But yeah, it's the first time I'm making VR. I think that was your question.

[ 00:17:20.803 ] Kent Bye: Yeah, I think that was actually one of the Gear VR launches at Samsung that had everybody that was watching the Gear VR and he walks in and sort of a super creepy iconic photo of, it was kind of like a surprise that he was there. And so it's just the idea that he's sneaking in without them noticing him. So it was kind of like this iconic photo that has come up for a lot of times.

[ 00:17:39.952 ] Sister Sylvester: It's super creepy, right? And yet it was being presented, like, there's a little bit of tongue-in-cheekness and critique around it, but, like, these super dystopian ideas were being presented as if they were real solutions to things that were going on in the world at the time. And I think that was also really fascinating to us. Like, what happened? When was this switch? We all know that these come from dystopian novels, but suddenly they're being presented as, like, exciting solutions to the problems of the world.

[ 00:18:05.370 ] Kent Bye: Yeah, and so you had said that you got a recommendation to check out some of Dan's work. Dan talked about some of the projects that he created. And so maybe you could talk about you meeting each other. And then you sent me last night, Dan, the piece called Our Arc. And so what kind of led to your collaboration?

[ 00:18:21.037 ] Deniz Tortum: Yeah, so I think the first time we met was when Catherine was writing the article called Voyeur Reality, which was published in the New Inquiry. And afterwards, I think a year or so afterwards, we then started talking about making a VR piece, kind of like a self-reflective VR essay in VR and looking at the history of it, but looking at also the affordances of it, the kind of narrative formations of it and one of the things we were also interested in is that like is there a way to kind of like present VR kind of like the potentials of VR within the VR and from there on I think our research led us to let us almost like a bit away from VR I think because one thing is that I don't think VR or virtual reality is just virtual reality it's a combination of technologies kind of visual embodied sonic languages and different media. So, you know, video games, live simulations, VR or films that use kind of these logics or, you know, the apps like Snapchat filters, TikTok filters. I think they all exist. in the same kind of computational culture universe. And I think there are also films like Tenet, which seems like instead of a plot, it has a game mechanic at the center of it. Or there's the new Harmony Korean film, which is currently premiering it. The Venice Film Festival, Agra Drift, which is, you know, rather than a film, it is more like a Grand Theft Auto cutscene that is shot in real life. So kind of all these things are emerging into this one kind of like common cultural language. and we were very much interested in that cultural moment and our research led us to kind of like invention of virtual reality but also the invention of virtual reality is also the invention of computer graphics because Ivan Sutherland invents this device called sketchpad and he's the first to draw lines on a computer and like draw shapes and he draws a cube and then the next logical step is how can you see the cube not on a screen but in 3d space as a volume and then that leads him to invent the virtual reality headset so kind of the History of computer graphics and history of virtual reality go really hand in hand. What does this kind of technological progress change in our culture, in our thinking? How does it affect our conceptualization of the world itself? These were the questions I think we were dealing with at first, especially with the film project we did, Our Arc. And that piece is basically, I think, founded on two ideas. One, or maybe just one idea, or that is a continuation of all this. But there is also, as Catherine mentioned, this interview with Elon Musk. And in this interview, he says that there's one in a billion chance that we are in Bayes' reality. And he voices this kind of idea, which is I think popular around more of the tech spheres, the idea of simulation hypothesis that the world itself or the universe itself is a computation and there is like kind of like we are in ancestor simulations or there's like a base reality that we are not in. I mean I think it's of course an interesting idea but the problem we had with it is what is the ethics of the world's richest man saying this and what does it mean for him to say this and for us like it is a really like act of like deferral of responsibility like what happens when you say the world is not real the world is a simulation then nothing matters and especially saying this in a time of planetary urgency, in the middle of climate crisis. What do you do with this? And kind of like related to this, we were also kind of looking at the history of computation, virtual reality, computer graphics. And you know, since the 60s, we are building these virtual worlds, computer generated worlds, we are populating them. but also at the same time we are destroying the physical world and kind of like these happen in kind of like this reverse graph to each other and what do we do with that as well and what does it mean to build these virtual worlds when there's you know massive species extinction there's massive heating and kind of our question was that can these be related in any way and I think that's the question we are dealing with and kind of like the question is like can this computational culture like is it creating a new cultural philosophical culture for us that is actually distracting us from the planetary urgencies or if these things are creating like blind spots in our thinking that blocks certain interiorities or certain ways of like forming collectives So I think those questions lie at the heart of our work and our research both in our arc but also in Shadowtime

[ 00:23:35.428 ] Sister Sylvester: We just add to that like another thing that we were looking at the connection between you know what Musk was saying about not being in base reality and I remember Dennis brought into one of the meetings the UN climate report where it was something like 90 80% of the technologies mentioned in it to mitigate or to prevent climate crisis were either didn't yet exist as technologies or were not scalable. So we were also looking at in relationship to like what does this kind of computational thinking like lead us to this techno utopianism where we're somehow relying on these technologies and then for like that in our arc, we follow these scientists at UMass Amherst who are trying to create 3D models of all animals on Earth, beginning with the ones most likely to go extinct. And there was something so beautifully kind of poetic and quixotic about this attempt to create this total archive, which is, you know, in many ways, completely fucking useless, because, like, my background is also, I'm an amateur microbiologist in my spare time. And obviously, there's such a back and forth between computing and biology, just in terms of language as well, like language gets borrowed back and forth, but each discipline is kind of outdated by the time the other discipline borrows its language. And so in that moment, I was also seeing this like, weird sense where these scientists were scanning an organism but they were just scanning the shell of the organism whereas in biology obviously all of the discussion is around the ecosystem and also the microbiome like the idea of looking at something as simply an individual is so outdated as a notion and yet the kind of computer side of it was still there it was still thinking of these animals in terms of like a single organism and what the appearance of them is and what the shell of them is almost So I remember also when we first encountered that archive, just spending a ton of time playing with the models and looking at them from the inside out and trying to think what it meant to, at this moment in history, preserve the shells of these organisms. as if that was somehow going to be a bulwark like we say in the film against their loss and just how kind of futile and poetic in a way it is and how much it kind of represents the ways in which we approach the climate crisis.

[ 00:25:48.039 ] Deniz Tortum: I think just I want to add one thing about digital life

[ 00:25:52.385 ] Kent Bye: Is that the company that was scanning things?

[ 00:25:54.266 ] Deniz Tortum: Yeah, in our arc, the film starts with Digital Life, which is a company that's scanning old animals. But they also see it as a kind of a necrophauna project, that when in the future, if we bring these animals back from the dead with their DNA, then we would have exact dimensions of them. But as Catherine said, it's kind of these animals don't live by themselves. They live in an ecosystem and they live in, you know, like other living organisms in certain conditions. There is a weird poetic defeatism in that as well. That is our hope in a way. And it is similar to the unscalable or unproven technologies of the UN climate report etc so we are putting our hope into paths that are not proven yet and I think we are like there's a lot of wishful thinking that all of this will work and I truly hope it works but we should be probably preparing and trying harder

[ 00:27:03.399 ] Sister Sylvester: Yeah, and also putting our hopes into things that we don't know will work, but also just seem, like, philosophically wrong, like the wrong way to approach things. And I don't know, it just ties into this broader thing that you were talking about, the Silicon Valley thing, also the George Church thing, the de-extinction programs, that, like, there's... You don't know who George Church is? Okay, this is another conversation. Oh, George Church from Harvard? Yeah. Okay, yeah. I work with students at university. I do a bio-art class and I had them this year looking at George Church's experiments and creating these kind of like speculative design responses to it and it was just so much further there. it's just like the ways of thinking and this I think connects to what we're talking about because we talked a lot about the philosophical stakes of these different technologies as well and what does it mean that these individuals like Elon Musk and like George Church come up with these grand schemes to save the planet through these means that are completely non-proven and yet kind of tap into a way of thinking that is so deeply individualistic and so kind of I mean, they're caricatures of themselves. So, yeah, like how do we get to that way of thinking? What is it in our kind of computational society that leads to these kinds of solutions? And one of the questions we started to ask in Shadow Time as well was what, and also in NAROC, was what ways of thinking will the headset lead to? Will simulation lead to? How will that change the way that we conceive of the relationship between ourselves our minds our bodies in the world? Once we can see the world kind of as this separate containable simulated thing like it leads to these ideas of base reality because we can see that Computer graphics are almost indistinguishable from this world. Then we think okay. So this world could also have been made So yeah

[ 00:28:50.609 ] Deniz Tortum: I can add one thing to that which is so kind of like in that Elon Musk interview he then backs his opinion in a very simple way but saying that you know look like 40 years ago we had Pong and now we have computer games that look almost like indistinguishable from reality and let's think like what would we have like in 50 years in 100 years and in the future there probably won't be any way to distinguish between reality and simulated reality, then how do we know that this thing we are living in is real anyway? So, kind of like that idea of these technologies do change how we conceptualize reality, how we think about it, And just to give another example, one book that really inspired us is this book by art historian Jonathan Crary. It's called The Techniques of the Observer. And in that book, one chapter of the book, he looks at the camera obscura. And he says that in 16th century, camera obscura has been a very popular tool for writers, thinkers of the era. And this is, I think, a bit of a poetic argument and probably like a bit of a stretch. I mean, there isn't a way to prove it, but his argument goes that one of the people who really loved being in Camera Obscura is René Descartes. And as you spend time in the camera obscura, you're in this dark room, and the world outside is projected in here, and it's upside down. But you see the world, but you're not in the world with your body. You're just kind of like, almost like you're in your mind, and your body is something different from your mind. So kind of he argues that like the whole Descartesian dualism is conceptualized through the technology of camera obscura and like the spatial and visual sensual affordances it brings and from that we were very very inspired with that and then thinking through that we were thinking if camera obscura did that then what would virtual reality do to us to our conceptualization of the world.

[ 00:31:02.120 ] Kent Bye: And you have a camera obscura installation as a part of your exhibition of Shadowtime here, which I think is very appropriate. So, yeah, well, I guess there's a lot to unpack in terms of Shadowtime. I don't know if we'll have time to unpack all of it.

[ 00:31:15.534 ] Sister Sylvester: You turn us on and we're just like...

[ 00:31:18.758 ] Kent Bye: So our arc is very much in the spirit of a film essay that's about virtual reality. And then Shadowtime is very much like a, I would say, one of the first virtual reality essays about virtual reality that I've seen, where it's really using the medium of VR to interrogate VR itself. And so love to hear about your process of having all of these concerns and critiques and questions, both about the implications of the technology, but also how to use the technology to provoke these deeper questions is to actually give people an embodied experience of these deeper interrogations that you're doing. So I'd love to hear about your process of starting to, you know, going back to the history of computer graphics, starting with Ivan Sutherland, University of Utah, you're in the lab, and then you have the sort of Damocles come down, you see the cube, and then you progress through a series of different scenes that are trying to explore this relationship between the Descartes dualism kind of model of both the virtual experiences, but also the physical experiences. So yeah, I'd love to hear a little bit about this construction of this deeper argument of using VR to explore and critique VR.

[ 00:32:23.734 ] Sister Sylvester: I think, I mean, one of the really great discoveries I think as we were developing it was that the cube could become our central metaphor for the piece. So the cube is the first virtual object and of course the sort of Damocles was actually kind of AR more than VR. You saw this cube in the space of the person. So that also became a really, I mean we play with a pass-through in the piece where you see the physical space that you're in. But the fact that that first moment involved seeing this virtual object and the physical space with the virtual object superimposed on it in three dimensions, I think that became a really great imagistic origin or place for our research. So in the piece, the cube, the one interaction that you have really is interacting with this cube. And the cube expands sometimes, the cube is the world and the cube is also something you manipulate. And the idea that the cube contains everything, the cube contains all possibilities of that very first cube, we started to try and think of it as this is the potential. These are all of the potential simulations, these are all of the potentials of this new world contained in this one cube. So within the piece your interaction becomes using this cube to kind of cat's cradle new worlds into being and kind of guide yourself through the world and I don't know just finding that one interaction became a way for us to have like this central metaphor for the piece.

[ 00:33:52.438 ] Deniz Tortum: Yeah, and I think one thing about both R-Ark and Shadowtime is they're both essay, like one is an essay film, one is an essay VR, if we hope it becomes a genre. But I think different than most of the other essay films and essayistic work, the voice is not our voice. Both pieces are a form of dark propaganda. Almost our arc is kind of the voice is talking, channeling Elon Musk, and in Shadowtime the voice and the character is channeling Palmer Luckey. and that also leaves the audience in a bit of an uncomfortable place or at least that's our hope to kind of like leave this experience with rather than answers but with provocations and maybe and hopefully with some sort of anger And I think that's related to our thinking around climate communication, which is a very, very hard thing to talk about the climate crisis because it is such a hard and taxing subject. And I think we are really good at shutting our minds off when it comes to the climate crisis. That's why we were thinking that we need to just reinvent new methods. There are many emotions around climate change, but a lot of people focus on hope, which is more the activist language, or fear, which is more the tumour language. Even though I don't like that term, I think that there's a mix between fear and grief, and I think we mix grief for fear, But then there's also all these other emotions that we want to play with, and one is anger. And then the others are like, what is, let's say, climate nihilism? What is climate excitement? What is climate hedonism? There's all these new questions, new emotions. emerging in this planetary era. And how do we explore it? How do we talk about it? And how do we reinvent ways of talking about it? And I guess that's one way we were trying to do in both pieces.

[ 00:36:11.817 ] Sister Sylvester: So in our arc, it starts very much as an essay. You think it's an essay, and then there's a shift at the end where we just shift to first person in the narrative. So it suddenly starts saying, we, and you understand that this person, that speaker, is trying to implicate you somehow in this. It's no longer just a history, it is a kind of propaganda. It's like a recruitment video for simulation theory. And it's been interesting having it travel, because some people get it and then we get some angry people, which is what we wanted. But we get people who really think, like we had reviews on Letterboxd being like, these people are creating propaganda for Elon Musk, don't listen to them, this is dangerous, which was really fun. And I think actually maybe more productive, like I don't know if it's more productive, but you know, so many pieces you come out and you sign a petition and like what's that gonna so there was something that we wanted to test out which is like a kind of provocation and then in this piece as well we worked really hard to try and find that place of ambiguity in the end and i don't know that it always works for everyone i mean we've had someone come out of it and say um you know i loved it i loved it but i think you're too optimistic and we're like wow did you watch the same piece And then we had someone come out yesterday who was actually a VC, which was interesting, who was incredibly angry at us. A venture capitalist who came out and was like, again said, this is dangerous, this needs a warning on it. He said, you're weaponizing mindfulness techniques. And you're going to brainwash people into accepting everything you're saying, which is not obviously all right. We don't want to brainwash people. But trying to also understand, not coming maybe from a moral place, but trying to understand what the seduction is of this. Because there is something incredibly seductive about simulation theory, about being able to say, oh, it doesn't fucking matter that everything's disappearing. We can move to this kind of shiny other space of creativity rather than desperate attempts to preserve. We can make new. We can start over. The seduction of being able to start over And that was something we really wanted to explore as well.

[ 00:38:12.234 ] Deniz Tortum: I would like to add one thing, which is regarding what you were saying about brainwashing. I think there's the aspects of brainwashing in both pieces, in Shadow Time and in Our Arc, but in a way, in an imperfect way. It has its holes and it gives many clues to the viewer that the kind of propaganda being presented in these pieces have a lot of arguments that's not working. And I think in that, that's why I think Shadow Time is an essayistic work because it is the self-reflective mode. It is trying to provide the viewers with tools to understand how VR can manipulate them and how to almost build some sort of intellectual cognitive defense mechanisms to actually interact with these VR pieces and keep a distance but also appreciate it. So I think that was an attempt that we tried as well.

[ 00:39:09.796 ] Sister Sylvester: It's training to resist brainwashing.

[ 00:39:14.497 ] Kent Bye: So I actually had a chance to see this piece twice, once at an exhibition that was happening at Onyx Studios during Trampaca around three months ago, and now here again with the final form and its full installation at Venice Immersive 2023. So I have like a dual, like some things are repeating and some things are different, but the thing that's coming up and being the striking moment is like this duality theme of like there's the realm of I don't know if you call, do you call it the real or do you call it the physical or do you call it the virtual? What do you, how do you create this dialectic? Okay, so you can't physical.

[ 00:39:45.698 ] Sister Sylvester: I know physical and virtual. Yeah. Okay.

[ 00:39:48.985 ] Kent Bye: Because I know that there is a dialectic sometimes to lean towards the real to contrast it to the virtual. And I'd be curious to hear your thoughts on Chalmers and his Reality Plus, where he's arguing that the virtual reality is a genuine reality. But yeah.

[ 00:40:00.633 ] Sister Sylvester: Before that even, I think there's something that we talk about and that I think is important with the virtual real thing, which is that all of these technologies of simulation very much have their roots in the physical world. So even though we talk about like cloud computing, no, it's like giant servers that are sucking up energy. the physical impact of the virtual was something that was really important to us. I think saying like the virtual is also very real in its effects on the world. So I think having it be physical and virtual rather than real and virtual is important. Yeah.

[ 00:40:30.871 ] Deniz Tortum: Yeah, and I think around that question, and you asked about Reality Plus, I haven't read it. I've only heard from friends and very briefly about that book, so I don't think I'm in a position to elaborate or comment on it. But I think in relation to that, maybe one thing is we are not necessarily interested in this ontological discussion around reality. We are maybe more interested in the ethics of having that discussion when there is a kind of a very physical emergency and kind of we are like asking if those ontological questions and those philosophical discussions Will they provide us with tools to, I mean, for lack of a word, like to survive or like kind of to keep the planet habitable? And, you know, the question of like whether we need to do it or not is like another completely different question. But I think kind of like there, this is the ethics of, you know, what questions would give us the right tools at this point? So yeah, I think that's a question that we are struggling with and we can't answer. But one kind of thing we think is that those ontological discussions around the nature of reality seems like they're acting as kind of distractions.

[ 00:41:58.837 ] Kent Bye: The reason why I ask that is because you have a quote that's on the outside that's saying, one realm is the realm of the heart, or one realm is the realm of the body, or I forget.

[ 00:42:07.379 ] Sister Sylvester: You're in two worlds at the same time. Your body is in one world, but your heart is in the other world. Did I get it right? Yeah.

[ 00:42:14.682 ] Kent Bye: That is an ontological argument, though.

[ 00:42:16.406 ] Sister Sylvester: Yeah, our character is making it.

[ 00:42:17.867 ] Deniz Tortum: Yeah, that's not us. That's the character almost trying to recruit you in the piece into kind of like believing that the virtual world is like a better world and like it's kind of this is where you should invest your life in. So it's kind of not our argument but the character's.

[ 00:42:34.099 ] Kent Bye: I was confusing the film essay as you as the author.

[ 00:42:36.141 ] Sister Sylvester: This is the brainwashing training. This is what you got to resist. Okay.

[ 00:42:41.720 ] Kent Bye: Okay, so what do you actually believe then? Because you said you weren't making the argument, it felt like you were making the argument in the piece, but that's the voice that you're speaking, so where do you actually stand? Or you say it's more of the ethics and it's not... The reason why I'm confused is because it seemed like such a central part of the piece that was sort of in there. So yeah, but then you're saying you're not saying it, but I hear it, so... Alma is saying it, the character. Elon?

[ 00:43:02.793 ] Sister Sylvester: Yeah, Elon. Alma or Elon is saying it, yeah.

[ 00:43:06.336 ] Deniz Tortum: What do we believe in? I don't know. I don't have my personal answer about the nature of reality. It doesn't matter that much to me. I almost think that's the wrong question. It's definitely not the wrong question, but it is not the urgent question.

[ 00:43:25.503 ] Sister Sylvester: we're asking in this piece. I mean I think Alma, the character, says that it's part of her technique to entice, to seduce you into the world of simulation, to seduce you into giving up on the physical world. She's trying to convince you that, you know, she's Elon-ing you, she's trying to convince you that the simulated world can hold you like the physical world can.

[ 00:43:47.272 ] Kent Bye: Part of the reason why I'm focusing on that is because I think from my own personal perspective VR has a potential to bring about some fundamental paradigm shifts that can bring about new metaphysical ideas and for me I'm very drawn to Alfred North Whitehead's process philosophy which is very much of trying to think about the world in a relational context and that order to really have humanity survive that the key thing is to have a shift in consciousness so that we are actually In more right relationship to the world around us and that you know, it's not going to be a technological solution It's going to be more of a cultural impulse that's going to drive the technology drive the laws and drive the behaviors and that the big potential that I see is that there is this shift that can happen that does see the shift into I see it as the virtual versus real type of framing creates this duality. And Chalmers is making the argument in Reality Plus that virtual reality is a genuine reality because we can have just as meaningful experiences. As an example, you have a social encounter in a VR. Do you come out and say, well, I had a virtual fake encounter with this other person? It's kind of like when you talk to someone on the phone, you don't say, I had a virtual fake conversation with this person. You say that you had a real conversation because it's actually about the relationship between there. And that as we go into these immersive experiences, it creates these aspects of our agency, of our emotions, of our relationships, of our mind, and also of our body and environment that is creating new relational dynamics where I think that's why I'm pushing that.

[ 00:45:10.841 ] Sister Sylvester: I would just say that when I was first writing that article and I read Dana's thesis, this was what was really exciting to me because it was proposing this other way of thinking about VR as a space where the laws of physics and the relationship between action and meaning could be changed and that could lead you to literally forge new neural pathways where you understand things in a different way. It's kind of like what you call an embodied metaphor.

[ 00:45:36.964 ] Deniz Tortum: Yeah, so basically kind of the idea there, my thesis was called Embodied Montage and the idea there is that it kind of like draws on ideas from embodied cognition that kind of language and thinking is very much tied to our bodily affordances and how our body is in relation with the world itself. There was a book I was pulling ideas from called Metaphors We Live By and very like simplistically kind of like the argument goes in this way that they say that the metaphors we use, the words we use are very much in relation to our physical affordances and you know there's a why we say I'm up when we feel energetic and I'm down when we feel sad. It's very much related to gravity in our body. When we're energetic, we stand up, it's a new day and all that. When you're tired, sad or depressed, it's kind of like the act of lying down there. So the body affects the ways of thinking and kind of forming thoughts, concepts. So the idea was there in kind of like the proposal in my thesis was that if we can change the bodily affordances, both how our body acts within itself and also our body's relationship with the world, Can we then use this as almost like a practice ground to think new concepts, think new ideas, and can we use VR as this platform to reach new ideas? So yeah that was that I think I wanted to say one thing about the reality plus idea of like kind of virtual reality being also providing as happy and satisfactory life as the physical world. I don't think I have a problem with that idea by itself but I think when we are thinking about these ideas we should also be aware how these ideas are being weaponized. And I think Palmer Luckey's interview, for example, or like kind of that Facebook's whole quest of like kind of like providing this life and like presenting it as like a happy life is a huge, you know, like a monetizable financial act of control. And just being aware of like what ideas are getting weaponized by kind of the power holders is this constant act we should keep in mind, I think.

[ 00:48:01.700 ] Sister Sylvester: And I think also, yeah, of course an encounter in VR is also a real encounter, and connected to that, the impact of these technologies on the world is also very, very real. So I think the idea that Zuckerberg and Pamelaki saying, give everyone a headset, one of those quotes was literally like, only the rich will have access to a smog-free sky, but everyone can have blue skies in the headset. So, like I said, it's not that VR is part of the world and the real encounters and the meaningful encounters you can have in VR. It's the way in which the proposal is that the underclass is placated by this technology in order to prevent the need to solve the problems. the world and to allow access to the physical world only for those very very you know 0.1% and everyone else is placated with this technology. So I think that's where our critique is not in saying that the virtual isn't real.

[ 00:49:03.066 ] Kent Bye: We talked about that very first scene and then you move into a series of 360 panoramic shots that are stereoscopic that then have, as you interact with it, you have this kind of modulation and then eventually you end up with a scene with a lot of bodies being mirrored across. You just turn your head and you have this whole crowd of people. And so in the conversation I'm talking to you I sort of understand that you're making an argument but you're also doing it in somebody else's voice and sort of a brainwashing reverse psychology kind of argument where you're making the argument that you're kind of arguing against in some ways.

[ 00:49:33.053 ] Sister Sylvester: It's a provocation.

[ 00:49:35.952 ] Kent Bye: So you're providing that provocation. So Marnie, if you could tie how the interaction of going through these different photogrammetry scenes that are spatialized that then have these AI style transfer as a second phase of that, and then the final scene. I'd love to have you tie together what you're trying to say in the story and how that relates back to the visuals that you're seeing. And so just so that you get a clear arc of how the entire experience is unfolding.

[ 00:50:00.568 ] Deniz Tortum: So in the beginning we start with just like our hands forming and a cube forming in front of us. Ivan Sutherland's cube and the hands are the first hands that Catmull did at Sutherland's lab in 72. So kind of like you're with these like first virtual objects, a cube and your hands. and the piece starts there almost like at the kind of like beginning point of virtual reality and then we find ourselves with Alma who's kind of this recruiter and then she talks to us and then afterwards we find ourselves in the lab of Ivan Sutherland and there's the cube and there Alma says that look at this cube and kind of imagine all the past and all the future contained in that cube And in that scene we were thinking that how would it have felt in 1968 for the people who wore this headset, looked at this very simple cube and what type of futures they saw in there. And we think they saw kind of a clear future in a way and they saw a lot of things. And we were trying to trace back to that moment of how would it have felt to see just that cube and imagine a future. And from there on the next scene is basically imagining that future, like you pull the cube and with every pull you're in a new environment, kind of a scant real environment and you go through these environments with every pull and this cube is able to generate many different environments, many realities and the future itself. And then slowly the cube grows up and you lose control of this and then becomes this kind of AI generated sequence of like the world that starts creating itself and you lose agency there. You're in this just like these worlds that is constantly creating itself and almost like you get lost in that scene and lose agency. and in the last scene you find yourself again in this big hall and there's a cube and there's like all the other people kind of like these ghostly figures appearing and there Alma is like doing her last trick of brainwashing you and kind of talking to you about you know, like kind of why, why this world, why the physical world is not the only world we have and why there's like other worlds and why this is also a comforting idea and kind of like I think that comfort is also what is very seductive even to us and we are kind of playing with that and trying to push the brainstorm to the last moment and ending the piece there.

[ 00:52:40.300 ] Sister Sylvester: And Alma does use the word real. She says, if this world was real and if this world was all we had. So she is making that argument. But yeah, I mean, exactly what you just said, but the hands become human agency. The cube is like all of this potential, but at a certain point you lose control. And it is both kind of overwhelming, but also seductive. but also you lose track, like there's no meaningful narrative in those AI worlds, like all of human history is kind of mushed together, so like a Buddhist statue actually becomes Jesus, becomes like we have like Islamic tiles on an old cathedral, and then I think like past and future and narratives become so confused in that. I don't know, there's like a kind of a sense that nothing has any meaning anymore because everything is everything. And so hopefully that propels you into the last scene with a sense of both being seduced by these images because they're beautiful, but there's also something that's lost in just such a mass of tangled webs of image.

[ 00:53:40.713 ] Kent Bye: Yeah, I think I had missed in both our arc and shadow time that there was like a voice that was not your own because it starts in the our arc is a very traditional film essay and then I Missed the twist at the end because I was watching it last night a very long days of Venice But also here in shadow time I didn't get that there was a sort of a narrator that was different than your voice as well because I don't see her I don't see her embodied and She's in the scene, I don't remember seeing anybody in the scene

[ 00:54:05.452 ] Sister Sylvester: You seen the new one or you just saw the old one?

[ 00:54:07.053 ] Kent Bye: I saw both.

[ 00:54:08.234 ] Sister Sylvester: Yeah, you sit. Remember there's a woman who appears right in front of you. Oh, that's right.

[ 00:54:11.697 ] Kent Bye: Okay. Yeah. Okay. Okay. I remember. I don't know. Was she in the first version? She was. Okay. Okay. So, okay. All right. Okay. I remember that now. Okay. So there's, there's little things that I didn't realize that the film essay part was like a character's voice rather than the author's voice.

[ 00:54:26.056 ] Deniz Tortum: But just to add to that, I think we really want that ambiguity. It's because I think both pieces work better when that voice has that tension of like, oh, are they being for real? Or are they not? And are they critical or not? It's not an obviously critical piece. And I think this is one of the few interviews we are giving about both these pieces, because our intentions in a way take away from the experiences.

[ 00:55:01.060 ] Sister Sylvester: We shouldn't have told you any of this, you have to erase it all. But I do think it's also part of us, like there's part of me that I think that's why you believe it, because it is. Wouldn't you say?

[ 00:55:11.348 ] Deniz Tortum: Like it's part of what... There's that tension that we are both critical but also very seduced and kind of, you know, we go back and forth and we ourselves like don't really like figure it out like how to deal with this or like we don't have an answer of like what is the right thing to do. It is just kind of like, yeah.

[ 00:55:32.946 ] Sister Sylvester: I see the appeal. I'm not, but I see how seductive that solution is. And I see that kind of, I understand it. So yeah, it's definitely part of us.

[ 00:55:46.513 ] Kent Bye: It reminds me of the Don't Look Up movie where there's a whole strand in that story where there's technology that's going to save everything and then the technology doesn't do anything. But yeah, I guess as we start to wrap up, I'd love to hear each of you tell me what either the ultimate potential of virtual reality might be or what you could see as the negative aspect of that, what the dystopic potential of the technology might be. You can choose.

[ 00:56:10.167 ] Sister Sylvester: I would say that the piece says that. I don't want to say anymore. I think we've given too much away already. I don't want to give any more away. I think that, yeah, I think we purposefully tried to end the piece on a really ambiguous note. And I kind of want to leave it with that ambiguity.

[ 00:56:26.102 ] Deniz Tortum: I must just say more. Sorry, sorry, Catherine. I just want to say that when we think about virtual reality, when we think about these particular technologies, the promise of virtual reality or the future of virtual reality is not separate from all the other futures. It's not separate from the future of the world. So I think probably the important thing is to think of all these things together. Because I think we tend to think of for example virtual reality and I know you don't can't but like with these technologies we tend to think about these technologies as like separate things which has its own developments progresses and we also think kind of this development and progress has no end but it does and how do we imagine it's with the world itself these futures all together. And I think what you were saying about is virtual reality, can virtual reality be a tool for shaping a new consciousness or shaping kind of a new worldview, is a question we are very interested in as well. But we are also just thinking that like we should be aware what else is at stake. Like that's not the only question we are dealing with.

[ 00:57:42.740 ] Kent Bye: Is there anything else that's left unsaid that you'd like to say to the broader immersive community?

[ 00:57:47.491 ] Deniz Tortum: Just thanks a lot. And this interview has been great. I don't know. I had a lot of fun.

[ 00:57:54.216 ] Sister Sylvester: Thank you, this is great. And also thank you for seeing everything. You go around and you see everything. It's incredible.

[ 00:57:59.541 ] Deniz Tortum: I also want to add that I was really impressed by everything you wrote and I was even impressed that you saw everything. I don't know anyone who is this committed and doing such hard work and it's really important and special. So thank you.

[ 00:58:16.754 ] Kent Bye: Yeah, well, I think it's important to see the work because I think the reflections are really a deep metaphor for what's happening in the industry of where things are going. So I really appreciate the more critical lens that you're addressing all these issues. And thanks for taking the time to look at it through that critical lens and to take the time to share some of your thoughts. So thank you.

[ 00:58:34.114 ] Deniz Tortum: Thank you. Thank you.

[ 00:58:36.805 ] Kent Bye: Thanks for listening to this interview from Fitness Immersive 2023. You can go check out the Critics' Roundtable in episode 1305 to get more breakdown in each of these different experiences. And I hope to be posting more information on my Patreon at some point. There's a lot to digest here. I'm going to be giving some presentations here over the next couple of months and tune into my Patreon at patreon.com slash Voices of VR, since there's certainly a lot of digest about the structures and patterns of immersive storytelling, some of the different emerging grammar that we're starting to develop, as well as the underlying patterns of experiential design. So that's all I have for today, and thanks for listening to the Voices of VR podcast. And again, if you enjoyed the podcast, then please do spread the word, tell your friends, and consider becoming a member of the Patreon. This is a listen-supported podcast, and so I do rely upon donations from people like yourself in order to continue to bring this coverage. So you can become a member and donate today at patreon.com slash voicesofvr. Thanks for listening.

More from this show

#1382: Interactive Generative AI Storytelling Installation “The Golden Key” Wins Top Prize at SXSW Leveraging Archetypal Folklore Motifs + Links to SXSW 2024 Coverage

I interviewed The Golden Key co-directors Matthew Niederhauser & Marc Da Costa remotely during SXSW XR Experience 2024. See more...

#1381: “Soul Paint” Wins SXSW Special Jury Prize for Innovative Body Mapping Technique to Spatially Draw Your Emotions

I interviewed Soul Paint co-directors Sarah Ticho & Niki Smit remotely ahead of the SXSW XR Experience 2024. See more context in the...

#1380: “Reimagined Volume III: Young Thang” Adapts a Nigerian Folktale while Refining the Grammar of Spatial Storytelling

I interviewed Reimagined Volume III: Young Thang director Melissa Joyner and co-directors Julie Cavaliere & Michaela Ternasky-Holland...

iHeart Radio

From the world wide web to AI: 11 technology milestones that changed our lives

The world wide web is a key technological milestone in the past 40 years. Image: Unsplash/Ales Nesetril

.chakra .wef-1c7l3mo{-webkit-transition:all 0.15s ease-out;transition:all 0.15s ease-out;cursor:pointer;-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;outline:none;color:inherit;}.chakra .wef-1c7l3mo:hover,.chakra .wef-1c7l3mo[data-hover]{-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;}.chakra .wef-1c7l3mo:focus,.chakra .wef-1c7l3mo[data-focus]{box-shadow:0 0 0 3px rgba(168,203,251,0.5);} Stephen Holroyd

.chakra .wef-9dduvl{margin-top:16px;margin-bottom:16px;line-height:1.388;font-size:1.25rem;}@media screen and (min-width:56.5rem){.chakra .wef-9dduvl{font-size:1.125rem;}} Explore and monitor how .chakra .wef-15eoq1r{margin-top:16px;margin-bottom:16px;line-height:1.388;font-size:1.25rem;color:#F7DB5E;}@media screen and (min-width:56.5rem){.chakra .wef-15eoq1r{font-size:1.125rem;}} Artificial Intelligence is affecting economies, industries and global issues

A hand holding a looking glass by a lake

.chakra .wef-1nk5u5d{margin-top:16px;margin-bottom:16px;line-height:1.388;color:#2846F8;font-size:1.25rem;}@media screen and (min-width:56.5rem){.chakra .wef-1nk5u5d{font-size:1.125rem;}} Get involved with our crowdsourced digital platform to deliver impact at scale

Stay up to date:, emerging technologies.

It’s been 40 years since the launch of the Apple Macintosh personal computer.
Since then, technological innovation has accelerated – here are some of the most notable tech milestones over the past four decades.
The World Economic Forum’s EDISON Alliance aims to digitally connect 1 billion people to essential services like healthcare, education and finance by 2025.

On 24 January 1984, Apple unveiled the Macintosh 128K and changed the face of personal computers forever.

Steve Jobs’ compact, user-friendly computer introduced the graphical user interface to the world, marking a pivotal moment in the evolution of personal technology.

Since that day, the rate of technological innovation has exploded, with developments in computing, communication, connectivity and machine learning expanding at an astonishing rate.

Here are some of the key technological milestones that have changed our lives over the past 40 years.

Have you read?

9 ways ai is helping tackle climate change, driving trust: paving the road for autonomous vehicles, these are the top 10 emerging technologies of 2023: here's how they can impact the world, 1993: the world wide web.

Although the internet’s official birthday is often debated, it was the invention of the world wide web that drove the democratization of information access and shaped the modern internet we use today.

Created by British scientist Tim Berners-Lee, the World Wide Web was launched to the public in 1993 and brought with it the dawn of online communication, e-commerce and the beginning of the digital economy.

Despite the enormous progress since its invention, 2.6 billion people still lack internet access and global digital inclusion is considered a priority. The World Economic Forum’s EDISON Alliance aims to bridge this gap and digitally connect 1 billion people to essential services like healthcare, education and finance by 2025.

1997: Wi-Fi

The emergence of publicly available Wi-Fi in 1997 changed the face of internet access – removing the need to tether to a network via a cable. Without Wi-Fi, the smartphone and the ever-present internet connection we’ve come to rely on, wouldn’t have been possible, and it has become an indispensable part of our modern, connected world.

1998: Google

The launch of Google’s search engine in 1998 marked the beginning of efficient web search, transforming how people across the globe accessed and navigated online information . Today, there are many others to choose from – Bing, Yahoo!, Baidu – but Google remains the world’s most-used search engine.

2004: Social media

Over the past two decades, the rise of social media and social networking has dominated our connected lives. In 2004, MySpace became the first social media site to reach one million monthly active users. Since then, platforms like Facebook, Instagram and TikTok have reshaped communication and social interaction , nurturing global connectivity and information sharing on an enormous scale, albeit not without controversy .

Most popular social networks worldwide as of January 2024, ranked by number of monthly active users

2007: The iPhone

More than a decade after the first smartphone had been introduced, the iPhone redefined mobile technology by combining a phone, music player, camera and internet communicator in one sleek device. It set new standards for smartphones and ultimately accelerated the explosion of smartphone usage we see across the planet today.

2009: Bitcoin

The foundations for modern digital payments were laid in the late 1950s with the introduction of the first credit and debit cards, but it was the invention of Bitcoin in 2009 that set the stage for a new era of secure digital transactions. The first decentralized cryptocurrency, Bitcoin introduced a new form of digital payment system that operates independently of traditional banking systems. Its underlying technology, blockchain, revolutionized the concept of digital transactions by providing a secure, transparent, and decentralized method for peer-to-peer payments. Bitcoin has not only influenced the development of other cryptocurrencies but has also sparked discussions about the future of money in the digital age.

2014: Virtual reality

2014 was a pivotal year in the development of virtual reality (VR) for commercial applications. Facebook acquired the Oculus VR company for $2 billion and kickstarted a drive for high-quality VR experiences to be made accessible to consumers. Samsung and Sony also announced VR products, and Google released the now discontinued Cardboard – a low-cost, do-it-yourself viewer for smartphones. The first batch of Oculus Rift headsets began shipping to consumers in 2016.

2015: Autonomous vehicles

Autonomous vehicles have gone from science fiction to science fact in the past two decades, and predictions suggest that almost two-thirds of registered passenger cars worldwide will feature partly-assisted driving and steering by 2025 . In 2015, the introduction of Tesla’s Autopilot brought autonomous features to consumer vehicles, contributing to the mainstream adoption of self-driving technology.

Cars Increasingly Ready for Autonomous Driving

2019: Quantum computing

A significant moment in the history of quantum computing was achieved in October 2019 when Google’s Sycamore processor demonstrated “quantum supremacy” by solving a complex problem faster than the world’s most powerful supercomputers. Quantum technologies can be used in a variety of applications and offer transformative impacts across industries. The World Economic Forum’s Quantum Economy Blueprint provides a framework for value-led, democratic access to quantum resources to help ensure an equitable global distribution and avoid a quantum divide.

2020: The COVID-19 pandemic

The COVID-19 pandemic accelerated digital transformation on an unprecedented scale . With almost every aspect of human life impacted by the spread of the virus – from communicating with loved ones to how and where we work – the rate of innovation and uptake of technology across the globe emphasized the importance of remote work, video conferencing, telemedicine and e-commerce in our daily lives.

In response to the uncertainties surrounding generative AI and the need for robust AI governance frameworks to ensure responsible and beneficial outcomes for all, the Forum’s Centre for the Fourth Industrial Revolution (C4IR) has launched the AI Governance Alliance .

The Alliance will unite industry leaders, governments, academic institutions, and civil society organizations to champion responsible global design and release of transparent and inclusive AI systems.

2022: Artificial intelligence

Artificial intelligence (AI) technology has been around for some time and AI-powered consumer electronics, from smart home devices to personalized assistants, have become commonplace. However, the emergence of mainstream applications of generative AI has dominated the sector in recent years.

In 2022, OpenAI unveiled its chatbot, ChatGPT. Within a week, it had gained over one million users and become the fastest-growing consumer app in history . In the same year, DALL-E 2, a text-to-image generative AI tool, also launched.

Don't miss any update on this topic

Create a free account and access your personalized content collection with our latest publications and analyses.

License and Republishing

World Economic Forum articles may be republished in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International Public License, and in accordance with our Terms of Use.

The views expressed in this article are those of the author alone and not the World Economic Forum.

The Agenda .chakra .wef-n7bacu{margin-top:16px;margin-bottom:16px;line-height:1.388;font-weight:400;} Weekly

A weekly update of the most important issues driving the global agenda

.chakra .wef-1dtnjt5{display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-align-items:center;-webkit-box-align:center;-ms-flex-align:center;align-items:center;-webkit-flex-wrap:wrap;-ms-flex-wrap:wrap;flex-wrap:wrap;} More on Emerging Technologies .chakra .wef-17xejub{-webkit-flex:1;-ms-flex:1;flex:1;justify-self:stretch;-webkit-align-self:stretch;-ms-flex-item-align:stretch;align-self:stretch;} .chakra .wef-nr1rr4{display:-webkit-inline-box;display:-webkit-inline-flex;display:-ms-inline-flexbox;display:inline-flex;white-space:normal;vertical-align:middle;text-transform:uppercase;font-size:0.75rem;border-radius:0.25rem;font-weight:700;-webkit-align-items:center;-webkit-box-align:center;-ms-flex-align:center;align-items:center;line-height:1.2;-webkit-letter-spacing:1.25px;-moz-letter-spacing:1.25px;-ms-letter-spacing:1.25px;letter-spacing:1.25px;background:none;padding:0px;color:#B3B3B3;-webkit-box-decoration-break:clone;box-decoration-break:clone;-webkit-box-decoration-break:clone;}@media screen and (min-width:37.5rem){.chakra .wef-nr1rr4{font-size:0.875rem;}}@media screen and (min-width:56.5rem){.chakra .wef-nr1rr4{font-size:1rem;}} See all

Robot rock stars, pocket forests, and the battle for chips - Forum podcasts you should hear this month

Robin Pomeroy and Linda Lacina

April 29, 2024

4 steps for the Middle East and North Africa to develop 'intelligent economies'

Maroun Kairouz

The future of learning: How AI is revolutionizing education 4.0

Tanya Milberg

April 28, 2024

Shaping the Future of Learning: The Role of AI in Education 4.0

The cybersecurity industry has an urgent talent shortage. Here’s how to plug the gap

Michelle Meineke

Stanford just released its annual AI Index report. Here's what it reveals

April 26, 2024

"There's a lot we haven't discovered:" Brevard students participate in astronaut training

NASA astronaut and former Kennedy Space Center Director Bob Cabana stood in front of 24 Brevard County students — some possibly future astronauts themselves — on Tuesday and encouraged them to never give up on their dreams.

The Brevard students were winners of a voluntary essay competition, open to all K-12 students in Brevard, that centered around the question: “Why do you want to be an astronaut?" The grand prize, which these students won: participate in the Astronaut Training Experience (ATX) at Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex in a group experience led by Cabana.

“I never dreamed I could be an astronaut," Cabana told the students. "I held astronauts to the highest standard. But, I wanted to fly airplanes."

Cabana talked about his time in the United States Naval Academy and journey to becoming a naval test pilot. It took him more than one application before being selected to be an astronaut, he said.

Don't miss the next Florida launch: Is there a launch today? Upcoming rocket launch schedule for SpaceX, ULA, NASA in Florida

Cabana reflects on becoming a NASA astronaut

Cabana flew on four shuttle flights and is best known for being one of the first humans to enter the International Space Station in 1998. He served as KSC director before being selected to serve as the associate administrator of NASA from 2021 until his retirement last December.

“If you got something you want to do, don’t give up,” Cabana said to the students. “It’s not just being an astronaut. We have so many cool jobs at NASA, and with contractors who help build spacecraft.”

Brevard County students who won the competition

Around 60 students from Brevard County participated in the open competition. A committee judged the essays based on enthusiasm and interest and selected 24 winners.

The 24 winning students were from the following schools: Freedom 7 Elementary, Palm Bay Magnet High School, Gemini Elementary, Audubon Elementary, West Shore Junior/Senior High School, West Melbourne School for Science, Surfside Elementary, Viera High School, Viera Elementary, Manatee Elementary, Williams Elementary, Suntree Elementary, Columbia Elementary, Johnson Middle School, Indialantic Elementary, and Lewis Carroll Elementary.

Robin Ward, grant coordinator of the Brevard Schools Foundation told FLORIDA TODAY, “We are the Space Coast. We want to encourage from an early age, even starting out in kindergarten, building that pipeline of talented future aerospace industry workers and get them in the workforce”.

The Astronaut Training Experience

The ATX experience was created by a partnership between Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex and Lockheed Martin in 2018. The attraction recently saw an upgrade to its simulators, which included updated visuals and the ability to select levels of difficulty.

These students were among the first group to try the upgrade.

Some students worked in mission control communicating with and instructing those who participated in simulated spacewalks. Simulated space missions included a space station spacewalk in simulated microgravity, a Mars Walk, and a Mars Rover expedition; the latter two using the power of VR to immerse the student in the experience.

The students also had the opportunity to fly on a simulated Artemis launch in a mockup Orion spacecraft.

While the groups of students worked together on their missions, Cabana stopped by to offer some professional astronaut guidance. He described the experience as a "great analogy" to astronaut activities, noting the importance of teamwork.

Brevard students dream of space

FLORIDA TODAY spoke with three students who had the top scores on the essay.

Eleven-year-old Rania Ray is a sixth grader at West Melbourne School for Science. She said her interest in space exploration was sparked by curiosity about the “vast expanse of space”. “There’s a lot we haven’t discovered,” Rania said.

She's not sure she wants to be an astronaut but might be interested in a role supporting astronauts.

“I’m fortunate to have this experience to see if there’s something related to space that can help me in my future career," she said.

Hazel Rose, 11, is a fifth grader at Freedom 7 Elementary. She spoke with FLORIDA TODAY after finishing a Mars Rover simulator. She describes herself as a frequent visitor to Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex. She wants to be an astronaut not only to help people learn about space, but to inspire others.

“I want to go to Mars, and then inspire others to come too,” Hazel said.

Meanwhile, Eleven-year-old Gwen Nelson , a fifth grader from Audubon Elementary stood nearby. “There are so many cool things in the atmosphere…in space that you can discover.” Gwen said her future ambitions may include going to Mars to search for life.

Who can participate in the AXT Astronaut Training Experience?

The experience is open to visitors to the Visitor Complex as an add on experience to daily admission. The only requirement is that one must be in good physical condition. The cost is $175. Admission to the visitor complex is $65 for children ages 3-11, and $75 for ages 12-plus.

Brooke Edwards is a Space Reporter for Florida Today. Contact her at [email protected] or on X: @brookeofstars.

IMAGES

Development of Virtual and Augmented Reality
VR's impact to world
Year Six: Clement's Writing About VR
AR/VR Essay: Characteristics, Significance, and SWOT Analysis
Augmented Reality Virtual Reality and the Music Industry
≫ Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality Free Essay Sample on Samploon.com

VIDEO

Indian Premier League IPL
10 Lines Essay on Benefits of Trees in Urdu || Benefits of Trees Essay || Urdu Essays
Nazam Payame Amal ka markazi khyal , khulasa or complete tashreehat @essaywithsaima #trending
NIEGRZECZNE ŚWINKI ( BAD PIGGIES / SCP SL ) MAM SKILL ISSUE
10 Lines Essay On Lion In English
10 LINES ESSAY ON MY FAVOURITE CARTOON CHARACTER || ESSAY IN ENGLISH

COMMENTS

109 Virtual Reality Essay Topics & Samples
109 Virtual Reality Topics & Essay Examples. Updated: Mar 2nd, 2024. 8 min. When writing a virtual reality essay, it is hard to find just one area to focus on. Our experts have outlined 104 titles for you to choose from. We will write.
Virtual Reality Free Essay Examples And Topic Ideas
28 essay samples found. Virtual Reality (VR), a simulated experience that can resemble or be entirely different from the real world, has made significant strides with applications in gaming, education, healthcare, and more. Essays on VR might delve into its technological advancements, its applications, and the societal, ethical, and ...
Virtual Reality Essays
Virtual reality (VR) is an increasingly important and influential technology that is shaping various industries and everyday life. Writing an essay on virtual reality can help to educate others about its potential and impact on society, as well as provide a deeper understanding of its applications and implications.
Virtual reality (VR)
virtual reality (VR), the use of computer modeling and simulation that enables a person to interact with an artificial three-dimensional (3-D) visual or other sensory environment.VR applications immerse the user in a computer-generated environment that simulates reality through the use of interactive devices, which send and receive information and are worn as goggles, headsets, gloves, or body ...
What is virtual reality?
What differentiates VR from an ordinary computer experience (using your PC to write an essay or play games) is the nature of the input and output. Where an ordinary computer uses things like a keyboard, mouse, or (more exotically) speech recognition for input, VR uses sensors that detect how your body is moving. And where a PC displays output ...
Virtual Reality Essay
Page 1 of 50 - About 500 essays. Better Essays. Virtual Reality Technology : The Dangers Of Virtual Reality. 1419 Words; ... ABSTRACT: Virtual Reality (VR), also called Virtual Environments (VE) has drawn much attention in the last few years. The promise of virtual reality has always been enormous. This paper sets sights on the application of ...
Virtual Reality (VR)
Essay Example: Virtual reality has enhance life in all aspects by allowing your senses to feel what your body cannot experience; it allows you to travel, learn, and has a bright future ahead of it. ... (VR) is the current frontier in gaming, offering immersion and totally different experiences to what gamers have been used to"(Wilson, 2017 ...
Virtual Reality
Virtual reality is a computer technology that immerses a user in an imagined or replicated world (like video games, movies, or flight simulation), or simulates presence in the real world (like gliding through the canals on a gondola in Venice, or attending a Grammy Awards ceremony). The user experiences VR through a headset, sometimes in ...
Virtual Reality's Main Benefits
Many technology manufacturers are now focused on the production of their own VR devices. Commonly, such devices are viewed as tools for entertainment. However, as pointed out in an article published in Time Magazine in 2013, virtual reality has a lot of benefits to offer to the fields of healthcare, military, education, gaming, and simulation ...
Virtual Reality: A Definition History
This essay, written in 1998 by an active participant in both virtual reality development and the virtual reality definition debate, discusses the definition of the phrase "Virtual Reality" (VR). I start with history from a personal perspective, concentrating on the debate between the "Virtual Reality" and "Virtual Environment" labels in the late 1980's and early 1990's. Definitions of VR based ...
Introduction to Virtual and Augmented Reality
The basic purpose of VR is to create an innovative interface between humans and computers. The idea of leaving users present in reality, but extending it with parts from a virtual world, leads to Augmented Reality. For the realization of virtual or augmented environments a virtual world and a VR/AR system are required.
The Concept of Virtual Reality: [Essay Example], 689 words
The definition of 'virtual' is near and reality is what we experience as human beings. So the term 'virtual reality' basically means 'near-reality'. This could, of course, mean anything but it usually refers to a specific The computer-generated simulation of a three-dimensional image or environment that can be type of reality emulation.
The Ethics of Realism in Virtual and Augmented Reality
VR and AR are intrinsically "deceptive" in that they deliver virtual sense data that may be perceived by people as an alternate reality, and they provide the means to interact within that reality. Although this is "deceptive," it is the point of XR. People are freely able to choose to enter into this deception, and there is an implicit ...
What is Virtual Reality (VR)? The Complete WIRED Guide
That's pretty much the conversation around virtual reality (VR), a technology by which computer-aided stimuli create the immersive illusion of being somewhere else—and a topic on which middle ...
Virtual reality (VR)
Text preview of this essay: This page of the essay has 470 words. Download the full version above. Virtual reality (VR) is not a new concept, attracted much attention in the past few years. A large amount of media interest is rapidly growing. Very few people, however, actually know that VR is that its basic principles and open problems.
How Virtual Reality Technology Has Changed Our Lives: An Overview of
VR as a field also includes augmented reality (AR) and mixed reality (XR), which are less immersive forms of virtual experiences where users still operate in the real world with a virtual overlay. AR and XR applications are more accessible to people due to their development for use on mobile devices, which are much more common with most people ...
Virtual Reality: The Technology of the Future
Virtual Reality: The Technology of the Future. Topic: Technology Words: 2086 Pages: 8. Virtual reality (VR) is a technology that permits the user to maintain contact with a computer-simulated ambiance whether it is an actual or perceived one. Most of the contemporary virtual reality environments are fundamentally visual encounters, shown either ...
(PDF) The Immersive and Interactive Experience in ...
This essay will discuss the immersive and interactive effects in VR games and VR films separately. In the first part of VR games, it will elaborate how the effects are provided through the VR ...
Virtual Reality Essays & Research Papers
Virtual reality is "an artificial environment which is experienced through sensory stimuli (such as sights and sounds) provided by a computer". It is basically a 3D (three-dimensional) environment, generated artificially, by a computer. The artificial environment can be explored, and also interacted with, by a person using the VR (virtual ...
(PDF) VR-Research paper
VR system, its contribution in modernisation, reviews and analysis of VR. While moving towards the idea of introducing VR in the Mass media sec tor. Key Words:- Virtual Reality, Classifications ...
Virtual Reality Versus Augmented Reality
Virtual Reality (VR) refers to a high-end user computer interface involving real-time interactions and stimulations that use several sensorial channels which include visual, auditory, tactile, smell and taste. Virtual Reality should not just be taken as a high-end user interface or a medium. This is because it includes applications that help in ...
Virtual Reality and Empathy Enhancement: Ethical Aspects
Virtual Reality Technologies: Devices and Fundamental Aspects. Virtual Reality 3 has historically been referred to as a set of technologies providing immersive experiences in computer-generated worlds. The most important features of computer-based VR are, on the one hand, the interactivity with digital scenarios, objects and avatars and, on the other, the motion tracking that permits the ...
#1292: Pioneering the VR Essay with "Shadowtime" Critiquing Sci-Fi
So this is a VR essay, one of the first VR essays that I've seen that is using the medium of virtual reality to talk about the medium of virtual reality. This is a piece that actually learned a lot more about listening to the creators talk about the piece. And I highly recommend if you do have a chance to see the piece to go see it, because we ...
How AI and other technology changed our lives
Facebook acquired the Oculus VR company for $2 billion and kickstarted a drive for high-quality VR experiences to be made accessible to consumers. Samsung and Sony also announced VR products, and Google released the now discontinued Cardboard - a low-cost, do-it-yourself viewer for smartphones. The first batch of Oculus Rift headsets began ...
NASA astronaut addresses Brevard students at Kennedy Space Center
A committee judged the essays based on enthusiasm and interest and selected 24 winners. ... the latter two using the power of VR to immerse the student in the experience. ...