II’m writing this from a room slowly orbiting the Earth. Behind a screen that floats in front of me, through a huge opening where a wall should be, a planet slowly rotates and appears close enough to take up most of my field of vision. To my right it’s morning in Australia. The first vestiges of India and Europe are illuminated and dotted to my left. The soft drone of the air circulation system hums quietly behind me.
I spent a week using a virtual reality headset to do everything I could: work, exercise, compose music. This was the year that VR threatened to go mainstream as prices became more affordable and Apple entered the market. So I wanted to see how far VR has come since I first tried it in the mid-2010s, when the main experience was available. It was a nauseating roller coaster simulator. I used Meta’s latest model, called the Quest 3, and the conclusion was clear. This means it works now. It feels a little unfinished, but we’ve finally reached the point where VR is possible. It becomes really useful.
The biggest surprise was working in VR. This is not recommended. When you put on the headset, you can summon multiple screens, all connected to your computer, and make them as large as you want and place them anywhere in your environment. “Pass-through” – the ability to see digital objects superimposed on the real world, enabled by a camera built into the front of the headset – means you can cut out a window from the virtual environment to see the keyboard. You can also choose any number of work environments, from minimalist cafes to mountain huts, and switch between them at will. I quickly reached the point where if I was working alone, I would rather work in virtual reality than in real life.
The main problem is the overall lack of polish. The headset doesn’t feel like a finished product. It’s probably 10% too heavy, like a lab prototype that hasn’t been improved yet. The battery alone won’t last the entire day. Sometimes the controller disconnects without explanation. I brought it on a plane to do some work, but the challenge of connecting to my laptop using the onboard Wi-Fi proved insurmountable.
But watching movies in VR while flying was nothing special. Yes, I felt the need to apologize to my neighbor in a very British way. Wearing a headset in public has not yet become socially acceptable. But as soon as I pressed play, I realized I would never be able to go back to in-flight entertainment. I was sitting in a movie theater with the lights dimmed and several rows of seats separating me from a giant screen on a virtual wall. In long periods without turbulence, we really forgot we were flying. The one downside is that I was so engrossed in it that I almost missed the breakfast cart passing by.
“Today, the key to getting the most out of VR is to use it for activities you do yourself, even if you’re not a gamer.” Photo: Marissa Leshnoff/The Guardian
Of course, the movie theater was empty except for me – by design. Other apps are intentionally less sparsely populated. I downloaded one that promised a live virtual concert. Upon entering the virtual lobby, I discovered that there was no concert going on and no sign of one being scheduled. No problem. It also provided a space for people to mingle when acts weren’t performing. I loaded it. It was a beautifully designed virtual world, all domes and arches and curved slopes. But it was a ghost town. I was the only one there. And this is considered to be one of the most popular apps for live music on the internet.
When most people think of VR, they often think of Ready Player One. This is a science fiction novel and film about a world where people spend most of their time in a shared virtual reality, where they gather as avatars to interact, talk, and watch sports and music. together. This feels like a long way off. There are games that give hints about this group experience, such as “Gorilla Tag,” where children gather together after school to play tag as gorillas, talking to each other and moving around by waving their arms. However, VR adoption has not yet become widespread enough to make Ready Player One’s vision a reality. Now, the key to getting the most out of VR is to use it for activities you do yourself, even if you’re not a gamer.
For at least some types of knowledge workers, work is one such activity, and someone closely involved in the industry recently told me that it is considered the fastest growing use case. It is being I feel that productivity can be easily improved with VR. Gone is the office clutter, replaced by a calming environment that matches your mood for the day. Monitors that would cost thousands of dollars in the real world are displayed in front of you on demand. A virtual forest in the mountains is far better than the gray walls of my study as a place to sit down at my keyboard and write music. All distractions disappear from view.
Another thing is exercise. I was doing a personal training session in my garden, and a virtual trainer was floating in the air right in front of me. Passthrough, which was only recently added to Quest, is important here because it means you can use weights. This was not a smart idea in previous models as it completely obscured the real world. While many people have tried to join a gym temporarily and failed, it’s not unreasonable to hope that on-demand personal training at home might help them get back to exercising regularly.
Apple’s Vision Pro headset, launched earlier this year, was meant to be the starting gun for VR. That wasn’t the case. It’s a marvel of engineering and has magical uses, but it’s still lacking in compelling apps. £3,500 price tag For most people that is ruled out. Stories of headsets gathering dust or being returned have led some to believe that VR is nothing more than a hype bubble created by a tech industry desperate to find the next big thing.
But VR isn’t all hype. Sure, there are kinks that need to be smoothed out. But I think we’ve reached a tipping point. It’s really useful if you’re bringing this in for single player and something you don’t really use in public. Work, entertainment, exercise – everything is already great in VR. Don’t rely on tiny rectangular screens as a way for humans to communicate with machines.
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Ed Newton-Rex is the founder of Fairly Trained, a nonprofit organization that certifies generative AI companies that respect the rights of creators, and a visiting scholar at Stanford University.
Source: www.theguardian.com
