Elizabeth Day visits the virtual human interaction laboratory at Stanford University in Silicon Valley – and it blows her mindMy interest in virtual reality was virtually nil – until final month. When I thought of it,I pictured low-budget sci-fi movies with bad special effects. I thought of those pixellated posters, common in the mid-1990s, and the ones where you would stare at the wall and a three-dimensional vision of an underwater city would slowly emerge from a cluster of purple dots.
I thought of it as something that turned on adolescent gamers who sat at home in their underpants with the curtains closed and who dreamed of a day when they could fully inhabit the body of the bank robber guy with the stubble and the biceps in Grand Theft Auto. I thought of 3D glasses in 1950s film theatres and the 360-degree cinema screens your parents took you to when you went on holiday to France and it was raining. The whole idea of virtual reality made me want to stifle an actual reality yawn. In short: I was clueless.
I’m greeted like an obsolete relic because I have never tried the Oculus Rift headsetAlthough the gaming market will be the testing ground,there are countless other applications that are being explored. Related: Could virtual reality revolutionise crisis-response filmmaking ? Related: Facebook joins YouTube in showing 360-degree videos – including Star Wars I cant stare you in the eye and claim it only works for the good stuff. Yes, it worries me. Related: Minecraft on Hololens: the future of gaming is legal in front of your eyes Continue reading...
Source: theguardian.com