Gadgetory

the Internet has never been as cool or as futuristic as we hoped we don't just want data we want to hang out in an actual alternate universe Metaverse cyberspace whatever so now the virtual reality is coming back people have started wondering again what would it take to make you really feel like you were in a place not just looking at it how could you create an imaginary world as good as the real one so let's forget about virtual food surround sound smellivision since the sixties VR headsets you know like the ones in the lawnmower man have been the most popular way to hijack your eyes when you put something on like the oculus rift you're looking at a flat screen through magnifying glasses but what you see is a 3d image that fills up almost your entire field of view and moves when your head does it's pretty bulky right now but ideally the same thing could be projected under regular glasses or even straight onto your retina for touch you've got all kinds of options from electrical fields that trick your skin into feeling different textures - motor powered gloves that push back on your fingers to make it seem like you're holding something people who spent a lot of time I'm just making VR that's not obviously distractingly unrealistic and it's not clear we actually can make something that's literally indistinguishable from real life unfortunately it doesn't take a perfect imitation to fool your brain even if the world doesn't look perfect if it responds well enough when you move we can start feeling like we're actually in it granted we still have basically no idea what moving around naturally in virtual space looks like I mean do you use a controller do you wave your arms do you strap yourself into a treadmill or a giant hamster ball it's easier to create specific situations like learning how to fly a plane or sitting in a room full of spiders which is something people can do right now if you want to get over a phobia if you find a way to manipulate our sense of balance and motion the way that we manipulate our eyes right now we'll be a lot closer to our dream in the actual virtual world so then there's the question of what a populated Metaverse would look like it's easy to see just a cruller version of second life and minecraft but it could go further than that you've ever watched somebody do something stupid and kind of awesome on YouTube imagine becoming them and then stringing your own crazy stunt just like the Internet hasn't replaced our offline lives okay it hasn't completely replaced them the virtual world could end up being a place we go to make the real one better all corporations could trap us there while they harvest our organs who knows it's a wide-open field