Virtuality

Virtual reality in an increasingly technological time

STORY BY MADELINE MOHN | GRAPHIC BY EVAN YAMADA featuring PHOTO BY NICK DANIELSON | INFOGRAPHIC BY HANNAH AMUNDSON

“Zero, zero, one, zero, one, one,” he says.

Nick Nestor’s hands are sweaty and he feels like laughing.

“Got it — ready for wires?”

He flips the bomb over. Colored wires run parallel to the clock ticking down to zero. He reads the sequence to his partner.

“Um, your knob is left,” his partner says.

“Okay. Wires?”

“All of them.”

“All of them?” He clips through four wires and the room flashes green. The bomb dings.

He’s defused it. Again.

“My turn,” his partner says.

Nestor removes the headset and the scene with the bomb vanishes as the Oculus Rift changes hands. He’s ready to tell his partner how to diffuse the next virtual bomb.

The game is called Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes and everyone at 2014’s Penny Arcade Expo (PAX) gaming festival wanted to play it. One player wears the gear and is virtually transported to a room where they are tasked with diffusing a bomb, with instructions given by a partner who can’t see the lethal weapon.

“It’s a communication game,” Nestor says. “It’s fun, but the real fun was using the Rift.”

Meet the Players

The idea of virtual or augmented reality is not a new. Immersive media and computer-facilitated simulations are common, popular, and becoming more intuitive to use.

But whether you’re wandering the map in a first-person shooter game or watching GoPro footage of a trip down Mexico’s longest zip line, one thing remains the same — you’re not there. The difference between these forms of immersive media and the new reality-enhancing hardware is a true sense of presence.

The Oculus Rift and the HTC Vive are on the high end of the technology and will be early entrants in the VR market. Both Vive and Oculus have announced that its product is a $600 investment.

On the lower end of the market are mobile-powered VR sets. Companies such as Google, Samsung, Freefly and Zeiss have also introduced products branded as VR that are simply headsets paired with smartphones as the display and processor. Users strap their phones into the headset to play games, watch videos or interact with media in an immersive setting.

“They’re novel and inexpensive but they’re just not the same quality, nor are they integrated into PC stuff, so the graphics are limited,” Nestor says.

Because the market is new and unsaturated, there are many smaller firms developing products on a budget. One such is Bellingham software company 8las. Cat Felts, a Western senior and software engineer for 8las, writes programs for augmented reality technology. This altered perspective is usually accomplished with visual overlays.

Felts considers the technology presence-enhancing and foresees augmented reality hardware, like Google Glass and Microsoft’s HoloLens, replacing mobile phones in the next few years. Most high-profile augmented reality technology isn’t ready for the average consumer yet, but Microsoft’s HoloLens beta models are being launched in the next few months, which will sell for $3,000.

“They’re building a product that’ll change lives,” Felts says. “But funding is a problem. Because product development is slow, high costs can be an obstacle to entry into the market for smaller firms,” she says.

The Hardware

Today’s VR hardware systems such as the Rift and Vive are tangible consoles, similar to an Xbox or Play Station. Both systems unite three parts to create a seamless virtual world.

Each includes a headset, worn over the head and eyes to provide the corporeal experience. A sensor is set up in the space of play to track the user’s movement and facilitate the immersion. A remote control allows the user to direct their interactions with the virtual world.

The owner of a VR system would set up the sensors in their arena of choice — the Rift’s sensors look like freestanding microphones and the Vive’s are Rubix Cube-sized boxes. The headset use sensors to signal if one is getting close to a wall or object, permitting free movement around the room.

“It sounds like a lot,” Nestor says. “But it’s portable. For the Rift at least, the headset is pretty small so it’s easy to move around.”

Augmented reality hardware is much simpler. The axis of the gear is simply the goggles, sometimes fortified with additional lenses like Microsoft’s HoloLens, or almost indistinguishable from eyeglasses like the discontinued Google Glass.

Whatever the style, the system is powered by a portable processor that allows holographic overlays to be manipulated in the wearer’s vision. Prototypes include a remote control to enable interaction with augmentation.

Felts says that the IMMY hardware currently uses an Xbox controller, but the team hopes to develop a more natural user interface, like hand gestures, so the software can be operated just like the screen on a smartphone.

Goals and Glitches

Despite the many attractions of owning a VR system, early adopters won’t have the easiest time getting started.

Owning the Rift is one thing, but having the PC to power it is another. Nestor, a senior studying computer science at Western, has invested about $1,000 in his personal computer for gaming, coding and streaming. If he were to purchase the Rift, he would have to spend an additional $500 getting his computer up to recommended specifications.

This means a total investment of around $2,000, assuming the average consumer needs to build their hardware from scratch, as well as order their VR headset, sensor and remote.

Additionally, developing integration for technology of this type is slow and existing programs will have to be rewritten to be compatible with these technologies, Nestor says. He guesses that it won’t be very popular at first, considering the financial investment.

Felts, however, has different hopes for AR systems like the one she’s helping develop.

“I think the product will have a fast integration, be readily available, and only cost a couple hundred dollars,” she says.

Those differences aside, the challenges of producing the technology to power VR and AR are fairly similar. One of the biggest issues in developing truly immersive and user-centric VR is creating a virtual world that responds like a real one.

“Real life doesn’t lag,” Nestor says. “So systems like the Rift run at 90 frames per second.”

Felts says her team has run into lag-related problems while writing programs for augmented reality. The lag between stimulus and response can produce “simulation sickness”, which manifests itself through symptoms such as nausea and dizziness and is caused by optical misperception.

“When your eyes see something that makes your brain trip, that’s a problem,” Felts says.

Looking Ahead

The practical purposes of VR are endless, Nestor says, recalling his own experience with bomb-diffusion.

“That’s just a game,” he says. “But the imaging on this thing could change the way we train medicine, military and pretty much everything.”

Felts agrees that this technology’s applications to professional settings will change the way people are trained, how they build and how they think.

“I really think that this is going to be the new smartphone,” she says. “Everyone will have one, and they’ll use it all the time.”

As the technology needed to power these products gets better and cheaper, more people will adopt VR and AR, Nestor says. Investors expect it to revolutionize productivity, entertainment, communications and all areas of media.

“It’s hard to think of an application that won’t work with this technology,” Nestor says. “You put on the headset, you look around and you’re just immersed. It’s such a natural interface. It makes sense.”

The way it’s developing, in a few short years, virtual reality could be anything to anyone. It’s a gamer’s escape, an innovator’s paradise. It’s a new kind of textbook, a new kind of travel. Not just blue prints or bomb diffusion. It’s not today, but it’s soon: the clock ticks down to zero, and then — boom.