Disclaimer: Like I said at the start of this series, I am not a lawyer. This is a complicated case and I am not an expert on the law, VR, or corporate contracts. I’m working with incomplete records of complex events where there was often more than two sides to every story. I’ve done what I could to be accurate, but series is intended as opinion and commentary, not authoritative historical record.
VR is a strange thing. For people who haven’t tried it, it’s natural to assume this is just another technological advance like plasma screens or surround sound. They think this is just the next step up in fidelity.
This is not the case. VR is as different from looking at a screen as a screen is different from a radio. VR engages parts of the brain that aren’t really involved or excited by traditional screen experiences.
Presence
A screen grab of the VR demo at Valve in 2014. This is back when they were still using the Oculus Rift, before they developed the Vive, their own competing headset.
A notable example is one that Valve was offering in its VR labs in 2014. In the demo, the user would find themselves standing on a narrow stone platform floating in a vast open space. The space wasn’t even designed to look real. The skybox was comprised of old webpages. The platform texture looked like something out of Half-Life 2. If you looked at this on a traditional screen it would be incredibly boring. It looks like “Baby’s First Game Level”. It’s cheap and dull and you wouldn’t give it a second look.
But in VR this stupid box room can be a visceral experience. If you’re at all nervous around heights then you’ll probably catch your breath, feel your knees lock up, and have an intense desire to grab onto something solid. You know you’re in a VR lab and you know it’s just a simulation, but the input reaches deep down and tickles the atavistic parts of your brain. You can see a similar idea at work in the Fear of Heights VR demo. While FoH makes for a better demo to watch, I think the Valve demo makes the more dramatic case for VR, since it accomplishes the same effect using only rudimentary visuals. It manages to convince you using unconvincing graphics, thus driving home just how different it is from traditional screen experiences.
This feeling of “being there” is called presence, and it’s only possible in VR. This effect isn’t a novelty. It persists, even in people who use VR regularly.
Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Zenimax vs. Facebook Part 2: The 5 Problems Of VR”
Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.
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