Friday
The Cave
Summary
The visit to the virtual reality lab was nothing like I what I had expected. I thought it would be more along the lines of the general 3D quality you find in theaters with the basic glasses and I did not realize that such a level of interactivity was possible. I was surprised by the amount of control the person with the joystick and head-tracking goggles had and it was amusing to see the predictable head jerks as objects got closer to everyone’s faces because the experience felt so real. The mapping world with the pottery was undoubtedly the most relevant to the class and I wish we had the time to create our map in the lab. It is unfortunate that the ceiling was not a part of it and that they did not have a back wall but hopefully that is something that can be developed in the future.
Inquiry
It will be interesting to see how the technology in the virtual reality lab will be applied in the future. To me it seems that it would be particularly useful with the military and schools because the military can train their soldiers without putting them in actual danger and making sure they are qualified and well-prepared, while schools, especially med schools, can recreate the human body or anything they need. I would love to see that technology applied to video games because as immersed as a player gets when they are playing even a simple game like Super Mario on the Nintendo, it would be amazing to play Halo or COD in 3D. The issue with relying so heavily on virtual reality would be that people could become disconnected with reality and there would be even less interactions between people. Nonetheless, it will be interesting to see how such technology is being used a few years from now.
1. How was your experience in The Cave and what was the most/least appealing thing to you?
2. Where do you see this technology being used a few years from now?
3. Do you think this technology will become even more mainstream in the future and if so, how long do you think it will take for this to happen?
4. What would be some issues with spreading the use of virtual reality?
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4 comments
As I commented on "Response is the Medium", I was not as impressed with the virtual reality lab as I had expected to me. A couple of things detracted from my experience there; one was the lack of fluidity in the image. When viewing the image, even with the tracking goggles on, I noticed distortion when looking at it between projector screens due to the screen's edges. This could be avoided by emloying a lab with rounded walls; as such exists in the Optical Sciences building at the University of Arizona. I feel that this type of screen projection would be much more fluid, and eliminate some of the distortion due to the screen edges. I was also unimpressed with the quality of the image. To me, it was far from HD 1080p imagery that we see daily on our home television sets, and was miniscule in comparison to the 3D effects in Avatar. It is my belief that this will improve over time, and I actually happen to think the movie Avatar itself will have a huge future effect on special effects and video imagery. I see this technology increasing in quality over the next few years, and being used much more for research and education, and most likely gaming as well. With the advent of uses for gaming within this technology, it will then become more widespread throughout society. It is hard to tell when is exactly this will happen, but if I had to guess it will be within the next decade for certain. Lastly, the largest issue with virtual reality is something I saw reiterated across two blog posts; detraction and separation from actual society (reality). Virtual reality can create a world of whatever is desired by it's designer or user, and also a world that is not real. A world exactly like The Matrix.
Although there are many positive things that would come from virtual reality, it also has downsides. If the use virtual reality would be spread, the time spend in the real world would decrease. This gives rise to the problem of distinguishing between the virtual and real world. According to “The Avatar Effect” on Pbs.com, if a person experiences a traumatic event or another event that is not pleasing, it can affect them in the real world. Another major problem is the initial cost to set up a virtual reality system and to produce images for it.
For me, the experience at the Cave was really interesting. I thought it was a great application of available technology. While some people may be able to visualize 3-D spaces well with 2-D representation, I believe certain applications can be enhanced by true 3-D visualization. I do understand that many of the applications mentioned in our class discussion appear to be more "novelty" uses (not true gains by using the technology), but using the technology to truly see a complex structure (like the molecule) can be very beneficial. The bottom line is, this technology must be used appropriately if it is to be truly valuable.
I have visited the VR lab before, and the other times that I have gone, I was able to see (near real time updates) of the Mars mission and Marvin was able to show us how there was evidence of water and ice on the planet.
In the past few months, I have seen so many movies that have come out that are in 3-D so I think that 3-D will become more mainstream. The movie theaters just increased the prices of 3-d tickets, because they are trying to add more 3-d theaters to the movies because people are really demanding the new types of 3-D movies. I wonder that once the 3-D phenomenon has passed if the theaters will still be so popular.
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