For those hung up on graphics, it's mostly a non-issue to me at least. When I used my friends Oculus devkit2, I didn't care about how good Half-Life2 looked, or any modern graphic game. My biggest enjoyment was a demo that had the surroundings change as you looked around. That experience, and as others have mentioned as being able to go to a distant location, is the true greatness of this to me. It could be so useful for people that cannot afford a real vacation, but can utilize a programmed one. Playing a FPS that clearly was meant for a controller (HL-2, Metroid Prime) was disoriented as heck. I feel the controller should eventually be phased out, and natural movement when possible is the true solution to disorientation. Some will still be there for people though regardless, and I am no exception.
Overuse of VR - out of touch with reality- is a real risk.
Take a look around now...people are already out of touch with reality with the technology available today. Easily 7/10 people you pass in public either have their head buried in their phone, headphones on, or both of those...and if they don't wait about thirty seconds and they will.
I'm sure the games that VR will bring will be amazing and being in the medical field I've seen first hand what some of this technology can do for healthcare.....but my opinion is For any of the "good" that VR can bring to humanity it will have a more powerful negative effect on us. I'm not a fan of it at all.
I agree, this will not be helpful to mass society, though I think it's going to take a decade or so for the technology to really make an impact. The headsets are bulky and expensive. Until the technology advances it won't be an every household thing. Once we get to holodecks, then the world will grind to a halt.
But it is more than just that. You are talking social avoidance, which is part of this. VR also though has the risk of making people loose touch with reality and daily tasks, beyond just social interactions. People will avoid reality for their virtual reality, because they can control it fully. I cannot perform my menial job, and being supervised- so I will be my own virtual boss that owns space ships. I'm broke- well, I am a billionaire in my VR. I want to kill people, but know I cannot- I will take out hundreds of people daily in my VR. That goes beyond social interactions and the avoidance of others, and goes into re-programming someone's daily living. Especially if they stop keeping up with their daily responsibilities.
I'm also thinking the movie Inception here, where the people in the chemist's place spend most of the day in the dream state because it is better. So VR will be a whole new addiction, one that is much more potent than phone and video game addiction. People may not be able to function in the real world, because their virtual world is so much better.
As a concrete, current example: look no further from those that suffer from daily out of touch with reality- people with Schizophrenia spectrum disorders. Depending on the severity, they have to use techniques to re-ground them to reality. I see a similar risk for excessive VR users.
Topic: Virtual Reality (Read 12922 times)
