The next big thing in virtual reality

VR is Virtual Reality. And now that there are cinema halls in VR, and work meetings being conducted in VR, let’s figure out where the next big boom is. Bet you didn’t see it coming.

The last time I put on a virtual reality gizmo over my head, I ended up in the bathroom, throwing up for about five minutes after playing one of the more popular endless-running games ported to it. Pretty unimpressive for someone so “immersed” when he’s gaming.

But, let’s face it: VR is a totally different game. While VR — along with its peers augmented reality, mixed reality and augmented virtuality — has indeed received a lot of hype for being the next big thing, the question remains — how big?

Today, VR is most popularly associated with games, but it’s also being pegged to be a staple (some day) in other more serious areas such as medicine, education and the boardroom. But according to the Virtual Reality Society, the earliest attempts of “creating the illusion that we are present somewhere we are not” are 360-degree murals… from the 1800s.

VR does have its benefits: it makes you more immersed into whatever you’re being exposed to, and we don’t need to mention it gives you a realistic experience to the point that you may end up in one of the YouTube videos resulting from a ‘VR fails’ search (Resident Evil 7, anyone dares?). But of course, it’s always a yin-yang sort of thing. Probably the most common complaint about VR is motion sickness — one could consider VR to be “vertigo reality” as well. Even for the most avid gamer, VR could be an out of this (real) world experience. You’ll probably be able to search this one guy who couldn’t be restrained because he was apparently freefalling into bottomlessness, flipping like a fish out of water on the floor for about a minute until someone finally, mercifully, took the VR gear off of him.

To be fair, VR devices do give warnings about the possible effects on users — but probably an extra reminder not to freak out when a ghost pops up right in your face or falling to your virtual death could help reduce your chances to go viral.

If you think about it carefully, the area that VR may fully invade in the not-so-far future could be the obvious: anything to do with watching. And for that reason, the way we experience stuff in the living room or in the movie house could be in for a radical makeover. That could be a disadvantage for bespectacled people like yours truly; I hate watching films in 3D because I feel so dumb having those funny 3D glasses over my regular ones — or vice-versa, whichever makes me feel more comfortable. And in case you missed it, titles like The Lawnmower Man, Ready

Player One and everybody’s favourite bullet-dodging movie, The Matrix, are on the way to a VR screen near you. Oh, and if you’re too lazy to read books, wait for your favourite ones to come up on VR as well. Boston College students are not just developing something for you to get through Ulysses — they’re transforming it into a VR game as well, for that full Odyssey experience.

But these aren’t really new, hold-your-breath things. The first VR cinema opened in Amsterdam over a year ago and it apparently feels weird: it’s not dark, no huge screen, only chairs with VR headsets. Perfect place to go if you’re too stingy to spend on your own VR kit and transform any place into your personal cinema house.

Which leads to the next one: TV. HTC, with its very own Vive VR machine, recently launched Viveport, a subscription service that can be at the levels of Netflix and Hulu.

Consider what Rikard Steiber, HTC’s senior vice-president for VR, has to say. “We will all have superpowers. Because in virtual reality you can be anyone, you can go anywhere and you can create anything.” He also called it the “next mass medium”. Let that sink in, then imagine you going into the future seeing several people with VR headsets slapped on, either laughing, screaming, rolling on the floor, engaged in a fighting stance or anything else, anywhere, anytime.

Now that’s going to be one weird world we’re virtually — pun intended — staring at. However, whether we like it or not, that’s where we’re headed. We just hope it won’t be out of control.

As with any innovation, companies have found a way to simplify it — not to mention eliminating the nauseating feeling in terms of use and price — and gain mass acceptance. VR is a great concept, no questions asked, even to the most sceptical. But challenges remain both for VR industry developers on how to convince everyone about it, and us, the end-users, to accept it and be breath-taken.

While we see how VR will change, we can sit back, relax and enjoy what’s available to satisfy our immersive experience needs. And by saying immersive, it need not be with a VR headset; as long as it’s eye-catching, enjoyable and can make you suddenly dodge a virtual rock falling on you, then that itself is truly engaging and enjoyable.

So, maybe, those funny glasses aren’t so bad, after all.

We will all have superpowers. Because in virtual reality you can be anyone, you can go anywhere and you can create anything. Rikard Steiber senior vice-president VR, HTC