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[Pre]

Hideo Kojima predicted the ramifications of virtual reality in Metal Gear Solid 2.

All those who think that VR won't be incredibly harmful from a social perspective also seem to think that online gaming and forum posting and the like represent real, meaningful social interaction -- something that I can say from experience is not the case. Interacting with someone in an MMO and having a face-to-face conversation with a human being are two completely different dynamics. I struggled for a long, long time (and still sometimes do) with social interaction because of an adolescence spent on the Internet.

 

[Opiate]

Independent of whether this person is correct or not, I'll point out that these supposedly anti-social technologies keep winning anyway. People have complained that cell phones are anti-social (they take away from real face-talk time), facebook is anti-social (nobody has real life friends anymore), that modern video games are anti-social (as in, pre-VR), and yet these technologies keep gaining steam.

I'd compare it, in a way, to privacy discussions, and how modern technologies are encroaching on that privacy. Most discussions focus on whether this is a good or bad thing, while my argument tends to be more like this: whether it happens to be a net positive or not is basically irrelevant, because these modern technologies are only becoming more ubiquitous and more privacy-encroaching. For good and for bad, it's happening either way and you clearly aren't going to stop it.

 

[Zaptruder]

Hideo Kojima predicted the ramifications of virtual reality in Metal Gear Solid 2.

All those who think that VR won't be incredibly harmful from a social perspective also seem to think that online gaming and forum posting and the like represent real, meaningful social interaction -- something that I can say from experience is not the case. Interacting with someone in an MMO and having a face-to-face conversation with a human being are two completely different dynamics. I struggled for a long, long time (and still sometimes do) with social interaction because of an adolescence spent on the Internet.

I think both forms of communication have their purpose and their own validity.

The modality of communicating in semi-real time on a message board like this where thoughts and ideas are kept on 'ink' versus a more fluid back and forth exchange of a face to face communication is very different and can elucidate a different set of ideas dependent on the participants.

On a forum, in my experience, communication tends to get deeper and more factual than face to face communication - because it allows you the time to compose your thoughts more fully and articulate in a manner that is difficult in real time (i.e. you can go back and edit words after you've typed them, or you can delete them, or you can pause mid-thought without breaking the flow of the expression). It also allows for coherency in a more large scale collaborative environment - people don't talk over each other on a message board, all voices are heard relatively equally, and tangents in communication don't lose out on the information available in the larger conversational thread.

On the other hand, face to face communication allows for a higher degree of quick back and forth iteration, valuable for small scale collaborative communication, allowing you to cut through and segue faster and intuitively understand from body language whether or not the other party understands the ideas that you express.

VR then is better able to fuse these (and more) modalities of communication, and in turn create new ways of interaction and communication that have a great deal of social/emotional validity.

Will VR reduce direct flesh to flesh social interactions? Likely - but it doesn't mean a deprovement in the way we communicate and interact. It does mean a society that is less able to live outside of its technological supports... but that has always been the nature of our symbiotic relationship with technology.

 

[Roshin]

Some people have suggested that the coming VR push is just a fad. The new 3D. People don't want to put stuff on their faces. It's a waste of money. It wont go anywhere.

But when I see actual gamers falling for the absurd fear mongering (VR is incredibly harmful, the death of social interaction, etc), that makes me feel we really have something here. That VR is going to be huge and have a significant impact on gaming. People fear change and I guess some of you smell it on the wind.

Fucking bring it.

 

[Paracelsus]

Until it brings the same amount of depth only a third person game can have (think a first person game that plays like Bayonetta) I'm not really interested.

 

[Mental Atrophy]

So this guy would think a VR MMORPG which would be a perfect duplicate of reality would be socially isolating.

What?

If we ever create a perfect VR simulation of our reality, then there's a staggering probability that we already exist in such a construct.

 

[Minions]

If we ever create a perfect VR simulation of our reality, then there's a staggering probability that we already exist in such a construct.

I believe there are tests currently being done to try to test whether we are actually just computer programs... or something.

http://discovermagazine.com/2013/dec/09-do-we-live-in-the-matrix

 

[TnK]

I think the point he is making is what if we look at it with creating virtual environments. Let's say for example you work at your house but are in a virtual office.
I don't know if this is the direction people should be taking in general.

 

[gunslikewhoa]

If we ever create a perfect VR simulation of our reality, then there's a staggering probability that we already exist in such a construct.

If what's going on in my day-to-day is somebody else's idea of fun within a virtual world, real life must be REALLY boring.

 

[Frank_Tha_Noob]

It's really just an HD Virtual Boy with motion controls.

 

[Dice]

When people actually want to sit around and play games together, I'll care. In the meantime, our whole culture is already antisocial in terms of hospitality. Nobody wants to leave their house unless it is to hit the town, and nobody wants someone else to come over unless it's an eating pit-stop before or between doing the actual things planned, or to fuck. Thus, games can go ahead and be as antisocial as they can without worry because, so far as I see, consumer media as a social passtime has one foot in the grave already.

 

[Kreunt]

I hope my DK2 arrives this month, so I can enjoy the shit out of being anti-social.

 

[Phediuk]

Is there any reason that VR can't be a social experience?

 

[thetrin]

I bet someone thought cell phones were antisocial at some point. Seems shortsighted as fuck. Pretty disappointing for someone whose career involves technology and innovation.

I can't tell if you're being sarcastic...

 

[fabricated backlash]

I think for people talking about social interaction through VR, there is a huge misunderstanding on both proponents and opponents sides that VR actually will make traditional social interaction obsolete.

That's simply not going to happen. As much as I insist that the tech is inherently anti social, it's implementation can actually enrich peoples social avenues, albeit just a virtual one. Now I see many proponents of VR claim like this has the potential to actually displace traditional social contact given enough time and technological advances, which is daft in the first place. VR isn't going to lead us into a dystopian future of loners.
It's another tool in a vastly growing palette of avenues for social interaction. It doesn't displace any other form of social interaction, but it will shift the focus significantly, even if just for a subset of the population.
Writing letters is still a viable form of social and communicative interaction that is both codified and absolutely free in it's expression, depending on the participants. VR will overtake parts of communication where the users will decide it's better suited or offers a more convenient way of doing things than existing tech. But honestly, people are fooling themselves if they think that it's the be all end all tech, because frankly it's not even close to that. (and I'm not just talking about the technological problems still to overcome)

When people actually want to sit around and play games together, I'll care. In the meantime, our whole culture is already antisocial in terms of hospitality. Nobody wants to leave their house unless it is to hit the town, and nobody wants someone else to come over unless it's an eating pit-stop before or between doing the actual things planned, or to fuck. Thus, games can go ahead and be as antisocial as they can without worry because, so far as I see, consumer media as a social impasse has one foot in the grave already.

I feel sorry for your life experience as described in this post. I really do.

 

[Dice]

I feel sorry for your life experience as described in this post. I really do.

because of doing things together instead of viewing things together?

 

[James Coote]

360 degree Camera rigs with binaural audio are already in development. Imagine being able to "watch" your favorite band's concert from the front row, or on the stage, or both. Or sitting in the middle of all of them while they jam in studio. Or being right on the sideline at a sporting event. Why do we have to observe these events through little digital windows when you can feel like you are RIGHT THERE in full 3D with 3D sound?

I'd be a little more optimistic about that had 3D TV taken off. Firstly, because all the 3D content being made for TV would provide a large base of existing content for people to use with VR, and secondly because TV shows and live events would have all the 3D recording equipment already set up and being used as standard.

But it didn't really happen, even though a lot of TV's shipped with 3D as standard. This, despite the fact people were going to buy a TV anyway, whereas you probably need a special interest in games to get a VR headset, at least for now. So it becomes a chicken and egg thing. Not enough people watching the Super Bowl using VR, so not worth having the equipment and broadcasting it (even when a fair chunk of those watching the sports match probably are video game players and VR owners).

On the softer, subjective side of making the experience better, it still lacks the physicality of being able to mosh at a rock concert or high five your buddy when your team scores. Being able to look down and see a muddy, litter strewn field between your virtual shoes isn't going to replicate the sensation of the bass turned up so loud you can feel the vibrations in the pit of your stomach.

PCs could be said to have been a a solution to a problem that didn't exist also. You could play some games and do some word processing (both of which you could already do more reliably elsewhere). Other than that there really was not much use for a PC thirty years ago. But the awesome thing about the PC was that it was a tabula rasa that allowed it to become a solution to emerging problems. VR has that same quality.

On a side note, I don't agree with your view that movies will not look better in VR. I think presence will bring something really cool to the table for movies that are made with VR in mind.

We'll just have to agree to disagree then. Maybe once AR and VR tech converges into a single device, but I still think it'll be AR driving adoption amongst most "ordinary" people, where VR will be stuck with an image of being just for hardcore gamers.

 

[BiGBoSSMk23]

It would be a great simulation of reality but it would still be simulation. Generally people don't put WoW at the same level as playing basketball at the local community center or dancing at the club.

Yeah but neither of those activities can be classified as "gaming" or even related to gaming.

Videogames and other similar forms of entertainment are aimed at the individual, they're intrinsically anti-social.

I don't get the doom and gloom connotation of this person's email.

 

[Shinta]

This quote is from this guy at Valve in the OP, saying that he thinks that VR is cool, but if you actually try and apply gameplay, it sucks. Then he basically says the good stuff in VR is "experiences," which is basically mostly passive observation with a complete de-emphasis on gameplay.

if you've ever actually
tried to translate traditional game systems into a plausible VR setup, you know
that most of it just feels really bad. I actually think that a lot of the
really interesting things one could do with VR are not games in any traditional
sense at all ("experiences" is probably a better term), and my concerns do not
necessarily apply to those.

Next quote is from Shuhei Yoshida, saying basically exactly the same thing.

Gameplay is extremely limited and largely sucks. He's pushing "experiences."

"As soon as you experience VR, and our developers are experimenting with many applications - we find that it doesn't necessarily need a lot of gameplay for people to enjoy VR. Like the demos we've been showing at GDC and E3, the demo called 'the deep,' people call it the shark demo; there is very, very little interactivity, but still people enjoy the experience."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mbRZo6WPvgw
10:50 in the video

And of course, Miyamoto had similar criticisms about it being massively anti-social.

I definitely have serious doubts about this. Even if it takes off, it seems like it's going to be sacrificing detailed gameplay for a lot of walking and pointing at stuff. Even worse, just sitting and watching things.

That's a pretty gigantic drawback to this technology if you are interested in gameplay.

I'll add another one that no one mentioned. Safety. If you have on a damn headset over your eyes, you will of course have earphones on too. Think about that. What if a fire starts in your house? What if someone breaks in? What if literally anything happens? You can't see or hear anything if they design it that way. That does not sound very safe at all. No one can even call you on the telephone, or knock on the door unless it was somehow wired in through your headset, which would take you out of the experience.

I think this will keep running into barriers and criticism when more people get their hands on it.

And think SERIOUSLY for a second here. What are the psychological and social implications of this taking off for real? Will it actually begin to damage people socially in severe ways? Even smartphones are already leading to people barely talking to each other.

 

[Seanspeed]

I think for people talking about social interaction through VR, there is a huge misunderstanding on both proponents and opponents sides that VR actually will make traditional social interaction obsolete.

Nobody is saying that. :/

At least not seriously.

On the softer, subjective side of making the experience better, it still lacks the physicality of being able to mosh at a rock concert or high five your buddy when your team scores. Being able to look down and see a muddy, litter strewn field between your virtual shoes isn't going to replicate the sensation of the bass turned up so loud you can feel the vibrations in the pit of your stomach.

I don't think anybody is saying it'll be just as good as real life. Just that its a massive improvement over what we have now and will be as close as you can get to being there without actually being there.

 

[Seanspeed]

This quote is from this guy at Valve in the OP, saying that he thinks that VR is cool, but if you actually try and apply gameplay, it sucks. Then he basically says the good stuff in VR is "experiences," which is basically mostly passive observation with a complete de-emphasis on gameplay.


Next quote is from Shuhei Yoshida, saying basically exactly the same thing.

Gameplay is extremely limited and largely sucks. He's pushing "experiences."



And of course, Miyamoto had similar criticisms about it being massively anti-social.

I definitely have serious doubts about this. Even if it takes off, it seems like it's going to be sacrificing detailed gameplay for a lot of walking and pointing at stuff. Even worse, just sitting and watching things.

That's a pretty gigantic drawback to this technology if you are interested in gameplay.

The guy was saying if you tried to apply 'traditional' gameplay. Basically, normal 2D display gaming design cant just be converted straight to VR. It requires a rethink. But also, we've already seen a 3D platformer with fairly traditional gameplay that works in VR. The Half Life 2 conversion done by Kreijlooc here works well, and that's not even ground-up. And finally, 1st-person racing games work pretty much out-of-the-box cuz it was almost made for something like VR.

There isn't a single consumer headset on the market yet, so jumping to conclusions about the gameplay involved is insanely premature. And while developers will need to think differently about game design, it will admittedly require consumers to be a bit open minded and not just expect the same shit they've been doing their whole lives 'but in VR', too. This is actually one of the more exciting things about VR. People complain about there not being anything innovative about gameplay nowadays, especially with the new consoles, but VR offers that.

 

[bj00rn_]

This quote is from this guy at Valve in the OP, saying that he thinks that VR is cool, but if you actually try and apply gameplay, it sucks. Then he basically says the good stuff in VR is "experiences," which is basically mostly passive observation with a complete de-emphasis on gameplay.


Next quote is from Shuhei Yoshida, saying basically exactly the same thing.

Gameplay is extremely limited and largely sucks. He's pushing "experiences."



And of course, Miyamoto had similar criticisms about it being massively anti-social.

I definitely have serious doubts about this. Even if it takes off, it seems like it's going to be sacrificing detailed gameplay for a lot of walking and pointing at stuff. Even worse, just sitting and watching things.

That's a pretty gigantic drawback to this technology if you are interested in gameplay.

I'll add another one that no one mentioned. Safety. If you have on a damn headset over your eyes, you will of course have earphones on too. Think about that. What if a fire starts in your house? What if someone breaks in? What if literally anything happens? You can't see or hear anything if they design it that way. That does not sound very safe at all. No one can even call you on the telephone, or knock on the door unless it was somehow wired in through your headset, which would take you out of the experience.

I think this will keep running into barriers and criticism when more people get their hands on it.

And think SERIOUSLY for a second here. What are the psychological and social implications of this taking off for real? Will it actually begin to damage people socially in severe ways? Even smartphones are already leading to people barely talking to each other.

You're not as good at paraphrasing as you think..

Most of us VR "enthusiasts" actually share some of these concerns, but you're twisting into being something else, and that I don't agree with. Simply put though, games generally have to be built up for VR, that's all it means. With that said, we already have a whole line of "games" that we basically don't need to do anything about to fit VR perfectly to make the existing "gameplay" in orders of magnitude more immersive: Flight simulators, racing games, space simulators/games, basically all forms of "seated" games.

Until you really try a tuned VR experience, you just don't know how eye-opening it is to for the first time feel that you're actually inside a game universe. In one of my favorite applications with VR support I used to enjoy last year I put myself in a vertical mountain side in the Himalayas, and being stuck there looking around and literally feel my synapses fire at the same time somehow as if I was really there I knew that VR is going to be a huge deal already in the near future.

Anyway, VR games will feel just as or more "social" as any "social" game, (or single player games and most hobbies, like..collecting stamps..) today, so I don't see that problem either. It's all about time management.

I had a DK1 for most of last year before I sold it, and I experienced none of the exaggerations you describe. With on-ear phones I heard what I needed to hear from the outside, and because there is an opening on the underside of the Rift it doesn't take much light changes to understand what's going on around you.
..And the thing is, these devices aren't even out yet! I mean, I predict that we'll have built-in stereo-cameras and alert notifications in these things already at the first or second consumer version. ..And they'll be at the size of sunglasses in relatively few generations.

One valid concern I share with you is, what happens when VR becomes "better than reality", and feels better than reality (but we're a loooong way from there yet..). That is an issue we should all have serious discussions about along the way there.

 

[fabricated backlash]

because of doing things together instead of viewing things together?

No because your post came off as rather cynical and depressed... might be just my misunderstanding your post then.

 

[Dice]

No because your post came off as rather cynical and depressed... might be just my misunderstanding your post then.

I suppose it is cynical toward consumer media. Depressed? No. I think there are differences between biding time, wasting time, and sharing time. Consumer media can, in right circumstances, be sharing time together, but if it's a regular habit of hours on end, it seems to manifest mostly as just wasting time.

I see this trend dying out, and I'm not entirely sure if it's culture or just being in the world of adults now, but overall it seems people are less into wasting time like that, and have relegated it to simply being a short means of biding their time when they have to wait on the activities they actually want to do, where they are really sharing their moments with others in a more socially engaging way.

Anymore when I'm with friends, we always have the option of playing games or watching some show or a movie, but most often if we don't have activities planned and are going to chill, we just opt for just sitting/walking around talking about our lives and things going on in the world and philosophy and such. This is the case even with my brother, whom I would have the longest history of gaming habits with to fall back into, yet don't. I also wouldn't have it any other way.

And this treatment of games as a means of merely biding ones time (seen in game both design itself and in new popularity of mobile platforms) isn't just one I'm witnessing in others, but myself as well. While I still have a deep enough knowledge of games to find them an interesting topic, and to analyze and discuss them, I seem to only play when I really have nothing better to do at all. So if gaming is becoming little more than daydreaming, why not VR?

I understand why developers, people who have made their entire lives about gaming, would rather want to transform games to become as socially engaging as they would want their lives to be. However, I think a person with that perspective may be missing the fact that if games don't do that, then most people will simply just choose more socially engaging experiences than games rather than allow isolating games to drag them down, as with all consumer media.

 

[Frog-fu]

Eh, I don't think he's wrong. I'm personally ambivalent towards VR myself. I like couch gaming. It's simple, comfortable and easy. I'll stick to that.

 

[TheSeks]

I bet someone thought cell phones were antisocial at some point.

Well, they kinda are. Have you ever been to a dinner/place with someone that wouldn't get off their phone? I have.

I'll add another one that no one mentioned. Safety. If you have on a damn headset over your eyes, you will of course have earphones on too. Think about that. What if a fire starts in your house? What if someone breaks in? What if literally anything happens? You can't see or hear anything if they design it that way. That does not sound very safe at all. No one can even call you on the telephone, or knock on the door unless it was somehow wired in through your headset, which would take you out of the experience.

That's why this whole thing is in the research phase and not the "selling it to consumers" phase. It's why the dude should stick around with Valve instead of writing a long-winded much-ado-about-nothing resignation letter. If he's so worried about security and it being anti-social, why doesn't he help Valve push that direction elsewhere? Maybe Valve doesn't want to do that and that's why he's resigning. But his letter just comes off as "yeah, this isn't what I want so I'm leaving. Goodbye!" than anything.

 

[Mexen]

There are normal, healthy people whose gaming time is strictly about them and no one else. VR certainly amplifies that for them. So that's a good thing.

 

[Alx]

Independent of whether this person is correct or not, I'll point out that these supposedly anti-social technologies keep winning anyway. People have complained that cell phones are anti-social (they take away from real face-talk time), facebook is anti-social (nobody has real life friends anymore), that modern video games are anti-social (as in, pre-VR), and yet these technologies keep gaining steam.

I'd compare it, in a way, to privacy discussions, and how modern technologies are encroaching on that privacy. Most discussions focus on whether this is a good or bad thing, while my argument tends to be more like this: whether it happens to be a net positive or not is basically irrelevant, because these modern technologies are only becoming more ubiquitous and more privacy-encroaching. For good and for bad, it's happening either way and you clearly aren't going to stop it.

"Depressingly realistic" indeed.
I agree that we've seen that phenomenon before, and it's possible there's nothing we can do against such drawback. The only difference I can see with VR is that all other technologies/phenomenons made their way into our everyday's life, trying to merge into regular activities. Cell phones are just physically following us everywhere we go, facebook is virtually following us everywhere we browse, they're meant to be with us in our daily activity and that's why they succeed. You can even consider phenomenons in Japan like the disinterest for console games in favor of mobile games to be the same thing.
While VR has a more obvious impact on anti-social behavior, it is also more restrictive and thus less worrying (unless people really stop doing everything else to spend their time in VR). I'm actually more worried by the consequences of AR and devices like Google Glass, that will probably sooner or later be on every head in daily activities. The dystopian future of people secluded in VR is scarier, but also less likely to happen.

 

[Durante]

Firstly, because all the 3D content being made for TV would provide a large base of existing content for people to use with VR, and secondly because TV shows and live events would have all the 3D recording equipment already set up and being used as standard.

No. You don't understand that stereoscopic 3D content is not VR content.

 

[badcrumble]

I don't see what the problem is. People who aren't huge nerds with no lives will keep on having their real life - virtual reality isn't going to *prevent* that from happening.

 

[Enlil]

The distance between real life social gaming and internet-gaming (i.e 1-player only online modes) with friends has already done this (refering to his concern). VR wont last long imo. will be another gimmick. eyes falling apart and being bad for the brain. etc etc.

 

[Extollere]

There are normal, healthy people whose gaming time is strictly about them and no one else.

Just like Frank Underwood.

 

[Krejlooc]

firstly, because all the 3D content being made for TV would provide a large base of existing content for people to use with VR.

This makes no sense. 3d content isnt vr content. I dont think you have a good conceptual understanding of how vr works.

 

[bj00rn_]

I'd be a little more optimistic about that had 3D TV taken off. Firstly, because all the 3D content being made for TV would provide a large base of existing content for people to use with VR, and secondly because TV shows and live events would have all the 3D recording equipment already set up and being used as standard..

Close one of your eyes. Are you still a part of reality?

 

[cm osi]

i don't play multiplayer games so it's not a problem for me, the problem is how vr is gonna deal with anything that isn't first person view.

 

[Shinta]

I'm actually more worried by the consequences of AR and devices like Google Glass, that will probably sooner or later be on every head in daily activities. The dystopian future of people secluded in VR is scarier, but also less likely to happen.

Widespread use of AR in daily life does sound pretty terrifying. It's people purposely making themselves, essentially, schizophrenic - seeing and hearing things that are not there.

 

[Chairmanchuck]

i don't play multiplayer games so it's not a problem for me, the problem is how vr is gonna deal with anything that isn't first person view.

Seems quite good actually.

Valve showed off DOTA 2 in VR. During E3 they showed a plattformer where you have some sort of "fixed" camera, so you are like a spectator moving your little puppet and there also seems to be a 3rd Person game where it feels like you are Lakitu following the guy similar to Mario64.

 

[Alx]

Widespread use of AR in daily life does sound pretty terrifying. It's people purposely making themselves, essentially, schizophrenic - seeing and hearing things that are not there.

I don't think AR apps will try to mess with the user perception of reality (unless it's an explicit feature... I'm sure it won't take long until anapp overlays Mickey Mouse heads on people real body, or worse).
It's more about the complete lack of privacy and focus on direct environment. Like we already have with people staring at their phone most of the time, except that this time it will be all the time.
Walking in the street would be something like Watch Dogs, where you could easily "see" the equivalent of people's Facebook account (provided they make it public, and they will). And it shouldn't take long before we get a real life "Xbox Ok Glass, Record that", which means that everything in our life will be recordable.

 

[Durante]

And it shouldn't take long before we get a real life "Xbox Ok Glass, Record that", which means that everything in our life will be recordable.

Better, you'll get background recording - so you don't need to know before if something worth recording will happen.

 

[Alx]

Better, you'll get background recording - so you don't need to know before if something worth recording will happen.

That's what I meant with the "record that" command, you can save a video of an event after it happens (like on new gen consoles), so you can never miss anything in your field of view.

 

[Shinta]

I don't think AR apps will try to mess with the user perception of reality (unless it's an explicit feature... I'm sure it won't take long until anapp overlays Mickey Mouse heads on people real body, or worse).
It's more about the complete lack of privacy and focus on direct environment. Like we already have with people staring at their phone most of the time, except that this time it will be all the time.
Walking in the street would be something like Watch Dogs, where you could easily "see" the equivalent of people's Facebook account (provided they make it public, and they will). And it shouldn't take long before we get a real life "Xbox Ok Glass, Record that", which means that everything in our life will be recordable.

Spooky science fiction rant time.

I just think AR has potential to seriously alter mental health. What if someone is "playing a VR game" in public, where they are interacting with things they see and hear that no one else can? They are at that point, virtually schizophrenic. What happens if you wear those glasses all the time, and then take them off? Would you ever be confused about what is real and what isn't? What happens to "memories" when you can record everything? Do they completely atrophy and die? Would anyone even be able to give an eyewitness testimony in court, or would it just be considered a joke? What happens to emotions like love if it's based on recordings and not memory?

What if people are able to hack your AR glasses and make you see things that aren't there, or block out things that are? In Ghost in the Shell, a large portion of the population have robotic eye implants so it's one step up from AR, but the main criminal can hack everyone's eyes and no one can see him. What if someone makes an app to remove homeless people from your view to brighten up the city? What if soldiers have the horrors of war and death removed from view to improve battle efficiency and dull compassion? What if the police can hack your AR glasses to distract you during a raid?

We don't even yet know exactly how schizophrenia works. It's a mixture of genetics, and inheritance, but are people who are "prone" to develop it able to have that accelerated with something like AR so it has a more rapid onset?

And in the OP's post, the Valve guy continually talks about "presence" in VR, what is the moral implication of "presence" if we make highly realistic murder simulations? At what point does that actually get creepy? Everyone definitely says "it's different" and you really, really feel like you're there. Is that starting to cross into actual, legitimately dangerous promotion of violence? Probably not, given how little correlation gaming has had with violence so far, but I have to admit, I'm not 100% sure.

 

[Zaptruder]

Spooky science fiction rant time.

I just think AR has potential to seriously alter mental health. What if someone is "playing a VR game" in public, where they are interacting with things they see and hear that no one else can? They are at that point, virtually schizophrenic. What happens if you wear those glasses all the time, and then take them off? Would you ever be confused about what is real and what isn't? What happens to "memories" when you can record everything? Do they completely atrophy and die? Would anyone even be able to give an eyewitness testimony in court, or would it just be considered a joke? What happens to emotions like love if it's based on recordings and not memory?

What if people are able to hack your AR glasses and make you see things that aren't there, or block out things that are? In Ghost in the Shell, a large portion of the population have robotic eye implants so it's one step up from AR, but the main criminal can hack everyone's eyes and no one can see him. What if someone makes an app to remove homeless people from your view to brighten up the city? What if soldiers have the horrors of war and death removed from view to improve battle efficiency and dull compassion? What if the police can hack your AR glasses to distract you during a raid?

We don't even yet know exactly how schizophrenia works. It's a mixture of genetics, and inheritance, but are people who are "prone" to develop it able to have that accelerated with something like AR so it has a more rapid onset?

And in the OP's post, the Valve guy continually talks about "presence" in VR, what is the moral implication of "presence" if we make highly realistic murder simulations? At what point does that actually get creepy? Everyone definitely says "it's different" and you really, really feel like you're there. Is that starting to cross into actual, legitimately dangerous promotion of violence? Probably not, given how little correlation gaming has had with violence so far, but I have to admit, I'm not 100% sure.

You ask a lot of questions. That's great. Now come at it from the other direction and try to answer some of them yourself.

 

[Shinta]

You ask a lot of questions. That's great. Now come at it from the other direction and try to answer some of them yourself.

Well, there is no answer. It's just pondering about what's coming. The advancement of time will answer them. Some in 10 years, some in 100 years, if we're still around.

 

[wmlk]

All the predisposition and doubt that we have of VR that we have right now is gonna be gone as soon as the thing starts picking up. Right now a lot of people are considering the cons instead of the pros VR actually has.

After trying VR (not the greatest term - VR would be like SAO in my book), I see the ground breaking possibilities. It's not going to create any problem in my life. If I think it's a detriment, then I won't use it, but I'm not going to deny it knowing that it can do some incredible things after trying it and owning it.

Who's to say we won't be praising a pipedream SAO-like world in the future? It doesn't have to be a bad thing; values and perception in society change very rapidly, especially when it comes to technology. I think that's obvious judging from the past decade. Look at how many people are ingrained with their smartphones now, and how people were afraid of it in the past.

 

[Zaptruder]

Well, there is no answer. It's just pondering about what's coming. The advancement of time will answer them. Some in 10 years, some in 100 years, if we're still around.

You're jut going to have to think a little harder.

 

[RVinP]

VR would be good news, if(edit) its more akin to very light head mounted display where the display component is a transparent piece which could turn transparency ON/OFF when required (so as to either augment the display or just display the screen with a dark/black background).

 

[Cizeta-Moroder]

That's the most hyperbolic statement I've heard in, like, five weeks. Please explain further, though.

The end point being "true happiness for all" though injected arbitrary emotions. This kind of defined happiness doesn't work when you consider that emotions are just a mechanism to give basic direction to our thinking according to conditions, an interface. When you disconnect emotions from reality, you strip them from their function and meaning, devaluing them completely. Consciousness, if such thing exists, gets lost in some sort of limbo.

 

[Alx]

Look at how many people are ingrained with their smartphones now, and how people were afraid of it in the past.

It's not like those fears were unfounded.

 

[MoGamesXNA]

.

 

[E-Cat]

If what's going on in my day-to-day is somebody else's idea of fun within a virtual world, real life must be REALLY boring.

Who's to say our world is someone's idea of fun? It could be a boredom simulation (certainly appears that way).

Is there any reason that VR can't be a social experience?

To the extent that the lack of requisite sensory modalities lessens the richness of social VR interaction, which is to say, it won't match or exceed real life for quite a while.