Anyone remember Lawnmower Man? The 1990′s flick revolving around the wonders of virtual reality? Not in your movie era, eh? Well if you haven’t seen it, it showcased what everyone thought virtual reality could have been. Basically you put on a V.R. headpeice and some kind of suit to totally immerse yourself in a virtual world, complete with 360 degree views, sounds and even textile feedback to feel virtual effects.
That reality never came to be, I can remember the closest I ever came to experiencing that sensation when they had a V.R. simulation in our local shopping mall one weekend. I took several turns in the rig along with a friend of mine and we proceeded to play some low resolution first person shooter kind of game that by today’s standards wouldn’t be all that impressive – but at the time it blew my mind. Wearing that headpeice and holding that controller I could look and move all around the game world. If I was getting shot at, I could duck or dodge just by moving and the game mimicked my movements in real-time. Talk about cool.
So what happened? Why didn’t this ever take hold? Obviously it’s possible to do this sort of thing but the technology as a whole just never progressed…or did it? We actually see virtual reality inspired devices in just about every type of computer or console gaming system made today. Hell, just look at the Nintendo Wii, it’s about as close to V.R. as you can get in a game console – for now. But still not where we wanted it to be. But you still see V.R.’s footprints in other devices.
Force feedback for example is inspired from V.R.’s idea of textile sensation in game. Directional stereo sound can even be attributed to V.R.’s ideals of making you feel more like you are in the game world – not just steering some computer character around. In most FPS style games out there directional sound is essential to being a good gamer. Hearing the footsteps of an opponent nearby and being able to quickly identify where they are just from the direction of the sound is everything.
But when is it going to go to the lengths of what we expected it to become after seeing it on the big screen? Full textile responsive suits, power gloves, V.R. headsets and high definition worlds? It may not be that long off afterall. Many companies are still experimenting heavily with virtual reality and increased proccessor power, communication bandwidth and image resolution – virtual reality is moving closer to being a gaming reality. Of the five senses, virtual reality is already able to immerse you with three of them. Touch, Sight and Sound. I just read there is a company researching V.R. that is breaking the barriers to unlocking a fourth V.R. sense, smell! They have already achieved the ability to reproduce stronger smells on the fly, like burning rubber, cordite or gasoline fumes. So even if V.R. doesn’t ever get fully realised, expect to see smell coming to your online PC and console gaming experiences soon.
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1 comment so far
You might want to check the current state of VR :
http://cb.nowan.net/blog/state-of-vr/
September 29th, 2008 at 3:26 am
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