Whatever happened to virtual reality?

are are lapping up against the shore. Very tranquil environment, you know, lots of nice cold tropical drinks. Nice Peto by the way. Thanks. You know I'm I'm I'm far more buff than uh than I may appear in real life. Yeah, that's the beauty of virtual reality. Yeah, yeah, I'm virtually happy. Nice. Okay, So we are obviously going to be talking about virtual reality today, yes, um, and you might wonder what the

heck happened to virtual reality? You know, it's funny when you brought this up and Jonathan said he wanted to talk about virtual reality, and I started thinking, uh, you know what happened to that? Because you know, it was all the rage people used to talk about it. All the time, and now we weren't. I said, Jonathan, what do you want to talk about about virtual reality? He said, what happened to it? Oh? Well, there you go, exactly what I was wanting. So so let's give you some

background virtual reality. The concept um, though not the term the concept, has been around for many decades. Back in nineteen a man by the name of Ivan Sutherland wrote a proposal called the Ultimate Display, and he was kind of making a theoretical display that would be you know what he considered to be the the ultimate in computer displays and um, obviously by the title, that's just a little repetitive redundancy for you. Let me reiterate. Okay, So anyway,

the Ultimate display. Now, his his concept was that the display would show a virtual world that would be um as real to the user as the physical world the user was actually in. So there'd be no way to tell the difference between the virtual world and the physical

world from from just from your experience in it. Um, although the two could the two could differ physically, like you could make a virtual world on the moon, for example, But to the important thing is is that to the user it would seem absolutely real, and uh, he kind of envisioned this sort of display, having a head mounted display or h m D, which one of those big clunky helmet things that fits over your head, and then that provides you all the visual and audio that you

need UM and that it would also incorporate sound and touch uh to make this big picture. So that was kind of his idea in a way. He's sort of like the grandfather of virtual reality. Or we'll skip ahead.

So this idea never fades away. People always keep it in mind and and in certain uses it comes to play, like in in military uses in particular, things like creating putting a camera on the outside of a plane and UH and hooking it up to a head mounted display within the plane so that h person in the plane can look around and see and help someone like the pilot land the plane because they can they have a

view directly beneath it, for example, that kind of thing. Sure, and they even have weapons systems that use that kind of technology where your the camera controls the weapons so that when the pilot turns his or her head, they can look at a target and the gun has already pointed whatever it is that they're looking at right right,

So so the military drove a lot of this early innovation. Eventually, other scientists were saying, hey, there's some really cool things we could use this to do, but it's hard to get funding because you have to convince people that it's it's a worthwhile endeavor. Uh. To that end one In the late eighties, that's when the term virtual reality started to come into play and the media picked up on it.

And that's when you had an explusion, particularly in the early nineties, that's when the media really went nuts with this term virtual reality. And part of the problem was that they built up that they being the media, built up this this vision of this amazing virtual world that we would all get to go and play in, and

we you know, the there were no limitations. You could have all the information at your fingertips, you could have you could live out your wildest fantasies in this virtual environment. Holidack essentially, yes, good good star Trek the next generation reference although as we all know, if you go into the holiday, something will go wrong in moriarity will try to kill you. But anyway, yeah, exactly, though, the next generation kind of take on virtual reality was sort of

what the media was playing this up to. Be to the point where people were really excited, and it sounded like it was just right around the corner, and that any minute now we'd be able to put on some sort of suit and be able to experience things like I've always wondered what would be like to I don't know, uh, sled down a huge icy mountain and I could do this safely in my own home, and I would have all the feeling and the experience of doing that. But in reality, I just take the suit off, I'd be

in my living room, I'd be perfectly safe. Or I've always wanted to pretend like I'm some sort of a super soldier, even though I'm a pudgy computer guy. I want to put on the suit and go out there and do a high risk mission and see what that's really like. But the reality was sadly lagging quite a bit behind this media perception. In fact, the chasm was enormous between what the media was saying or what they

were kind of promising, and what the reality could actually produce. Um, I don't know if did you ever get to do a virtual reality game at all? Now? I've never played a virtual reality Okay, well, children, sit back, Jonathan's gonna tell you a little story. The year was nine. Yeah, I was. I was in high school. Uh, and um, there was a mall that was not too far from my house. Uh, the Gwinnette Play Small. Yeah it's been there. Yeah, it's different now, but back then they had a small business.

And the only thing the small business did was it essentially rented out time on virtual reality games. You would go and you pay a certain amount to get five minutes of playtime in this virtual reality game. And the game, by the way, the main game they had was Dactyl Nightmare and um, it's odd, so it was like a thumb. No, it was supposed to be a ptero dactyl. They called

it Dactyl Dactyl Nightmare. So you would with other people, I think up to three other people, so four player game, and you had a little control that you would hold in your hands that would represent a gun in the game, and you had a head molond display you'd wear and you would be Um, you'd be inside the stand on a little pedestal that had a little guard around it so you wouldn't you know, fall off, and you had a control on the handle of the the little controller

you had you had a button control movement. You could just move forward, so whichever way you faced you push the button, that's the way you would go. And then you had a trigger where you could fire the slowest moving bullet you've ever seen at your opponents, lower than in the matrix. Okay, the second slowest bullet you've ever seen, and uh and so, and occasionally a terrodactor would come down and pick you up and drop you, which was a good way to for you to lose a life.

Not that impressive, I gotta tell you not um not impressive really at all. It was actually a big letdown compared to what you're thinking all virtual reality is really gonna you like. And that was kind of the case across the board. You had all these people try these games out and other applications, and they were so primitive in comparison to what everyone thought of thought virtual reality

was really gonna be. Like the bottom fell out. Funding for virtual reality projects kind of dropped out because people just lost interest. It's just like the sort of the same problem NASA has with the Space program. If there's not a lot of interest in it, they have trouble funding the program. Same thing for virtual reality. So it actually got to the point where people began to hate the term virtual reality because it had the stigma attached to it, which is why you don't really hear the

term now. Now you hear virtual environments. Right, it's the same sort of thing. It's a little bit more of a broad definition than virtual reality was. But in general you're talking about the same stuff. It's just a different name. And the reason behind it is because virtual reality just became such a loaded term, right, So there you go, that's what happened to virtual reality. Well then, but I've heard the term virtual environment applied to things like Second

Life or Google Lively or Sony Home. Right. Yeah, that's that's where the broad definition comes in, so, you know, because you don't have to wear special equipment to do that, although you can, Yeah, there are people who do, I'm sure. Now. That's the thing is that virtual environment is a more broad definition in right, So essentially, any any computer environment

you create in a way is a virtual environment, right. Um. But the way that the term is being used within the industry, the old VR industry, you need a little bit more than that. Um. The main concept for virtual environments in this industry is called immersion right now, Immersion.

Immersion is that feeling you get where the environment you're in seems real to you, right, Okay, So uh Now, ideally you get to the point where you feel that environment you're in is as real as the physical environment your body is in, and in the perfect example, you would even forget about your physical body entirely. You would just concentrate on the virtual one and that would be real to you. Um. Now, The interesting thing here is that immersion does not depend solely upon the graphics quality

of the program or um or even the sound quality. Uh. It really depends on how interactive is this environment, how when you turn your head, is there any latency? Latency is is the delay between an action and the way the computer shows it to you. So like if you turn your head and there's a slight delay, it's very disconcerting and it ruins the immersion experience. Yeah, because you're no longer being fooled into the idea that you are

somewhere else exactly. That's an artifact of real life. It kind of makes you feel like you're maybe slightly drunk or drugged or something, and in fact can lead you to motion sickness. It's called cybersickness UM in virtual reality terms. But yeah, it can really it can disorient you because you know your your brain is telling you, hey, I'm looking to the right, but my view is lagging behind

my actual actions. It's interesting because in virtual reality studies they found out that the human I and mine can perceive a delay of as short as fifty milliseconds, which is that's an incredible fraction of the second, and you can detect it. So that's a big challenges is decreasing that delay so that it becomes imperceptible. UM. But that that can lead to immersion. Also, things like haptic feedback, which you know all about because you you edited the

how haptics work, right, that's true. UM. Haptic feedback is essentially anything that makes you feel like you're actually touching something, So UM, that can be anything like um they're they're medical devices that are used to actually do surgery UM or to train people who are doctors, and that gives

some haptic feedback. So I mean, really, if you're controlling a robotic arm with the use of this this mechanical equipment, electronic mechanical equipment, UM, you know a robot is going to be you know, it's not gonna have any feeling to it. It's gonna just you know, slice into whatever is around, you know, without being discriminatory other than what happens to be on the camera that the that the

doctor is looking at. And there are some pretty subtle nuances, you know, depending on whether you're cutting muscle or whatever. So the doctor needs to be able to feel that to know exactly what's going on as he or she is working. So these haptic devices, you know, provide some sensory feedback to them, some tactle feedback so that they go, okay, you know, I need to go just this far and

no farther to to you know, complete this surgery. Amounts of resistance that kind of thing, right, and there are there are still different kinds of devices that that you

can use. You can put on gloves that have uh different little motors and vibrating modules in there to give you the sense that you are touching things that they resist your fingers so that you make it makes your hand feel as you close it that you are holding, for example, a ball, because it is holding back your hand to to you know, give it that feeling that oh there's something there, you know, because you actually can feel it. And these things are you know, some of

them are quite large. UM. So you know, you may be putting on some some pretty large gloves. But it's got a sensation, gives you the sensation that you are actually touching something, and it adds to that perception that you are in another world. Yeah, and I at c Yes somewhere electronic showcase, I actually tried on some stuff that that had haptic feedback UM devices built into them.

There was there was a vest that you could wear the Yes, it was designed for first person shooters, so when you got shot, it would They had little air bladders in them and the air bladder would inflate suddenly and thus you would feel an impact against your skin. UM. And because the vest was so tight, it was you know, it had to be because otherwise you wouldn't really sense this UM. But it meant that you felt it. It

was it was not something you could ignore. But they also had a helmet that did the same sort of thing. And and that's the Here comes another interesting part about virtual environments and the research that goes into them. Because it's still hard to get funding for these things, they often appropriate devices that were designed for other industries and and apply them to virtual environments. So the video game industry in particular is huge when it comes to this

sort of stuff. Uh, they'll you know, people who design virtual environments will actively seek out devices in the in the video game industry that they can then repurpose for virtual environments. So things like this kind of vest which would let you feel impact that could become in handy in a virtual environment really helps with the immersion. So when you see something happen to your virtual self within a world, and usually this is in a first person view,

because that helps with immersion. It's it's when you do third person that you don't really you still have a sense of detachment, sure, but when you see something coming at you and then you feel the impact through something like this, it definitely reinforces that sense of immersion. Well, the video game industry is all about immersion and virtual environment exactly. And uh, you know, as we were, as you were talking, I was just thinking of an obvious analogy.

Would the flight simulator, uh, you know, the flight simulator, I can't even say simulator. That's lovely, the flight simulator that that you that you play on your desktop is very uh similar to the kind of machine that they used to to train pilots in, right, and that was atually very early application of virtual environments. Again we're going

back in military. Yeah, but well, the airlines use them, and of course the there's a simulator for the Space Shuttle, I believe, UM, and there were for the Mercury capsules even in the Geminy gem and I. I don't care what the astronauts say, but they said it. I know they said it. I'm still saying gem and I, Okay, But they were using virtual environments to to do some training too. So those are those are things that that the public might have actually seen, that they might be

aware of. And there's some there's some uses that are going on right now that the public might be aware of, UM, depending on Sadly a lot of it's uh sadly in the sense that it's not a fun application. It's it's a good application of virtual environments. But medical applications besides the telepresence and surgery that you're talking about, UM, one of the useful uh ways you can incorporate virtual environments

and treatment UM involves psychological treatment. UM. There are experiments being run at Duke University and Emory University, where doctors are using virtual environments to simulate situations where patients with phobias can can kind of confront their fear um in

a way that ultimately they know they're perfectly safe. Ultimately they know they're inside a doctor's office and they don't have they're not actually confronting what it is they're afraid of, but because the sense of immersion is a powerful one, their bodies react the same way they would if they

were actually encountering their real fear. For example, fear of heights. UM. If you are a psychologist and you're a psychiatrist and you're treating someone for a fear of heights, and you happen to have an office in a one story building, your options for treating this patient are become pretty rough when it comes to actually, you know, confronting the fear head on. It means you have to go to a

different building. You have to you know, you may have to secure permission to go to a certain floor or anything like that. UM virtual environments, you could create an environment where you appear to be at the top of a tall building and you can walk right up to the edge virtually and look down. And the interesting thing is after a couple of minutes where you kind of get oriented, patients have shown the same physical reaction to the virtual environment as they would if they were in

a real one. And that using this as sort of uh a kind of therapy where they get used to it over a period of time, they can uh, they

can really make a lot of progress. In fact, some psychio psychiatrists and psychologists have reported that their patients come back and say, hey, you know, after we went through these sessions, I took it upon myself to go to this hotel downtown that's got It's a fifteen story hotel and I went all the way to the top and I walked all the way to the window, and you know, I was really scared. It was really nervous, but I did it. And it's amazing because without this treatment, they

would never have taken that kind of initiative. So that's kind of an interesting approach. There are other ones as well. UM fear flying is a common one. It's also being used for people who have u UH veterans who are coming back who have have problems afterwards. You know, that's that's a big use for them. Sure, it's that's that's kind of where a lot of the funding is going into now because it is a an application that you can see direct results from. So what if you fear

fear itself? Nice? Um? Yeah, that one, that one that was tricky. Yeah, I would imagine so at least two to replicate in in a virtual environment. Yeah, Well, I want to talk about one other things. We did talk about haptics earlier. Sure, I want to talk about passive haptics, which is kind of virtual environments. Passive haptics are when you incorporate real objects and you connect them to the

virtual world. So usually in this case, you're your virtual environment actually requires that you have a room where the a lot of the the images you'll see are projected on on maybe the floor and the walls and the ceiling, and you're wearing special glasses to complete the illusion. But you put in real physical objects that are mapped to this virtual environment, and if you, as a person in the physical environment, interact with these, you see that reflected

in the virtual environment. Again reinforces that sense of immersion. It's pretty cool, you know. So, like you see a ball and you push it, Uh, you would actually feel the ball, because there really is a ball there, and you'd see it move. The other neat thing about this is that you can trick the mind and create an environment that's much larger than the physical virtual environment that's that's many times larger than the physical one. UM. You can trick the mind into thinking you're walking in a

straight line. And really, if you were to be an independent observer, you would see that the person inside the room is walking in a circle, but in the virtual environment, it would look like you're walking in a straight line. Right, So in a way, you've just created a room that's larger on the inside that it is on the outside. To tell what, I'm kind of fascinated by virtual environments

and reality and technology behind it, you know. I was thinking though that there are some some holdovers from it, UM. You know, talking about CS. I remember the my View personal video player that they have, UM. It kind of looks like a very small version of the head gear that you used to see in the virtual reality UM stuff.

But basically what it is is, UM, it's a When I say personal video player, it's literally a pair of glasses that you put on your you know, put on your face and it plays you know, hooks up to your personal video player and plays the movie or the video podcast or whatever on the lenses of your glasses, so you're actually watching you know, you're it's sort of a mini immersion type of thing because you're showing yourself that um. And remember the old virtual game boys still

still feel those headaches. Yeah yeah, yeah, but they had a problem with latency. Yeah, imax. They're all kinds of things in reality. I mean, you've got there's a new camera that actually will tag things that you see in real life. It'll tag it and remember it and and uploaded and share it. Um. Where you can point a camera at a building and push this little button and it'll pop up and tell you what that building is.

I mean, that's the same sort of thing. These are all these applications that came out of the research from virtual reality. Yea, so there it still exists. There's just bits and pieces of it then incorporated into different materials, right. So it's it's pretty interesting stuff. No, it's not not gone. It's just maybe gone underground and sort of assimilated into a way where you wouldn't necessarily recognize it immediately. It's it's cool stuff. And uh, well, I guess that's a good,

nice long conversation about virtual reality. But if you want to learn more, we have a whole suite on virtual reality at how stuff Works. A good place to start is how virtual Reality Works. There. That's live right now at how stuff works dot com, and we'll pop to you against soon. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit how stuff works dot com. Let us know what you think. Send an email to podcast at how stuff works dot com. Brought to you by the

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