Virtual Reality

If you have watched Sword Art Online (SAO) you should be familiar with virtual reality, because the characters in SAO use a device to connect their brains to the virtual world. However, isthis really possible? The 5 senses being animated inside a virtual world sounds substantial.

After watching SAO, I was desperate to play a virtual reality MMORPG, and I researched about topics relating to virtual reality and full immersion gaming technology. In my research, I found out about a company named Oculus. Oculus is currently making a 3D virtual reality full immersion headset called Rift. It allows the user to be inside the game, maximizing the view, instead of a limited computer screen. This is being developed currently, and it will be released at an affordable price, which I estimate approximately $300. (I’m not sure when the final product will be released.) The Rift supports games such as DOOM3, Hawken, Minecraft, and a VRMMORPG is being created by Xiphos studios. I’m looking forward to that.

However, after researching in more depth, I found a video of a company-related person testing out the Oculus Rift. However, I was very disappointed to see the person use a console to control the movements. The Oculus Rift only satisfied one of the five senses, which was sight. Hearing, tasting, touching, and smelling was beyond their technology. It could not be animated currently.

However, I came across another video, of a futurist called Ray Kurzweil. He is a futurist, who predicts futures. He wrote a book called “The Age of Spiritual Machines”. He predicted many futures and as far as I know, every prediction was nearly/fully correct. This surprised me. However, what stopped my heartbeat for 5 seconds, was looking at his book on wikipedia, and finding out some of the predictions he had made about virtual reality.

2019

• People experience 3-D virtual reality through glasses and contact lenses that beam images directly to their retinas (retinal display). Coupled with an auditory source (headphones), users can remotely communicate with other people and access the Internet.
• These special glasses and contact lenses can deliver “augmented reality” and “virtual reality” in three different ways. First, they can project “heads-up-displays” (HUDs) across the user’s field of vision, superimposing images that stay in place in the environment regardless of the user’s perspective or orientation. Second, virtual objects or people could be rendered in fixed locations by the glasses, so when the user’s eyes look elsewhere, the objects appear to stay in their places. Third, the devices could block out the “real” world entirely and fully immerse the user in a virtual reality environment.
• Devices that deliver sensations to the skin surface of their users (i.e.–tight body suits and gloves) are also sometimes used in virtual reality to complete the experience. “Virtual sex”–in which two people are able to have sex with each other through virtual reality, or in which a human can have sex with a “simulated” partner that only exists on a computer—becomes a reality.
• Just as visual- and auditory virtual reality have come of age, haptic technology has fully matured and is completely convincing, yet requires the user to enter a V.R. booth. It is commonly used for computer sex and remote medical examinations. It is the preferred sexual medium since it is safe and enhances the experience.

The predictions above by Ray Kurzweil highlights the predictions about the upcoming virtual reality technology. The predictions are thought to happen around 2019, and that is when we can copy SAO. In SAO, the virtual reality system comes out in 2022, and Ray Kurzweil predicted that the virtual reality system will come out in 2019. There is only 3 years difference between the anime and the prediction. This makes it highly likely for the prediction to be true, and when the time is 2019, i’ll be inside the virtual world playing around.

Yay says Ji Hwan