If I were just starting my adult life I believe I'd consider something like this due to how viable VR is becoming...
VR is viable for something I think could be potentially beneficial to all of humanity. I have not traveled as much as probably a lot of people. I have gone a few places that had a unique look and feel to them
A career move I would consider at this time would be visiting historical sites, natural parks, museums, and other wonders and doing the following.
I would capture photos of the approaches, the maps, signs, etc. I would get close ups of textures of stone, ground, walls, the sky, etc.
I then would turn that into a VR experience. It would NOT rival actually going there, but in the age of high speed internet, and VR we could easily be exploring the world from our own home. If you watch the history channel, travel channel, etc. It would be the same as something like that, but with VR you could actually get there and wander around a recreation. How close that recreation could get would depend upon the quality of textures, accuracy of photos, height maps for terrain, and how much time the person/team put into the recreation.
This could also preserve wonders. It could be done at sites before construction of new locations if you want a historical preservation of what a place looked like before our civilization built something on top of it.
I believe this would be useful not only for virtual tourism, but also for things like anthropology, biology, geology, and of course archaeology.
If I were young and starting a new adventure, I believe that might be exactly the type of thing I might try to turn into a career. Preserving locations, and making them digitally visit-able by anyone in the world.
I expect to see more and more of this. Some of it I expect to be a bad experience, and likely behind some bad business models, but eventually in the future (provided we don't nuke each other) I fully expect this to be a reality.
Here are a couple of places I have been that are amazing to me, that I'd love to be able to do this with. I'd also like to be able to revisit them in VR for the nostalgia purposes. Being able to go to places instantly could open many avenues of research too as tying disparate information together becomes even more viable without the time delay required by travel.
Mesa Verde
Source: MesaVerde.Com
Source: Wikimedia Commons
Source: Mesa Verde Foundation
Carlsbad Caverns
Source: nps.gov
Source: Tripadvisor.com
Source: DesertUSA
Places near Lake City, Colorado
Source: lakecityswitchbacks.com
Source: lakecity.com
Source: lakecity.com
Places near Marble Colorado
Source: marbletourismassociation.org
Source: onu.edu
Source: coloradopast.com
Dinosaur footprints in Texas
Source: Talk Origins Archive
Source: Texas Parks and Wildlife
Source: Life traces of the Georgia Coast
Black Canyon of the Gunnison
Source: Wikipedia
Source: Tripadvisor.com
Source: RV123.com
What do you think?
As a side project. Augmented Reality could be used if you physically visit these places to provide pop up information and additional detail based upon your location and what you are looking at. That could enhance the experience for people actually visiting the location, though that could also be included in a VR experience.
Traveling still gives you the temperatures, the winds, the dynamic sounds (rather than an attempt to mimic), the fragrances, and REAL interaction with the locals. It will not replace that feeling and experience. It will however, make it so traveling all over the world and seeing wonders no longer has to remain exclusive to the television and the wealthy.
Steem On!
Love the idea, especially after seeing those pictures of the incredible sights you have seen!
This would be great for me I'm disabled and housebound so this would give me a chance to see more of the world. I love the pictures :)
Sounds like a great opportunity for anyone who's well motivated and organized. There were quite a few omnidirectional camera options at CES this year. The VR headsets that I was able to try, however, were generally disappointing. 😄😇😄
ooooooooooh I want a badge from the galactic vader :D , yeah I've had a few times I wanted to capture my experiences , walks and such , but to be frank it takes too much time as I do 3D , it's impossible , takes months to make a good scene , if you are recreating and so much matterial and manpower and computer power, maybe even steem Power :D , if the workflow for 3D stays the same , i suppose you can drone scan , but that is not yet developed(quote me I'm a genius) :D , it will be at least 5-10-20-++ years untill there is True VR and that I'm not sure will be a god thing , check Dreamfall :( Chapters , or Sound of Silence :D
Although keep me posted and in mind , I would like to be a part of any ventures :) I'm still lacking in the pro fields, but I've had some experiences finally at least , not just watching tuts , so far I've built a few outdoor scenes and lots of shitty houses and interiors , cars and boats , some items , for games , nothing extraordinary , didn't put in the astronomical effort needed to break the wall and have it easy afterwards .
What you have in mind already exists and is called photogrammetry:
The only VR game it's used in to my knowledge is the Vanishing of Ethan Carter but a lot of "experiences" use it to pretty good effect.
I wrote an article here about doing the same thing but with voxels/point clouds instead of polygons.
Yes, I am familiar with the Vanishing of Ethan Carter. The tech exists, which was my point.
The tech is there, now let's see some young people start maybe making a career out of making the sights of the world digitally accessible. My scope was not about inventing the tech, it was more how I'd like to see it used. :)