Virtual Reality: the future is closer than you think

Yesterday evening, whilst most people were celebrating Halloween in the traditional ways; dressed up in spooky or ghastly outfits, carving pumpkins, trick-or-treating or going to house parties, a couple of friends and I spent the evening playing Virtual Reality (VR) games instead.

My friend, and ex-colleague, works as the CTO of a technology startup and in their fancy new office they have the Steam VR kit, including the HTC Vive. He invited us over to the office yesterday evening to check it out.

We passed many groups of people, old and young, dressed up as Zombies (and other assorted trauma victims), Witches, Vampires, a Lion and groups of people dressed as the villain from the Scream movie as we made our way from bus to train on the way over to my friend's office. I felt strangely out of phase from the rest of humanity that night, but my excitement was not diminished.

This was my first experience with a serious bit of VR kit - I have tried out Google Cardboard in the past, and whilst this is a bit of fun for 5 minutes it didn't prepare me for just how much the VR scene has progressed in a few short years.

Most reviews of the early VR hardware such as the Oculus Rift had described the experience as nauseatingly disorientating and tolerable for such a short period of time that they painted a bleak picture for the future of VR. More companies entering into the VR-space is one sign of progress, yet the technology still hasn't broken through into the mainstream entertainment industry and I have not read any articles or been aware of hype around VR that would lead me to believe that the technology had been able to overcome the shortcomings reported by the early adopters and reviewers. I still had some trepidation about whether VR was going to be a wholly pleasant experience - and whether having a couple of beers beforehand was at all an advisable thing to do.

the Vive VR is an incredibly immersive, awe-inspiring and enjoyable experience

I needn't have worried, the HTC Vive VR is an incredibly immersive, awe-inspiring and enjoyable experience - and we were able to play it for hours without any adverse side effects (except excessive sweating and an unpleasantly damp headset). The games which we played (Audioshield, Space Pirate Trainer and Rec Room) at face value are very limited titles / demos when compared with the games produced by AAA game development studios, but in both small and dramatic ways these VR titles eclipse the AAA game titles.

There are some small aspects of the Vive VR experience which really show the maturity of the software and enhance the overall experience of playing with it: an example is that when you put the headset on you can see the two cameras and the two controllers overlayed on your virtual world which allows you to orientate yourself and the controllers. It's quite an experience to confidently walk across a room and pick up the controllers sitting on a chair, whilst seeing through the eyes of a computer. What makes this even more rewarding is when you are playing a game like Space Pirate Trainer and as soon as you pick up the two controllers, they magically transform into glowing, futuristic weapons which move in the virtual game in perfect synchronicity with the movements of your hands and arms.

The larger and more publicised aspects of the virtual reality experience are even more wonderful than I had imagined they would be; being completely immersed in a novel and bright world, being able to walk, turn around and look around this world and it be completely seamless and the for it to respond so quickly that it doesn't feel unnatural and blurs the lines of reality.

One of my favourite modern novels is Ernest Cline's Ready Player One and in terms of science fiction exploring the role of VR in society it seems to be ahead of its time, insightful and laser-sight accurate.

I can't wait for VR to become ubiquitous and I think that it will play a larger and larger part of our future in the not too distant future.

If you haven't had a chance to experience modern VR then I would thoroughly recommend it to you.

Here's a little clip of my friends and I playing with the HTC Vive VR headset for you to enjoy:

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