Making The Unreal Feel Real

Technological advances are nothing out of the ordinary for today’s generation. Everyday, there is something new offered to the world, something more exciting and intriguing. However, Oculus Rift, the new Virtual Reality device developed by Facebook, is taking strides in technology and realistic illusions as we know it.

Oculus Rift is a headset, similar to many other Virtual Reality headsets we have seen before, but this time is excelling in interactivity. With high definition sceneries, sounds, motion capabilities, and visuals, you feel as though you have transformed into a different person or being when you put this device on. Your eyes are shielded from any sight of the outside world, and if you choose to put the earphones in, you are isolated to the sounds offered by the spatial audio. If you look down, you might notice a change in your anatomy to be an animal or different person if you choose, and you have the ability to move limbs and explore different views with connected controllers for both of your hands. The reviewers of this article discuss how they feel they have left their body and transported to a different, realistic world. They have a very attractive and desirable website to look at, and the writers of the review had a compelling style of writing as well to keep the reader hooked.

They mention that there is a feature you can utilize that allows you to tether yourself to an object in a room you are using Oculus Rift in. I think this alone goes to show how carried away with the Virtual Reality people can come to get to, when they forget about their real life surroundings and physical rooms they are in. There is an element of fear that I have from this, because like stated in the article, these devices can be used as an “escape” from real life and people have the option to live in another fake world that may be more desirable. Virtual Reality is an alluring field, which has the treacherous potential of becoming more detrimental to human beings’ mental health.

 

https://www.cnet.com/special-reports/oculus-rift-review/

 

2 thoughts on “Making The Unreal Feel Real

  1. With the Oculus being owned by Facebook, I think it is important to think about the possible kind of data collection that may come from these VR platforms. The amount of data that could be collected from these VR software is immense; they could potentially track movements and save/record conversations to create personal portfolio of individual users. Currently, the privacy policy from Oculus allows them to share and receive information with Facebook, but at the moment claim that the information that is shared is no different than the metrics that would be shared with a third-party app developer. So in the present you can at least be confident that we’re not being watched by the VR headsets we are watching. This article also lists the other information that is shared between Facebook and Oculus, but all of it is information that makes sense to be linked between the two in order to improve user experience without intruding on privacy and to prevent and ban spam activity.
    Facebook and others with interests in the VR field hope to continue to improve this technology such that it becomes common-place and eventually as vital as cell-phones. If this shift ever does occur, it would open the flood-gate to more information collection through the additional features developed. So while VR is playing nice now, I think it is something important to keep in mind as users of the potential invasion of privacy capabilities that may come with this exciting emerging technology.
    https://www.theverge.com/2018/4/9/17206650/oculus-facebook-vr-user-data-mining-privacy-policy-advertising

  2. We both know how complex and intense technology is getting. After reading about the Oculus Rift headset I was first intrigued by this and thought it was a really cool idea. At the end of your post you mentioned about how this idea of being able to leave the real world into a virtual world was scary, I thought about it. People use many ways to cope with the world, they use drugs, alcohol and other subtenses. They use these because for at least 20 minutes they feel as if they have escaped the world. I believe virtually reality could be just as bad as drugs or alcohol. It provides people with an escape and I believe people could get addicted to it and treat the virtual world as their real world. In 2015, a 17-year-old boy died in his Russian home after playing DOTA for 22 days straight. He took all the recommended breaks to eat and sleep, but died of blood clots formed because of his lack of movement for long periods. A year later, a South Korean couple were so wrapped up in an online video game, Anima: Beyond Fantasy, in which they raised a virtual child together, that they failed to feed their own infant child, who starved to death. After reading about these two stories from an article on Vice, I knew how dangerous the virtual world can really be. I think that each virtual game should have a time limit and only allow the player certain hours of play time each day. This will ensure they keep up with their real-life priorities and health.
    https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/4w5g7d/gaming-in-virtual-reality-could-be-the-very-real-death-of-you-911

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