The straps of the HTC Vive controllers wrapped my wrists, as I held the controllers in my hands. I was in control, and now ready to be crowned with the VR headset. I said goodbye to reality and entered the virtual as it lowered over my head.
I was underwhelmed. All the hype and talk about VR had my expectations set too high. That was until I turned my whole body around. The real sense of depth struck me. I could see I was standing in an animated warehouse filled with various machines and objects. There was a small kiosk protruding from the ground with an option, which read, “Start”. The depth perception was so real and palpable that I felt as though the button was too far from me. This was my first real revelation. With similar euphoria a toddler must feel when taking its first step, the profundity of autonomy of one's body in space, I took my first step in VR. The phenomenal room tracking technology created with the HTC Vive allows you to move within a space of 15 by 15 feet.
I looked around my new environment. The feeling of submersion in a new world is indescribable, in as much as the described “experience” of standing on a mountain peak is incomparable with actually being on a mountain peak.
Every moment was another moment of fooling my brain into believing I was truly in a new space. I could see things far in the distance, and notice the robotic dog bouncing around my feet, the illusion had taken me. It had become impossible to conceive of the fact that there were two screens jammed up to my eyeballs.
When I look at my hands in the virtual world, they appear as the Vive controllers, floating in space. This adds a layer of immersion, because I am able to see my hands in relation to this new world, and am able to interact with it.
A black table to my right caught my eye, so I turned my body around to investigate the table beside me. A large bone lay there with various other objects.
Part of the reason why I loved this experience so much was because the guy who gave me the demo didn’t give me much instruction at all, which proved its intuitiveness. I reached my hand over the table and picked up the large bone. This was nothing short of an epiphany. Consider the prehistoric apes in 'The Dawn of Man' from Stanley Kubrick’s ‘2001: A space odyssey’, as they pick up a bone and move it about in their hands. The revelation that this bone is an extension of their mind in the physical world, a tool, and a weapon. A similar cognitive leap in understanding washed over me as I moved the bone about in the virtual world. The bone in my hands at my command. I raised it above my shoulder and threw it, which was then fetched by the robotic dog.
Once realizing the extent of immersion in this world, and ability to interact with it, you can only imagine my excitement when I saw a bow and arrow lying on the table. I felt a slight vibration in the controller as I pulled back the bowstring, and because I’m a terrible human being, I shot the robotic dog.
After visiting other worlds, like photo realistic mountain peaks with my robotic dog skittering at my side, it was time to enter back to reality.
The light was blinding as I dethroned the headset. The feeling that I had been somewhere else and returned was undeniable. It's as if I had entered a door to a building, which was dark, and filled with magic, then stepped back out of that door again. You do not even come close to this sensation of walking through a door when playing a game on a 2D screen or losing yourself in an immersive narrative film.
I have now become one of the growing population who spouts the cliché that “You cannot describe it, you just have to try it, it's an experience” Because it is.
Like the feeling of a roller-coaster can only be felt, not described, so too you can only feel the virtual reality experience as an individual. The number of people who have tried it is still small, but growing. Consumer data shows that almost 90% surveyed were aware of VR but only around 16% have tried VR, like the HTC Vive or Oculus Rift.
I'm left with more questions than answers. What does this do to our brains for long periods of time? How is this going to change our perception of “self” or “reality” when we inevitably have an infinite supply of utopias on tap? Almost half of those surveyed in the consumer study reported they had some form of concern about trying VR. A total of 23% of respondents cited worries about their health, 11% fretted about "losing touch with the real world," and 5% thought they might get addicted. One thing is for sure; the perceptual shift from 2D screens to VR is a leap on par with the photograph to moving video. Like the first cinema-goers that freaked out when they first saw a moving train coming toward them on a 2D screen, we can either fear it or embrace it. We are on the cusp of a new realm of possibilities and cognitive utopias unthinkable to us now, which will be birthed into existence on this new platform of deep experience.