![\"Photo](\"https:\/\/itp.nyu.edu\/adjacent\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/05\/12.png\")
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There is an interesting, multi-layered conversation at play about the current state of virtual reality. More and more of the general population are reading reviews and seeing sales of cheaper and more advanced VR products. As a practitioner of creative technology who has recently taken the dive into VR production, I will get asked the following questions by friends and family: \u201cHow good is it, <\/span>really<\/span><\/i>?\u201d \u201cIs it worth it?\u201d \u201cIs it the future?\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n When you look at VR\u2019s biggest proponents, you\u2019ll mostly see hardware and software companies with skin in the game. For them, there are little to no questions. For a company like Facebook, the acquisition of VR platform Oculus not only transformed them into a hardware company, but also made them VR evangelists. VR isn\u2019t just the future, now it\u2019s an \u201cempathy machine.\u201d Their most pointed questions and critique will be asked behind closed doors, mostly wondering, \u201cHow does this $2.3 billion investment pay off?\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n Which leads to our next layer of VR discussion amongst tech artists, tech critics, and tech philosophers. Interestingly enough, I find that while this group is more technically knowledgeable than the public at large, the questions seem to be the same as the first group: \u201cHow good is it, <\/span>really<\/span><\/i>?\u201d \u201cIs it worth it?\u201d \u201cIs it the future?\u201d And even more intriguing is that some of the most technically experienced among us are the most bullish or skeptical of \u00a0VR\u2019s allure.<\/span><\/p>\n But the truth is that technology\u2019s evangelists can sometimes be its harshest critics. And the criticism isn\u2019t coming from an irrational fear of technology, but from love. Your techy friends who care the most about net neutrality can have the best critique, the most in-depth damning evidence, and strongest venom towards Facebook -much more so than the most technophobic in our society. Why? Because us nerds simply love the internet. So we want what is best for it, and don\u2019t hesitate to call out threats.<\/span><\/p>\n I\u2019ve noticed some potential parallels between how we talk about VR and how we talk about the Internet. Looking backwards at the history of the Internet with a critical eye could give us insight towards a possible future of VR. This is a potentially positive future, but it will only happen if we decide to create it. <\/span><\/p>\n So how do we talk about the internet? Despite our well informed skepticism about the current state of the internet, we <\/span>do<\/span><\/i> have an ethos of internet freedom. The idea that the internet \u201cshould\u201d be open and free is simply axiomatic in our community. Watching defenders of the open internet advocating for net neutrality legislation, you can frequently see them cite what I\u2019ve started calling an \u201cideological leverage point.\u201d In this case, the history of the internet and web are used as justification for a political position or action.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cFacebook is <\/span>changing<\/span><\/i> the internet. The internet wasn\u2019t like this before.\u201d \u201cNet neutrality <\/span>preserves<\/span><\/i> the way the internet was <\/span>intended<\/span><\/i> to be used.\u201d Changing, preservation, intent. These all point to questions of heritage -heritage that is being leveraged to convince people to support specific positions, legislation, and adopt a brand of cultural attitudes towards our internet culture.<\/span><\/p>\n However, couldn\u2019t we accurately describe the internet in a different way? The internet was a technology commissioned by the United States military and created by elite institutions. The technical complexity, size, and price of the hardware required to use it were well out of range for the average person, let alone vulnerable or underserved populations. The internet\u2019s first popular \u201capp\u201d was email, that while showing promise as a people-to-people communications technology, was developed mainly for the coordination of the developers of the technology.\u00a01<\/a><\/span>\u00a0Essentially, email was made so that the most exclusive universities in the U.S. could more easily create communications technology for their military.<\/span><\/p>\n If this version of the history of the Internet was widely embraced, imagine all of the retrograde arguments that could be made today: \u201cWhy shouldn\u2019t the government spy on you over the Internet? They made it!\u201d \u201cWalled gardens? Internet fast lanes? Of course. It\u2019s been for the elites since the beginning\u201d. Would you or I be convinced by these arguments? Hopefully not. I believe open internet ethos are good because they are good ideas, and not only because they are part of our history.<\/span><\/p>\n But we certainly don\u2019t hesitate to use our history in an argument, do we? I sure am glad that these values we hold are established in our culture. However, these values and attitudes were not <\/span>inevitable<\/span><\/i>. It\u2019s the result of those who used and developed it in its early days, and explicitly called out those values as important to them.<\/span><\/p>\n Those pioneering users and developers \u00a0did have some help, though. I would argue that help was in the form of <\/span>bad<\/span><\/i> technology.<\/span><\/p>\n We speak in breathless tones of the halcyon days of the early net, and its radical open community. But let’s imagine using the internet in the late 70s or early 80s. How many activities were mostly if not entirely text based experiences? Especially for the average internet user. The public consumption of the internet at that time was nothing but communication via text: Email, bulletin board systems, chat rooms, and multi-user dungeons.<\/span><\/p>\n The hyper capitalized internet we know today simply couldn\u2019t run on those machines. A popup ad experience that even remotely resembles what we have today was not viable. An image of any decent quality (let alone video) couldn\u2019t be delivered in a timely manner. And even if it was, the computer on the other side wouldn\u2019t have had the power to show it with the number of colors we are accustomed to today. Nor would the monitor be able to show it at any resolution that would be acceptable for ad agency producers.<\/span><\/p>\n And even if there was the network speed or the computational power, let\u2019s say you click on the ad (assuming you have a mouse, which wasn\u2019t introduced commercially by Xerox until 1981).\u00a0<\/span>2<\/a>\u00a0The ability for you to actually purchase anything with a credit card with any amount of basic security was still over a decade away (1994).\u00a03<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n So it’s no wonder we think of the foundation of the internet as community oriented. It would seem that was all there was to do, more or less.<\/span><\/p>\n And I would say, we are all the better for it. The purported ethos of openness (even if was just to make some researchers lives easier), and community (because what else was there to do?), were possible results in part due to the <\/span>limitations<\/span><\/i> of the technology. The affordances informed our internet ideology. And those affordances were <\/span>negative<\/span><\/i>. <\/span><\/p>\n Computers used to suck, thank god.<\/span><\/p>\n The first email was sent in 1972. The Apple Macintosh was launched in 1984. The first online credit card purchase was 1994. The first Oculus Rift kickstarter was launched in 2012.<\/span><\/p>\n It can be a bit hard to talk about virtual reality in this concept of history and lineage. Do you count Morton Heilig\u2019s Sensorama?\u00a0<\/span>4<\/a>\u00a0Ivan Sutherland and Bob Sproull\u2019s Sword of Damocles?\u00a0<\/span>5<\/a>\u00a0Or does it start with the usage of the term \u2018virtual reality\u2019, and Jaron Lanier\u2019s work with the Visual Programming Lab?\u00a0<\/span>6<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n The best consensus I can get from VR professionals is that we\u2019ve come a long way, but really it is only the beginning. The Oculus Rift and HTC Vive start to show what we knew would be necessary: high quality stereoscopic images, head and controller tracking at minimal lag, easily wearable, run on consumer hardware.<\/span><\/p>\n But, it isn\u2019t perfect- far from it. Ask any VR practitioner and they\u2019ll tell you: Images aren\u2019t as high res as a laptop screen, the headsets are heavy, tethered cords unwieldy. And you need an expensive computer to run still expensive VR hardware. And with products that address these problems, there are other issues. Cheaper hardware has lower quality and less robust tracking technology.<\/span><\/p>\n It is all phenomenal gear, though. It represents a new high mark in our technological capability. With all its flaws, this really is the best version of the tech on a mass market scale. But when you talk to tech enthusiasts, professionals, and artists, you will start to hear commonly that \u201cVR isn\u2019t <\/span>quite<\/span><\/i> there yet\u201d.<\/span><\/p>\n While there is good artistic work being done in VR, it would seem that many potential innovators are sitting on their hands waiting for the technology to get better before taking the dive. But making a truly immaculate multiverse in the vein of an 1980\u2019s cyberpunk vision simply isn\u2019t on the table right now. My fear is that while waiting for this technology to become tenable, the history, and hence ethos, of VR will be defined in a way we would rather not wish to see. For example, could we currently describe the state of VR as such:<\/span><\/p>\n A burgeoning technology controlled by large corporations. Certain elements of openness are present, but certainly \u201cwalled gardens\u201d are as well. It is expensive, and the hardware takes up too much space. In cases where this is not true, the hardware is inadequate. For very specific use cases, it seems to be somewhat useful. Forward thinkers can see the future potential, but many see current implementation as an expensive toy for rich people.<\/span><\/p>\n Couldn\u2019t this also be a description of the internet in the late 70s and early 80s?<\/span><\/p>\n Going from military funded academia to \u201cInformation wants to be free!\u201d culture certainly required forethought and people willing to establish their morals as community pillars. I would never say that was purely an accidental result of bad hardware. But the bad hardware helped a lot.<\/span><\/p>\n If we truly are in the early days of VR history, we will need to be future thinking and establish community values that we want to see. But the bad hardware can help. Particularly, it can help artists.<\/span><\/p>\n Current VR headsets are heavy. Once you have gone to all the effort to get strapped into a VR headset, you will not be casually taking it on and off repeatedly.<\/span><\/p>\n Now let us also consider that the average person checks their smartphone every 10 minutes. In the same study, one in 10 checked it on average every four minutes.\u00a07<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n Spending the past few years seeing people use VR, it occured to me that frequently it was the longest I\u2019ve seen people go without checking their phone. Could a currently feasible VR experience encourage us to unplug from our \u201calways on, always connected\u201d smartphone phone culture?<\/span><\/p>\n VR being an entirely new interactive medium brings all kinds of amazing new UI dilemmas. How are you going to input your credit card number for a purchase? The dark patterns of UX\/UI have been established to cajole and convince us to buy discount airline tickets and streaming subscriptions. But that has been a two dimensional practice. We haven\u2019t seen the same sophistication displayed in a three dimensional context, yet.<\/span><\/p>\n Motion sickness is still an issue with current generation VR technology.\u00a08<\/a><\/span>\u00a0What would a VR experience that catered to those prone to motion sickness look like? Perhaps slow and stationary.<\/span><\/p>\n Currently, watching a video inside of VR will not be as high quality as going fullscreen on your Macbook, inherently due to the \u201cscreen door\u201d effect. VR is not the optimal medium for auto-playing ads. It will take time for ad agencies to find the optimal 3D corollary.<\/span><\/p>\n How many artists and companies are making a living solely off of VR content? Optimism is our idea that VR <\/span>will<\/span><\/i> make money. Eventually. But does VR make money now, at the end user level? A professional last year urged game developers to \u201cmeasure expectations of the future VR market, at least until things start to.”\u00a09<\/a><\/span>\u00a0So, VR is not currently a cash cow.<\/span><\/p>\n![\"Photo](\"https:\/\/itp.nyu.edu\/adjacent\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/05\/11.png\")
<\/p>\nWhat We Believe and Why<\/i><\/b><\/h2>\n
![\"Photo](\"https:\/\/itp.nyu.edu\/adjacent\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/05\/8.png\")
<\/p>\nThe Bad Old Days<\/i><\/b><\/h2>\n
![\"Photo](\"https:\/\/itp.nyu.edu\/adjacent\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/05\/7.png\")
<\/p>\nThe Bad New Days<\/i><\/b><\/h2>\n
![\"Photo](\"https:\/\/itp.nyu.edu\/adjacent\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/05\/6.png\")
<\/p>\nVR Sucks. Let\u2019s make VR.<\/i><\/b><\/h2>\n
![\"Photo](\"https:\/\/itp.nyu.edu\/adjacent\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/05\/4.png\")
<\/p>\nThe Best Problems of VR<\/i><\/b><\/h2>\n
Heavy, Clunky Headsets<\/b><\/h4>\n
Unsolved UI<\/b><\/h4>\n
Motion Sickness<\/b><\/h4>\n
Relatively Lower Resolution<\/b><\/h4>\n
Lack of Mass Revenue Streams<\/b><\/h4>\n
Not Great at Being Connected<\/b><\/h4>\n
![\"Glitch](\"https:\/\/itp.nyu.edu\/adjacent\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/05\/3.png\")
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