How Old is Virtual Reality? | Game/Show | PBS Digital Studios

47 Comments

1. Virtual GTA carjacking is the best thing i've ever experienced!

2. My buddy has an HTC Vive. Having experienced it, it was absolutely mind blowing. Technology has caught up enough to make this a reality.

3. Technology is still not advanced enough. There is still too much lag on reaction time combined with Oculus Rift. It may be cool just for sight seeing ; but you are basically worse when it comes to game playing efficiency. Just fancy-ness of observing environment of virutal reality may save it to the point where people would buy it anyway.

4. Game/ Show hasn't done anything for a while. Did it get canceled?

5. I think a completely different style of games will need to be made and if there are any action games I think players will need to be eased in the action over the straight into the action style of games. I'm pretty sure you can get PTSD from a realistic FPS but if a game was more like the levels of basic training I'm pretty sure it would be fine. I mean, players may become combat ready and personally I would love to relive the times in basic training and I yes I do mean screaming Drill Sargent and lots of push ups before you are even given a weapon.

6. Flight based games. That's something I'll be first in line for!

7. Thank you! You have an amazing channel!

8. 1894 was first novel with an imaginary world… that can't possible be true. Humans have been creating imaginary worlds since the dawn of civilization

9. I'm hashing it out.

10. This isn't going to be a big main stream hit, I see it as having a stronger niche following though.

11. I'd love to see VR used in the classroom. Think of learning history and instead of listening to a boring lecture you are in a virtual world watching historical moments play out.

12. problem: the tech is still to expensive.

13. I think the VR world I'm most excited for is an RPG in the vein of Skyrim (except hopefully better.) The first time I played Skyrim, I was super into it. I felt like I was there, walking around and making my way in a cold land of fantasy and adventure. VR would increase the effect tenfold.

14. You look like Minecraft's Steve?, but with glasses. Very few people can claim the default skin as a self-portrait, be proud! (Jeb totally looks like Alex.)

15. Technology has certainly come a long way towards achieving Virtual Reality but the equipment is still essentially "a big screen TV over your eyes" and fundamentally not far off from the original Victorian idea and hardware. We're "looking" at things. I have hopes that there will be a new experience with this new generation of hardware coming this year, but as consumer what I ultimately seek from "VR" is a true neurological takeover, akin to a dream.

    Edit: I predict that first person adventures will be a popular genre for the newer devices. I'm calling Elder Scrolls 7 and Fallout 6 will be "VR" 🙂

16. The main problem with the current VR coming, is going to be the cost which will limit it's deployment and if it's a rarity then developers will not budget much if anything to giving VR it's full potential. I do not believe it will take off until it' is included in part of a console so that every developer who is looking to develop a game for that console can justify spending the money to really take advantage of it because they will know everyone that owns that console will have it.

17. At the very start with the mention of the photography part – creating an illusion in which we can go into, it's like saying we are choosing to reject reality for an illusion and is that not what gaming has been edging closer towards and now with the Oculus Rift this can be achieved on an even grander scale? How is this a positive thing? What if our perceptions of reality, of life, of others, of ourselves where actually the issue and not reality itself?

18. lawnmower man sold VR to me at least.

19. I want there to be VR games based on the stuff we thought VR would be like in the '90s. Like Questworld from The Real Adventures of Johnny Quest and VR Troopers.

20. This was interesting.

21. I still don't think VR is going to catch on. It'll be a clever niche, not some sort of revolutionary medium like the camera was.

22. Snowcrash by Neil Stephenson was a revolutionary novel that really embodied the idea of virtual reality with its MetaVerse, which was accessed by some using high end goggles. You really should of mentioned this because it inspired a real world software called ActiveWorlds in 1995 and there was even users who had made head mounted monitors for it.

23. I hope playstation rocks it and refine VR 🙂

24. As I see it, VR is still stuck in the 90's because many still hold a very limited view on how VR works.  Not saying third person perspective games and similar won't work, seeing how there are possibilities for those to function in VR.  It's more to do with the fact that we tend to have a limited understanding of how to apply the unique aspects that are needed to make VR immersive.

    My view comes largely from how little practical use, when it comes to gaming, was applied when it comes to peripherals like the Wiimote and Kinect.  Not to say all of it is bad, seeing how even the motion controls of Sony's sixaxis controller made games like Folklore feel natural.  Just that far too often the games are either unresponsive or gimmicky.  Until we can improve upon the tech that functions best with VR, VR will continue to feel more like a gimmick than a form of tech.

25. Portal would probably melt some brains. The Myst games if redone with a fully rendered world would be incredible. VR is a change to put people into fantastic and impossible worlds and letting them accomplish impossible feats. Although I think FPS games might become really distasteful. By removing the filter of a screen and controller there might be a chance of violence feeling too real.

    I could imagine a vest that provided force feedback every time your character got shot and in gams as detailed as "The division" or the new CoD games this might give some viewers some bad brain times. I wonder if VR experiences could cause or treat mental illness?

26. you should upload this again with the music turned down

27. I think it is the 90s all over again. The tech has improved in that headsets are lighter than before but not much else has really changed. People can try to point to how graphics have improved but that is not really something unique to VR. Graphics have improved across the board. The crappy VR graphics of the 90s were about on par with what you would see in games of the time being mostly polygons with little to no textures.

    So other than it being more portable and cheaper I don't really see how this breakout of VR is going to be much different than the 90s. With it being cheaper it might gain in popularity and be more wide spread than it was in the 90s. I see VR as being a fad just like motion control was. Sure the Nintendo Wii had a ton of console sales but not many studios outside of Nintendo hit it big making motion control oriented games. And even Nintendo with it's current gen console seems to be putting motion control more on the back burner while the others have pretty much abandon it.

    VR is also very exclusive by it's very nature. When playing games with friends you can all watch the screen together and see what is going on even if only one person is playing. With VR only the person with the headset sees what is going on unless there is another screen or the other people are in VR themselves.

    Then there is the medical issue, 3D movies as well as VR create the illusion of 3D by putting the images at slightly different positions in order to trick your brain into seeing 3D. The problem with this illusion though is that it is not how your eyes natural see and focus on things which leads to eye strain and headaches with prolonged use. Also the disconnect with what your eyes are seeing and the other senses are feeling often leads to simulation sickness for many people. Even people with high tolerances often can not go for the same length of time they could with more traditional control schemes.

    These very real medical concerns more than anything are what hold 3D movies and VR back. And making the systems lighter and graphics higher res are not going to help fix that. In fact I've seen studies that they could actually do the opposite as more realistic looking simulations have shown to increase the likely hood of simulation sickness due to the mind being tricked even more so that what they are seeing is real and doesn't match what the other senses are telling it.

28. Without controls to match, VR is set for another 90's style flop. Sure the headset and graphics may be great but if I have to interact with the world using a controller it's not true VR right? When we have the tech to recreate something like OASIS from Ready Player One is when VR will really take off.

29. Guys… I have a question… the video games are also considered a part of virtual reality right?…..right? because i am presenting a seminar on VR in 2 days and i need to know this.

30. Great episode. One note, the stereoscope images are not really identical. Each side represents a different view point and was produced with a special camera with two lenses. I'm sure this is what you meant anyway.

31. Yes, the audio is pretty low and unbalanced.

32. VR's possibilities are truly limitless. They could really help the realm of meditation and relaxation specially for people with phobias or anxiety. I'm still unsure how future control systems would work as we still need our own limbs to interact with it all. Controlling things with one's brain is still pretty difficult (even in the medical realm where it helps patients with paralysis). But if we could borrow from that, this could help tons of people experience the world very differently from what they know.
    Sorry just on a ramble here. This was a great episode! Thanks! 😀

33. VR is a fad

34. I am really hoping to see VR go the way of smartphones in the early 2000s. Something that appears trivial at first (and quite costly) but slow adoption allows it to become a staple of American life and something everyone has at least tried.

35. First game that popped up in my mind: Metroid

36. I dunno, Disney's been doing VR pretty well at Disney World for years now.

37. I've been thinking recently about Plato's Cave, and how people are trapped seeing shadows until they can leave. The obvious dystopian analogy is that VR will become that cave and we'll forget to step out and can experience the world but I'm more excited about the flip side. Our world is limited by so many laws, but I'm fairly convinced there are so many world that we can convincingly explore that mess with physics at every level.

    Soundself is still one of the coolest VR apps I've seen and I just want to see more of that. MORE!

38. Minecraft is one of the most popular games ever, and it's coming to VR!

39. 1:08 And one of the first things we used it for was titties. The more things change, the more they stay the same, eh?

40. I'm surprised you didn't mention Sword Art Online The Beginning. You know, that IBM project.

41. Unfortunately, as much as I want VR to succeed, it's just far too expensive.
    When there are so many contenders competing for this new market, I could've hoped for at least ONE of these headsets to be at the very least affordable, but noooooooooo…

42. nice shirt

43. Aah i cant hear lol

44. I Already Done the Review on VR

45. Well I'm excited about the minotaurs and fox people.

46. The music is a bit loud, or Jamin is too low a volume this ep. I could hear him, but the music was very distracting.

47. Game engines are all ready for it, but the hardware isn't there quite yet, too expensive to be a major success.
    However, the tools are there for people in the game industry to experiment, which will be key in a few years, since the games will be ready when the price will be affordable for everyone.
    That's why for now, it probably will be a tool for engineers, or for architects. it provides a great visualization potential and for instance Epic Games knows it since it is opening itself to architectural visualization, and VR is the best argument to go use that instead of a traditional rendering software. In addition to that, a professional use is more easily worth the price.
    It also has some nice potential in the medical field, to cure phobias for example.
    All in all, it is perfect as is for professional use, while quite not enough mature for mass usage.
    Indeed, there are some exciting things which are more imminently doable for everyone, which will probably cast a shadow on VR for now.