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Virtual Reality: Purpose Beyond Gaming
An anonymous reader writes "Virtual reality tech is getting a ton of attention for what it can do to video games. But the technology itself isn't limited to games — just as Kinect was hijacked and used for myriad other purposes, so will VR be broadly adapted. This article goes into some of the applications: 'An elderly woman in a retirement home recently used an Oculus to explore a garden and walk stairs again. This simple environment brought her to tears. Work is also being done to help PTSD sufferers deal with their trauma by replicating the scene within virtual reality and there is great interest in using a similar approach for other conditions like amnesia, Alzheimer's and dementia. ... It's now possible for museum spaces and schools to teleport students to specific moments in history, to allow them to experience being executed by a guillotine, take tours of space or even explore the depths of the ocean.' What other VR uses can you foresee?"
Good thing it mentioned the anecdote about the eldery woman twice, otherwise I might have forgotten it. Clearly no one is proof reading these...
... used an Oculus to explore a garden and walk stairs again. This simple environment brought her to tears. Work is also being done to help PTSD sufferers deal with their trauma by replicating the scene within virtual reality and there is great interest in using a similar approach for other conditions like amnesia, Alzheimer's and dementia. An elderly woman in a retirement home recently used an Oculus to explore a garden and walk stairs again. This simple environment brought her to tears. Work is also being done to help PTSD sufferers deal with their trauma by replicating the scene within virtual reality and there is great interest in using a similar approach for other conditions like amnesia, Alzheimer's and dementia and echolalia. An elderly woman in a retirement home recently used an Oculus to explore a garden and walk stairs again. This simple environment brought her to tears. Work is also being done to help PTSD sufferers deal with their trauma by replicating the scene within virtual reality and there is great interest in using a similar approach for other conditions like amnesia, Alzheimer's and dementia.
What about combining it with hypnosis for truly interactive experiences?
now you can fulfill all your pedophile, nekrophile, sodomy, heterosexual ..... - phantasies without commiting a crime.
this will change masturbation forever.
Can the story be changed to be from the Redundancy of Derpartment Redundancy?
It must be redundently restated redundently, otherwise we'd all miss it!
as well as déjà vu.
Something designed for games can be re-purposed for something else? Wow... Next you'll be telling me that new Internet thing with all the porn can also host cat videos.
Flight simulators. Of course, we've been using VR for these for decades, so it's not exactly news..
Those people who think they know everything are a great annoyance to those of us who do. (Isaac Asimov)
Porn
Use the VR headsets ot stream the 3D video from drones/robots and make operating them that much easier/faster/safer.
Won't work on mars or the moon because of radio lags, obviously, but could still be interesting to use, at least locally. Inspecting the inside of pipes/tunnels could be that much faster.
Any use of VR is fine, with gaming, medical and tourism being the most amazing from my perspective.
That said, I would hate to see it become predominantly a platform for social networks as Zuckerberg has envisioned. That stuff has the potential to ruin the technology by integrating itself too deeply.
walking on water not perfected yet http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=weather+manipulation+wmd cleansing reconstruction underway http://youtu.be/WSCHKimgy1s
I hope it gets broader adoption than Kinect or those Wii sports novelties.
give me a 3d world that i can place virtual displays in - wherever i want, whatever size i want. right now, in the physical world, i have three monitors at my desk and could realistically make use of a fourth. but, between the cost of an additional display and a the cost of an additional video card (i've used all my existing video ports), my boss won't let that happen. but with a vr headset, we can eliminate all those displays and simply place me in a virtual world where i can create, at will, as many displays as i need in 3 dimensional space. couple this with something like a leap motion or kinect to do hand tracking and slap a few ir markers on my keyboard and mouse. now i can view virtual representations of my keyboard and mouse, as well as my hands. with this, i can type and move the mouse while getting real world haptic feedback as well as visual.
its a quick and easy way to turn my little cubicle into a spacious office and to add display capability without adding cost
There have been many sci-fi novels about virtual worlds and their economy, and they inspire a lot of people. I have spoken to people eager to "relocate" into virtual reality with most of their business and even personal life. I guess it's because virtual worlds simplify or ignore many boring details of life.
Even the current, far from perfect, simulations like Second Life, WoW or Lineage have so many fans that it shows the potential for adoption.
If Facebook and other vendors make it right, it can be a smooth continuum of shades of VR, from games, through virtual art galleries, shows and meeting places (like Second Life or Minecraft), and to 3D chat and augmented reality.
And of course porn.
As I have a needle phobia I was part of a trial involving oculus with my dentist. It didn't work and I was mostly disappointed that whilst I could wonder around and not talk to the dentist the detail was too low to really get lost in it. I want to pick flowers or roll in grass and see the details as I investigate.
are a couple of the more practical, less warm and fuzzy, places where I thought VR would have been employed much sooner.
The USA is only 4X older than me...perspective
Somewhere in the 1991 timeframe, my lab in Houston started working with VR for training. Intelsat 603 was rescued by the crew of STS-49. Attempts to capture the satellite required 3 EVA before they were successful. One element of the training was the use of a new VR tool to attempt to teach the crew just how little force would cause unwanted vector changes. Crew enthusiasm was "limited", as I recall, for this training method. During preliminary testing, I was one of the guinea pigs who was frustrated into getting the forces right.
is /. editors. Maybe I could go to a virtual world where /. has real editors?
Do you have ESP?
I can imagine great potential for using this in conjunction with the Ludovico Technique
*band if you please*
The Oculus Rift is really great....FOR PORN!
You can do all kind of advanced graphics... FOR PORN!
Explore whole new worlds...FOR PORN
Then return safe and sound FOR PORN
The Oculus Rift is for porn
The Oculus Rift is for porn
Grab your RIFT and double click for PORN! PORN! PORN!
Microscopy: put cameras and microphones on a very small physical avatar (say, the size of a Lego minifig). Walk/drive it around in a real miniature environment-- say, a Lego city built on a tabletop, with real people also in the room. Enjoy. Refine. Make something cool. Macroscopy: place cameras and microphones widely spaced apart and high above the ground-- on the side of a skyscraper, a cell tower, or suspended from a blimp. Or on the ISS. Figure out how to incorporate something like looking-around movement to the rig. Pretend to be a giant, or a giant space creature. Have fun.
How about an Editor?
I can finally live with my waifu!
...just a view of the basket that your head is going to drop into? Maybe there is an option to lay down face up towards the sky.
Porn, because that's where the money is.
After they've shown everyone (interested) that it works. I can see the technology in teaching hospitals (I'd buy that video game) and any other hands-on-training schools.
After that, my girlfriend and I can buy a pair of them. I'll be able to do her in ways she won't currently allow (which is her right) and she'll be able to do Sean Connery (at 35), Ron Jeremy (at 18) and the capitain of the Titanic.
Making my waifu Liru come alive in more interacting ways than plain ol' Second Life
One word answer: Holodeck.
(...or at the very least, the first baby steps towards such a thing...)
I've been thinking about the possibilities of full immersion virtual reality for a while. People tend to focus on things like flying, playing games, having sex with strangers without consequences, and swimming with strange creatures in the deep ocean. But it will also enable us to be somewhere (virtually or physically) via telepresence, and feel like we're actually there. Imagine if you could visit a member of your family in another state, sit with them in their living room, even hug them. You could "teleport" anywhere in the physical world that was properly virtualized and experience the sights, sounds, and even smells of the locale. You could interact with the people as if you were there (with a bit of awkwardness due to lag). You could be "present" during a riot or revolution and get a firsthand look at what's going down.
Shamless plug: I'm serializing a hard sci-fi story about the potential future of full-immersion virtual reality. It's on the web, completely free, and doesn't even have ads: http://livingoutside.net