If you have never tried virtual reality, you are sure to wonder if it actually has the potential to replace actual reality. Through research on the subject, I have found the answer to that question.
Virtual reality may substitute most of reality in the future, but at the moment it does not have the full capability. Eyesight, hearing, and social interactions can now be replaced, but taste, touch, smell, jobs, and education are not quite there yet.
There are many different ways that virtual reality could replace many parts of reality. Continue reading to learn about each one in depth.
How VR replaces reality today
The purpose of virtual reality is to mimic or substitute actual reality, eventually intending to replace reality entirely. This is what makes it so incredible. By substituting reality, VR can make our wildest dreams come true.
People speculate that one day virtual reality will completely replace reality as we know it, with the world becoming similar to how it is in the 2018 movie “Ready Player One”.
Right now it falls short. While sight and sound are temporarily substituted by VR, other senses such as touch, taste, and smell are fairly far off. Our reality will never be able to be entirely replaced until a virtual reality can make up for those senses.
Social Interaction in VR
Right now we get a lot of our social interaction from school, work, and time with others.
Over the last few years technology and media in general has started to replace the simple social interactions that people had with each other.
Once virtual reality starts to evolve and develop, the question arises: Could it start to substitute our social interactions with our family, friends, and acquaintances?
The answer is yes! It has already started to in fact. In VR people can play games, watch movies, and even just hang out together.
Anyone that has seen the movie “Ready Player One” knows how easily that can turn into our reality. In the movie, everything fun and social in virtual. No one wastes time in the real world anymore because it is bland compared to what is inside a headset.
In the movie we also see that this substitution of realities also isn’t very healthy for people or the world. We need to do the small and simple things now and enjoy time that we have with each other and this will never be too big of a worry.
Replacing Sight
The first step in replacing reality completely is replacing the visual parts of reality. This is the main focus of VR since the human brain does a great job of filling in the gaps that VR is not replacing yet.
Basically, there are two numbers that really matter when it comes to replacing vision; screen resolution and refresh rate.
Screen resolution is how hard it is to see individual pixels, and the refresh rate is how fast the screen changes.
Although the current virtual reality experience is really awesome, it doesn’t quite match up when compared with reality. When you first put on a modern VR headset, you are overwhelmed with the feeling of being in a new place, but after a while, you start to notice that everything seems a little fake, and you notice something called the “Screen door effect”.
The screen door effect is what happens when you are put within inches of a screen. You can see the space between the pixels, which then gives you the effect of looking through a screen door.
Obviously, headsets are getting better with this. The main focus of many VR companies is the display, and for good reason. If you have a good display, then everything else will fall to the side.
In the movie “Ready Player One” screens are ditched completely, and instead, they use a system that shoots lasers into the eye in order to replace vision perfectly.
Replacing Sound
Replacing sound is the easiest of all the senses to mimic. In fact, we have been doing it really well for a long time.
As long as you have really high-quality headphones, replacing sound is fairly easy. The hardest part about it is not actually producing the virtual sound, it is actually filtering out the real-life sounds.
We have hosted many parties where we put somebody in a haunted house and since they are surrounded by the whisperings of their friends they are not scared in the slightest. It wasn’t until we started using noise-canceling headphones on our victim that we got really awesome reactions.
When you have sounds from the real world bleeding into the virtual one, it can really ruin the effect, but if you have the sound done really well then you will be surprised at how immersive it is.
What VR could replace in the future
In many movies, virtual reality is less of a video game and more of a completely different world. Some great examples of this are the “Matrix”, “Tron”, and of course “Ready Player One”.
We are limited in how much of reality we can simulate simply because the technology is not there yet, but eventually, our technology will improve and help us to reach new heights in virtual reality technology.
Let’s talk about some potential ways VR technology can improve in the future.
The 5 Senses
As mentioned before, virtual reality would “substitute actual reality” when it can fully replace all of our senses.
Right now VR completely dominates sight, sound, and even some touch with the controllers.
As virtual reality develops further it will be interesting to see if they can involve smell and taste with it somehow.
I don’t think this is in anyone’s plans at the moment, so presently virtual reality is still far off from fully replacing actual reality in terms of the 5 senses.
Neuralink
Elon Musk has generated quite the stir in recent years because of his contributions to the electric car market with Tesla all-electric cars as well as his rocket fabrication company called Space-X. Although these companies are amazing, we are going to focus on one of Elon Musks 26 Million dollar pet project “Neuralink”.
The goal of Neuralink is to develop brain implants to send people into the virtual world, almost exactly like the matrix.
This connection would change the way that we do everything, and could very well replace much of reality. Elon says that one day we will be cyborgs and merge with artificial intelligence in order to conquer the stars.
This is a very real possibility, but for now, it is quite a ways off, and Elon says they are more than 8 years away from a prototype.
It will be pretty awesome to plug yourself into the computer though. Imagine the possibilities! These devices wouldn’t need headsets or headphones, instead, they would replace the actual signals sent to the brain with digital ones. You could replace every single sense fairly easily once you figure out how to even start.
Tactile VR Gear
In Ready Player One, they use several different mechanisms to simulate touch. These mechanisms are really complicated, and although we have some today they are expensive and rather ineffective.
After the main character of the movie gets the first key, he uses the money to buy a “boot suit”. That suit is designed to make you feel everything in their VR world.
These types of clothing are actually already in production. There is one glove that is specifically impressive. Watch this video to better understand what I mean:
The idea here is to have equipment limit movement as well as using electricity to simulate touch. Pretty cool huh?
Eventually, this technology will be applied on a large scale and will simulate touch very well.
Another piece of hardware talked about in Ready Player One is the Omni-directional treadmill. This is used to simulate walking even though you are standing still. We have some base prototypes running right now, but they are far from what they have in the movie. Here is a video showing off this tech.
There are all sorts of mechanical solutions to VR problems, and if you were to combine them all you could have a pretty powerful reality replacing experience.
Why Virtual Reality will never replace reality fully
The truth is that VR will affect the way that we interact, work, and live. On the other side of that coin, virtual reality really can’t replace reality in a permanent sense because we still need to do things outside of it in order to be successful as a species.
“I’m not crazy about reality, but its the only place to get a decent meal.”
Groucho Marx – Ready Player One
I love this quote, and it really shows the truth. No matter how good virtual reality gets, we will always need to return to reality at some point, whether that is when we die, need to use the restroom, or even when we need to sleep. The funny thing about reality is that it always seems to remind you that it is there!