[ed. If you think cell phones are obnoxious and isolating (and they are), just wait. VR is going to have a massive impact on society.]
Every Friday, a dozen or so people strap on virtual reality headsets, log on to the Internet and do something that would normally require driving to a local multiplex: watch a movie with a bunch of strangers.
Their avatars all sit in the seats of a virtual movie theater, staring at a screen playing a movie from Netflix. The sound from the theater is so accurate that if participants munch potato chips into their microphones, it sounds as though it is emanating from their avatars.
“When all of a sudden 10 avatars turn around and look at you, you know you should be quiet,” said Eric Romo, the chief executive of AltspaceVR, a Silicon Valley start-up that organizes the virtual movie gatherings and other virtual reality events.
The ability of virtual reality to transport people to locales both exotic and ordinary, is well known. Yet how the medium will fit into people’s online and offline lives is a new frontier. (...)
That makes the thousands of developers and early adopters, who already have prototype virtual reality headsets, effectively lab rats for these devices. They’re the ones figuring out how to navigate their real-life surroundings when their vision of the real world is shut out.
They’re learning which virtual reality experiences are fun, which are creepy and which might make people nauseated from motion sickness.
Etiquette around social forms of virtual reality is already taking shape since this technology has the potential to turn some of the more noxious forms of online behavior into something far more menacing.
Every Friday, a dozen or so people strap on virtual reality headsets, log on to the Internet and do something that would normally require driving to a local multiplex: watch a movie with a bunch of strangers.
Their avatars all sit in the seats of a virtual movie theater, staring at a screen playing a movie from Netflix. The sound from the theater is so accurate that if participants munch potato chips into their microphones, it sounds as though it is emanating from their avatars.“When all of a sudden 10 avatars turn around and look at you, you know you should be quiet,” said Eric Romo, the chief executive of AltspaceVR, a Silicon Valley start-up that organizes the virtual movie gatherings and other virtual reality events.
The ability of virtual reality to transport people to locales both exotic and ordinary, is well known. Yet how the medium will fit into people’s online and offline lives is a new frontier. (...)
That makes the thousands of developers and early adopters, who already have prototype virtual reality headsets, effectively lab rats for these devices. They’re the ones figuring out how to navigate their real-life surroundings when their vision of the real world is shut out.
They’re learning which virtual reality experiences are fun, which are creepy and which might make people nauseated from motion sickness.
Etiquette around social forms of virtual reality is already taking shape since this technology has the potential to turn some of the more noxious forms of online behavior into something far more menacing.
by Nick Wingfield, NY Times | Read more:
Image: Ramin Talaie
