Why you should start with VR NOW
A Beginners guide to Virtual Reality, the quest for the eternal beach, and the next big tech revolution.
When I last wrote about VR back in 2016 (in an article titled “Can China Innovate”) I argued that two of its biggest disadvantages was the price of its gear – a Headset and Computer would set you back 2000 USD easily – as well at the lack of good content. With such high costs and without a “killer app,” the proliferation of the technology to a bigger audience would have to wait. Not to mention the headaches a lot of people experienced when putting on the heavy headsets. “The Peak of Inflated Expectations” was soon followed by the “Trough of Disillusionment,” according to the Hype Cycle.
Fast forward to our Corona Times of 2020, and the world (of VR) looks very different. We might now have finally arrived on the “Slope of Enlightenment” according to the same Hype Cycle.
A New VR World
So what has changed?
First off, VR just got its first real blockbuster game with the ego-shooter Half-Life: Alyx selling a million games in just a month. Meanwhile, Mark Zuckerberg, whose Facebook purchased Headset Maker Oculus in 2014 for 2 billion USD, declared on a recent earnings call about its new flagship: “(The Oculus) Quest has surpassed our expectations…. I wish we could make more of them faster during this period”.
Photo by Helen Feng: Philipp just before entering another reality and becoming PGWISE
VR headsets were now selling faster than they could be produced.
I remembered this fact when I finally ordered my first VR Headset, the Oculus Quest 128 GB version (the 64 GB was already sold out) in mid-March: It took about 4 weeks until it eventually was delivered.
It cost me about 550 Euro (including a travel case) - still expensive but less than the new iPhone. And like your iPhone, it has a processor built in which makes it work without connecting to a computer, which is a big step up from previous editions like the Oculus Rift. (Oculus Competitor HTC Vive also has the standalone headset the HTC Vive Cosmo).
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The similarities with Apple didn't end there. Unpacking the Quest also felt a bit like unpacking your Apple product: The whole experience, as well as the product itself I found, was surprisingly well designed and enhanced my anticipation to step into VR
in style. And as we also know from the iPhone - design can be an extremely powerful distinguishing feature.
And then? As I was slowly diving deeper into the world of VR, I became increasingly aware of the endless possibilities this technology could offer.
But, let's go step by step:
Entering VR – Where is the Beach?
When I ordered the Quest, on the one hand, I was looking for options of how I could use VR to create a blueprint for "the event of the future" (check out my article) and on the other, I was looking for my personal killer app. I imagined a beach somewhere in Virtual Reality, where I could chat with my friends around the world while sipping on a cold drink and listening to the waves. Nothing too creative, but something, that would let me feel close to friends and family in a relaxing environment – and if you had to choose between a beach and an office or Zoom Call – why not meet your business partners at the former, too? (Coincidentally, a friend sent me a WIRED article about a guy who recreated his favorite pub in VR. My beach – his pub: Same concept. You guess who is German and who English ;)
Oculus Quest
Once I loaded myself in, I found myself in a slick Oculus "dome," my virtual headquarter, which I immediately wished I had as my office. Watching out of my virtual windows into a wide-open field felt somewhat calming. I quickly created a virtual self, PGWISE, then I started browsing through the pre-installed apps. I soon found myself dancing with a robot, getting into a boxing ring, shooting some spaceships, sitting in a virtual cinema, attending a meditation class, and watching a 360 video documentary about climbing Mount Everest.
Photo: Oculus Blog
I found the feeling of "space" in VR quite impressive. Standing on top of the mountain, I felt "present" as if I could breathe in the fresh air while sitting in my apartment in Berlin.
But where was my virtual beach? The "Vacation Simulator" had a nice ring to it, so I downloaded it and found myself in a world of flying cartoon robots, which helped me to do some gardening – not quite what I was looking for.
Instead, my thoughts were shifting towards my quest for the "event of the future"
I had already postponed the third edition of WISE the Beijing based Future Festival from the end of April to the end of August. By mid-April, however, it seemed evident that foreign speakers, artists, and bands would not be able (or willing) to travel to Beijing in August. The prospect of just making a couple of Zoom calls instead of a real face-to-face meetup didn't seem to be too appealing. But maybe VR could be part of the solution?
Photo: Rec Room, Jacraft
Getting social in VR
The first thing I had to figure out was, how, and under what condition people could actually meet in the new reality. Luckily, a friend of mine from the Bay area already had some experience in VR, and he, like me, was stuck in his home country, waiting to go back to China. He suggested we meet in Arizona Death Match – a Zombie Shooter - so he could show me the wonders of multiplayer gaming.
So we did, and in the hot Arizona desert immediately started killing some Zombies while having a chat about the quarantine situation in the US and Germany, and how to generally upgrade my Quest experience. While my friend's Zombie shooting Avatar resembled Jason in the horror flick Friday the 13th, I could clearly see his friendly smile behind the virtual mask of a mass (Zombie) murderer.
This taught me VR lesson #1:
To feel connected to someone, you don't need to see his face. It seemed to be enough to "feel" a physical presence and hear the voice, the former a big step up to a regular phone or video call.
Rec Room
Soon we decided to explore some of the Social VR experiences Oculus had to offer. First, we met in Rec Room, Social VR Network, developed by the Seattle based company with the same name, which has been around for a couple of years.
Each journey in Rec Room starts in something that resembles a college dorm room, where you can find clothes for your Avatar and scribble on a chalkboard, among other things. My friend invited me to a "private room" where we played some squash, one of the hundreds of mini-games you can encounter in Rec Room. On the way there, we crossed a hall where a bunch of other Avatars gathered. This was the first time I heard multiple voices speaking at once in VR. Like in a real room, the voices would get louder the closer you were moving to the Avatars speaking. I felt a little uncomfortable starting a conversation to complete strangers - so we moved on.
Photo: Rec Room
I learned VR lesson #2: Despite being an Avatar and nobody being able to see my real face, social situations in VR actually work quite similar to those in real life.
I was wondering, however: Who were these people? Why were they gathering in this place? Were they like me, just trying out VR, or did they have some secret knowledge I didn't have access to? Judging from their voices, most of them seemed quite young, but their Avatars were ageless, and I also read somewhere, that some would alter their voices to appear female even they weren´t.
Age and gender seemed strange concepts in this room. It reminded me of the chatrooms omnipresent in the early days of the internet. Just now you had some sort of a virtual body and a real (or not so real) voice attached to your perceived anonymity.
VR lesson#3: Don´t trust appearances in VR. You don´t know who is behind the Avatar, you can only try to confirm somebody´s identity.
But it would get even trippier.
VR Chat
If Rec Room is your clean, friendly, and somewhat nerdy friend from college, VR Chat is more like his acid dropping, Japanese manga loving counterpart. Once entering this weird world, my friend turned into a cute little fox while I myself chose a pixelated, mustached gentleman look. Together we explored some pretty freaking virtual worlds until our senses got a little overstimulated, and we chose to sit down for a while in an empty space bar (literally a bar in outer space) to take a break. Whiskey would have been appropriate given my avatar's looks and the loungy intergalactic surroundings, but for this time, we had to postpone the drinks. At least, finally, we had found an apt place for having a chat in peace, uninterrupted from Zombies, giant Avatars who looked like manga girls or feeling like in a college dorm. Still, it wasn't quite the beach feeling yet.
Altspace VR
The next on the list of Social VR platforms was Altspace VR, which was acquired by Microsoft in 2017.
The graphics are somehow similar to Rec Room, but I started out in a slightly more stylish room leading to a terrace with a view and a mini basketball court. It seemed to lack the mini-games of Rec Room but had some interesting events on offer. I decided to check out The Educators in VR meetup and the Creative Writing Group, both of which were surprisingly informative and engaging. Like a real-life meetup, there was a moderator/host, and the 20 or so people in the room could ask questions and engage. There was a difference though: The moderator could mute the audience and then unmute whoever wanted to ask a question – a feature, I thought, would come in handy in real-life conference situations.
PGWISE in the Educators in VR Meetup in AltspaceVR
My first VR Meeting
Then I set up my first proper meeting in VR. Back in my college dorm in Rec Room, I met with Paola from the XR Wechat Group I was added to by a Beijing friend. It was the first time I ever met Paola, and the first time I heard her voice. It was also the first time I saw her – or, well, better said, her headphone-wearing, fairy avatar-self. We chatted about the pros- and cons of different Social VR platforms while she was scribbling her notes on a virtual blackboard situated above my college dorm bed. The meeting lasted for something like an hour or so. I actually lost track of time and was finally pulled back into reality by my kid's screaming.
Again I learned some valuable VR lessons:
#4 Once you are engaged in VR it sucks you in, and it's easy to forget about time in the real world.
#5 Apparently, it is possible to have proper meetings in VR where you feel "present" in a room with somebody.
It's not quite a real face to face experience (actually you don't see the face of the other) but still a big step up to a fon call or video call.
I felt I got one step closer to understanding what needed to be done to properly use VR in social settings and not only hang out in empty rooms, shoot zombies, or bump into complete strangers.
Virtual Tea Party
But the next lessons were just around the corner: For the following weekend, Paola invited me back to Rec Room for a virtual Tea Party with some VR developers at a virtual playground full of carousels. There I shyly approached a group of Avatars having a friendly chat. Soon Paola joined and introduced me to the group. An avatar called Joker suggested we check out the room he created, and soon, I found myself teleported into a huge bowling alley in space with about a dozen or so other avatars. Knowing very little about how to actually create such virtual worlds, I was quite impressed and was already pondering about how I could invite my future conference speakers and guests from all around the world to Joker's creation. It would be nice to have an exchange of ideas while playing a little game. Maybe Joker even could create that virtual beach for me? While I was lost in my thoughts, the rest of the group already proceeded to the Laser Tag Party. I followed, fired a few shots, but then my headset glitched, and I was thrown out of the game and into my apartment in the Berlin night. Good – it was time to go to bed anyway.
PGWISE and his newfound friends in Rec Room bowling in space (Paola on the left and Joker Center)
VR Lesson #6: Curated experiences with a specific group of people in Social VR make a lot more sense than just going on random explorations by yourself.
This is kind of a no brainer if you think about it. In the real world, you would hardly run around in empty rooms just for the sake of it or go onto the street with complete strangers, and without a purpose expecting to have a great experience. But VR newbies (like myself) would do exactly that a lot of times. And after the novelty factor of just being in VR wears off, they get disillusioned by the technology (and let's face it – the still mediocre graphics).
Conclusions
VR Lesson #7: You need to figure out for yourself WHY you are using VR and how you want to use it. Are you a gamer? Do you want to go to see and “touch“ product or go to places you haven't been to before? Do you want to work out? Do you want to meet people? And if so, for what purpose? There are a thousand ways of how you could make use of VR
- as much as there are a thousand ways of how to live your “real” life. And with the currently available applications, we are just scratching the surface.
My own VR journey took me to explore different facets of VR. While I was looking for concrete solutions of how to bring people in different parts of the world together in VR, I also discovered some worthwhile games, had some workouts in VR (I can recommend Box VR which gave me a real muscle ache) and learned some valuable lessons about this new world.
I also realized that a lot of the skepticism towards VR comes from the fact people haven't really figured out the potential of VR, how to use it properly, and, more importantly, what they can use it for. It will take some more time for the average consumer to figure it out and for the pros- and newly converted to show them the way. In the meantime, the technology will get better and cheaper. And while I still haven't found the virtual dream beach I was looking for, I´m 100% convinced I will one day and that VR will be one of the key technologies of the 21st century. I wouldn't be surprised at all, in fact, if its impact would be at least ten times bigger than that of the smartphone. “And just as with cell phones, everyone .. will mock the early adopters for mindlessly embracing unnecessary technology with no useful purpose. At first.” wrote Time Magazine already in 2015.
Apart from having the potential to disrupt- or at least advance whole industries, revolutionize education, change the way we work and interact, it also has the neat side-effect of being a tool to reduce CO2 emissions in the same way video telephony does. Only with the difference that in the VR meeting in the future, you will feel much closer to your meeting partner, and the need for real-life meetings and the necessary polluting travel will diminish.
PGWISE on the Altspace VR Terrace
It also can help with meditation, building empathy, find new ways of expressing creativity, watch movies with friends, turn workouts from a chore into a fun experience or come up with applications we haven't even dreamt of (Still waiting for good ideas from musicians or the music industry. Or as Scott Cohen, Chief Innovation Officer of Warner Music puts it: If Pink Floyd were 20, what would they do with VR?).
The possibilities are endless, and we are still just at the beginning of the journey, maybe comparable to the early days of the Internet. So far, only about 7 million VR headsets have been sold, but the forecasts predict that by 2023 it might be 30 million headsets per year.
It's indeed a good time to start with VR right NOW.