Ready player one? Take a deep breath, now open your eyes and step across a dimension without ever leaving your room. Virtual Reality allows any person to be part of a digital environment with the ability to fully immerse oneself in another world. As a result, VR is revolutionizing much more than the gaming industry. When the science fiction novel, Ready Player One, was first published in 2011 it seemed like a faraway dream, but today it is close to reality. Not a gamer? Not a problem! You see, virtual reality isn't just for games. Since headsets today can mimic senses such as touch, sight, and hearing, the world is your oyster, as far as interactive experiences go. Movies and TV shows can now be enjoyed through VR equipment such as the Oculus Meta Quest 2, giving you the option to turn your home into a virtual cinema. Desire to skydive? With virtual reality, you can mentally prepare yourself for the real experience. Some people are even using VR as a type of aversion therapy. For example, do you have a fear of heights? If you do you can work on that from the safety of your living room.
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In a post-pandemic society, we can also see how VR aids with human interaction and connection, Sergei Vardomatski, the author of a Forbes magazine from 2021, describes how companies were utilizing VR to organize meetings in a virtual environment to help their staff engage better during lockdown. The uniqueness of virtual reality stems from its ability to allow consumers to be fully immersed with their surroundings, objects, and other players. Some people also find it easier to form friendships over a digital world as it lessens the stress of social anxiety breaking down barriers of space and time.
Already a billion dollar business, VR promises to further impact the economy in terms of employment. With its ability to be utilized in a wide range of industries such as education, engineering, entertainment, and design to name a few, the hope is that it will improve and create more jobs.
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In the medical field, VR is already being vetted as a possible additional aid in pain relief. Timothy Kenney reports in his 2018 article titled “SnowWorld melts away pain for burn patients, using virtual reality snowballs” for GeekWire, that a virtual world called “SnowWorld” has been developed as a way to help burn victims deal with pain that they experience during medical procedures. Using virtual reality as a form of treatment is based on the theory that VR can be used to “trick” the patients brain into beliving they are in another reality, and in turn lessens the subject’s pain, by way of distraction. Basically, the patient wears the headset and is enveloped in a snowy environment. The landscape is cool and full of ice, and the victims goal is to throw snowballs at a constantly moving bunch of penguins. Kenney notes, “It might seem silly, but the results speak for themselves: burn patients experienced 35 to 50 percent less pain when immersed in VR, about the same reduction as a moderate dose of opioid painkillers.” Opiods are the drug of choice when treating burn victims, however even when high dosages are administated, victims still have the possibility of feeling pain. Without the use of chemicals virtual reality is trying to provide a solution to a medical issue. It's fascinating to see how virtual reality is integrating with medicine; it's been used to treat anxiety, PTSD, prepare surgeons for surgery, and even lessen labor pain.
By Lucrezia Carnelos on Unsplash.
Museums are also utilizing VR with innovative approaches. Visitors to The National Museum of Finland can journey back in time to 1863. The VR headset allows users to immerse themselves in the artwork of The Opening of the Diet 1863 by Alexander II. The technology allows you to interact with the atmosphere of the painting. Visitors can interact with the characters and view it from a 3D perspective. The goal of the experience is for guests to have a genuine, engaging understanding of political life in Finland during the 1860s.
By Julien Tromeur on Unsplash.
In the fashion industry, VR is being used to improve the shopping experience by providing virtual dressing rooms and the ability to try on virtual clothes.
It also has led to virtual fashion shows, back in September 2022, Somnium Space, the virtual platform, held the first mixed reality fashion show during Prague’s fashion week. The event managed to mix Augmented Reality, Virtual Reality, and even promoted the use of teslasuits by having their models wear them at the physical event as well as in the digital world. Creators and brands were encouraged to showcase their avatars because their art would be shown throughout the virtual fashion show. It’s interesting to see that avatars allow the ultimate kind of self expression allowing consumers to explore physical traits not designated at birth.
Still for all of the advancement in VR the technology is not advanced to the point of the Metaverse, the term given to an idea of 3D online virtual spaces where people can interact on social and economical levels, in other words a fully digital environment where people can work and play. Creative and Cultural Industries Director, Dr. Patrick Fuery, who utilizes virtual reality in several of his CCI courses, indicates that everyone is still learning the ins and outs of VR and that it is currently limited in terms of the metaverse. Some obstacles to virtual reality are that headsets are expensive, motion sickness is quite common, and it’s currently not consumer-friendly, with the average unit costing upwards of $300 in 2023. However, in terms of how VR can help students reframe how they approach subject matters, he encourages the debate of what should be considered fantasy and what should be considered reality, when exploring VR. Fuery poses the query, “If VR is not real, why does it elicit such emotion? Why do we truly believe our experiences are real?”.
Dodge professor, Professor Charles Fink, who has a long history of working with and writing about Extended Reality/Virtual Reality/Augmented Reality, believes that given the direction society is headed, virtual reality is not the only solution and that in fact, mixed reality is currently more accessible than the metaverse. He notes that in terms of enterprise, VR is particularly successful, however In the eyes of consumers, virtual reality is still simply viewed as a game.
So what does this mean for the future of VR, and for those working in the creative and cultural industries that are utilizing and/or developing VR experiences? Only time will truly be able to tell us, yet it is hard to imagine how this genie might be re-corked given the potential we can already see, hear and feel. A significant technology, it will no doubt be included in many an industry’s future, a future that is just around the corner.
What are your thoughts on the world of VR, and how you see it evolving in the creative and cultural Industries? Let us know at ccistu01@chapman.edu or on IG @chapman_cci