The Void - upcoming virtual reality park

[Anakin McFly]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cML814JD09g

I want this so bad it hurts. ;____;

There's been some scepticism about the tech, but reviews from testers have been awesome so far: https://www.facebook.com/thevoidvr?sk=reviews

If this or other VR systems ever become easily accessible and affordable, I'd probably just stay in there all day building other worlds and it will ruin my life.

The Star Wars franchise will almost definitely cash in on this if it gets going. Which means getting to kill things with lightsabers and move stuff around with the Force. So many childhood dreams, man. Even if we're not quite there yet, give this another 10, 20 years, and we'd get there.

...I worry for my financial future.

[thesalmonofdoubt]

That is about the most awesome thing I have ever seen!

If this or other VR systems ever become easily accessible and affordable, I'd probably just stay in there all day building other worlds and it will ruin my life

Get a Samsung note 4 - and you can purchase a VR gear headset for about $250.. (local - no idea how much they are in Singapore) .. it's a unit that you slip your phone into that turns it into a VR headset .. and so far the reviews are pretty positive.
I recently bought a Note Edge 4 .. and - apart from the groovy curved screen (which I was more curious about than compelled by) .. I was also wanting to use it for the VR stuff - only to find out later that despite this being Samsungs flagship phone, they aren't making the VR Gear for it - which pissed me off enormously.
It's co-developed with Occulos rift (sp?) so, should be pretty good. The screens on the note are amazing and driven by a quad core processor so, nice refresh rates and good pixel count - from the sounds of things, it should be as good (almost) as any actual dedicated VR on the market but at a fraction of the cost!

[Anakin McFly]

I didn't know that about the Note 4 - that's awesome! Just looked it up.

I'm planning to wait a few years before buying anything, since we're still in the early days of commercial VR and things will only get better (and hopefully cheaper) along the way. I'm also prone to motion sickness, which VR can cause, but apparently it's not as bad with the newer systems. I'm also a bit worried about the eyesight effects of having a bright screen right up in your face for long periods of time. One Oculus developer experienced after-images for hours after using it, which doesn't sound fun; so hopefully they'll have fixed some of those issues by the time it goes public in a big way.

It's still insane how all this isn't just sci-fi any longer.

[thesalmonofdoubt]

I'm planning to wait a few years before buying anything, since we're still in the early days of commercial VR and things will only get better (and hopefully cheaper) along the way. I'm also prone to motion sickness, which VR can cause, but apparently it's not as bad with the newer systems.

That's pretty much what I keep telling myself now that I can't get the VR gear thing - I change phones every year (recycle them down to the kiddies) so, figured I'd just wait till the next version is out to get one and let all the early adopters iron out all the kinks.
I sometimes get motion sickness - not so much now that I'm all grown up, but even some first person shooters leave me with a pounding headache - one of the main reasons I stopped playing "Alien Isolation" which was awesome, but left me feeling sick every single time!~

Tech sure is moving ahead at a steady clip.

[phe_de]

I sometimes get motion sickness - not so much now that I'm all grown up, but even some first person shooters leave me with a pounding headache - one of the main reasons I stopped playing "Alien Isolation" which was awesome, but left me feeling sick every single time!~

Tech sure is moving ahead at a steady clip.

That's what I also heard: The problem with being able to move while watching VR is not quite solved satisfactory; therefore people get sick.
I haven't tried it out yet; but I believe that some sort of holodeck like in the OP might have a better chance of working; after all, you don't need to worry about running into stuff.
Personally I'm more looking forward to robots moving in the real world, rather than humans in a virtual world.

[Derived Absurdity]

Sounds neat, I hope it doesn't all turn out to be bullshit or something though like what happened in the 90s

[thesalmonofdoubt]

Sounds neat, I hope it doesn't all turn out to be bullshit or something though like what happened in the 90s

You mean - what happened in the 90's with respect to VR tech?

Seems like this is more than just a concept given, from the looks of things, the park has already been built and a few people have already had a development preview of the tech - and if that facebook link is to be believed, people seem impressed.

I don't see any real reason to expect this to be anything less than totally awesome. The tech is all already there, we have small high def bright screens that won't pixelate at close range, unlike what was there in the 90's. Refresh rates are enormously high and the processing power reduces lag to almost nothing. Just seems like a completely brilliant way of bringing the tech together with the real world in a biggish budget sort of way that is completely within the techs ability to deliver.

I'm kinda wondering whether there's anyway of making this into a franchise and bringing something similar over here given, I reckon this is going to be an enormously popular new form of entertainment! I imagine the set up costs are going to be crazy tho

[Anakin McFly]

Here's their official website: http://www.thevoid.com/

That's what I also heard: The problem with being able to move while watching VR is not quite solved satisfactory; therefore people get sick.

I think that's one of the problems this was trying to address - the player actually moves, so you don't have the problem where your eyes think you're moving but your body doesn't, leading to motion sickness. Lag could still cause that though.

They haven't built the park yet, but have been testing out the prototype in a warehouse. They seem to have plans to franchise it into various cities around the US and later the world, with entry fees similar to that of laser tag, which is unexpectedly affordable.

I'm kind of wary of our general progress towards more and more immersive, realistic virtual realities, though. Right now we have people all glued to their phones. Soon it might be everybody walking around with a VR helmet, living in their own personal pocket of heaven where all their fantasies can be brought to life. Why would anyone ever want to leave? I'm not sure what will happen to humanity.

[thesalmonofdoubt]

I'm kind of wary of our general progress towards more and more immersive, realistic virtual realities, though. Right now we have people all glued to their phones. Soon it might be everybody walking around with a VR helmet, living in their own personal pocket of heaven where all their fantasies can be brought to life. Why would anyone ever want to leave? I'm not sure what will happen to humanity.

Yeah - I don't think I have any real concerns about this at all - I don't see VR removing the need or desire to interact with the real world as much as it just being an evolution of what we do for our entertainment. I see things like Microsofts new Hololens being a bigger player in how we augment our lives given that at this early stage, it's already apparently delivering on some pretty amazing promises and, unlike google glass, it actually has some pretty attractive and practical real world applications .. But having said that - I really don't see much of an issue with that either..

[Anakin McFly]

I don't think there'll be a clear line between VR and augmented reality for very long. For instance I can easily imagine that one day we could walk down a street while seeing it as a completely different place, thanks to a virtual overlay similar to that used in the park. It could turn a dingy apartment into a mansion, your office cubicle into a spaceship cockpit... We could make the world and its people look and sound however we like and basically have our own preferred settings for reality.

At the extreme, as the tech gets more advanced and more immersive, what reason would we have to return to the 'real' world without all the augmentations? If we could have everything and go anywhere and be anyone we wanted, we might not still have the same drive to make our real lives better. We might no longer care as much about the environment if we could see and hear realistic natural landscape whenever we wanted; we might pay less attention to our bodies and health if most people only interact with our always-perfect-looking virtual avatars; we might care less about exploring space if we could create and visit any planet we wanted; or even stop bothering with RL sex when you can have all your impossible fantasies come true in immersive VR porn. (Some guys on Reddit were already commenting on how they would totally use VR to make their girlfriends look like any porn star they wanted. I'm not sure what that would do to relationships.)

There is no end to where this could go, and the fact that we already have or are close to having the technology for all that is both exhilarating and utterly terrifying. It could be the ultimate addiction. I'm really hoping I'm wrong, and it'll just be an awesome thing that makes life easier and more fun. But probably at least some people are going to end up badly falling into addiction, and I'm afraid I might be one of them. I have trouble enough with regular video games as it is.