Those of us what have been around virtual worlds for a while can be forgiven for being somewhat bemused by a lot of the hype regarding the forthcoming virtual reality boom, because a lot of what is being discussed as futuristic advances are use cases we’ve all seen before. However there are use cases that already exist that may even pass us virtual world enthusiasts by.
These thoughts crossed my mind as I read a couple of articles today, the first was by Adi Robertson over at The Verge; The Virtual World’s Fair is where VR hype meets theme parks. The article concerns the work of Landmark Entertainment Group, who are famous for building theme park attractions and have plans to dip their toes very firmly into the waters of virtual reality.
What really struck me about this article was this part :
Landmark believes its role is to help solve the “chicken and egg” problem the industry faces: people won’t buy VR if there’s nothing to do in it, and no one will make experiences for VR if people don’t buy it. Christopher thinks the company is uniquely poised to succeed, compared to filmmakers or game developers — who are making a “whole different thing” compared to VR. “We’ve been doing what we call ‘total theater’ in the theme park space for three and a half decades,” he says. “We’re way beyond experimenting with this.”
Whereas I’m not familiar with Landmark Entertainment’s work, it is indeed true that theme parks have been the home to immersive experiences for quite some time. However those are immersive attractions where you go to the theme park itself and Landmark will be building what they call “live centers” that host digital art, zoos and more, with one set to open in China in 2017. However they will also have plans to launch The Virtual World’s Fair :
Landmark Entertainment Group has taken inspiration from its theme park design heritage and the long-standing World’s Fair tradition to create the concept for the “Virtual World’s Fair™,” a virtual reality experience loaded with real-time social interaction, entertainment, education, and shopping, just like a traditional world’s fair, but designed to be enjoyed in-home rather than as a real-world travel destination.
Landmark’s Virtual World’s Fair has been developed in conjunction with the Pavilion of Me ™ (P.O.M.™) concept, a daily-use in-home entertainment portal that reimagines everyday activities such as checking social media, online shopping, watching film and TV content, video chat, and playing video games into virtual reality experiences.
The Virtual World’s Fair will be accessed through the P.O.M. portal donning a VR headset; first-time users will create a personalized avatar, and then journey into the Virtual World’s Fair embodied in their newly customized digital persona. Both the P.O.M. and Virtual World’s Fair will enable social interactions with other people’s avatars (including family, friends, celebrities, world leaders and even total strangers) from around the world.
P.O.M. is scheduled to launch next year, with the complete Virtual World’s Fair experience to follow in 2017.
How well this progresses is of course dependent upon how well the technology surrounding headsets develops and gains acceptance but it’s interesting to see plans such as this in progress.
The second article I was looking at is by Andrew Heikkila over at Tech.Co; The Age of VR is Almost Here–But Are Businesses Ready for It? This article suggests that virtual reality is mostly associated with video games, and then goes on to exemplify use cases that are not video games and in doing so, links to some old Second Life related video footage that is actually a really good example of virtual world usage for education.
The video footage comes from Joe Sanchez of Rutgers University who was a Second Life enthusiast some years ago, but I’m not sure where he is with his research these days. What I found interesting about Joe’s videos was that they are similar in style to those of Draxtor Despres for his The Drax Files : World Makers series. Draxtor’s videos are more stylish and exemplify many more use cases than Joe’s videos, Joe’s videos are education centric, but like Draxtor, Joe produces short videos that pack quite a lot in.
For example this video has students talking about the benefits of education in Second Life :
Second Life will look a tad dated in that video because it was uploaded over five years ago, but I still find the overall message positive.
Some interesting points in the video are made regarding how shy students feel more comfortable speaking up in a virtual world setting and how students also like text communication, something that creators of vr experiences may want to bear in mind, text is still a popular tool today. This is why it’s important to look back as we prepare to move forward. The past is a useful tool and these days, very well documented.
Virtual reality is coming whether people like it or not, whether it sticks this time we will have to wait and see, I’m confident that there will be an immersive future but I’m also prepared to be surprised about what that entails because if there’s one thing that the past has taught us, it’s to expect the unexpected.