Oh my God, why am I scared right now?
This is not supposed to be scary.
Welcome to ConTechtual,
where we show you the history, and future, of all the tech you’re coveting or using right now.
Are you sick of this reality?
Oh God yes.
So am I.
And because of that we’re going to be talking about
virtual and augmented reality.
Virtual realities take place on a screen in a digital world,
and augmented realities are projected on the real world in front of you,
usually through your screen—
pretty much on your smart phone.
They both go back way longer than you’d think too.
For example, In 1835 we got the stereoscope—the coolest VR of the 19th century—
they were essentially goggles you wore on your face, with lenses and duplicate images
to transport the wearer to another location,
or at least it convinced people of the 1800s that they were transported to another location,
but they also believed in witches—
what are you doing?
I’m transporting.
That’s not how this works—It’s not any goggles—
there’s stickers, those are stickers on the goggles.
That’s what you think.
Okay.
Sure.
In 1929, people built this thing that passed for a flight simulator.
And in 1962, a filmmaker named Morton Heilig
patented the Sensorama Simulator.
A crazy arcade cabinet with a 3-D screen
that took up your entire field of vision.
It had vents for wind and smell and a vibrating seat.
Mmm!
The games included “A Date with Sabina,”
Hence the vibrating seat.
You can’t have a date with Sabina without a vibrating seat.
And weirdly enough something called “I’m A Coca Cola Bottle!”
Also, for the vibrating seat?
Probably to simulate carbonation.
Oh.
Myron Krueger brought some of the first Augmented Reality with Videoplace,
a crazy art project that used holograms, projections,
cameras, and other technology to put users in a space where they could interact with the art,
including interacting with some of the other users
from another room via hologram.
That’s pretty impressive for the time—
Which brings us to modern VR,
We went to VR World to play around a bit.
VR World is a center for virtual reality, augmented reality, and mixed reality.
Our mission is to make it more accessible—
is to make it more accessible in general to the mainstream audience.
It’s more than gaming—
Yeah, totally. I mean, the gaming community— of course they’re going to love VR, right?
It’s like gaming on steroids.
But we wanted to do something that was beneficial for everyone.
And also showcase the storytelling power that this medium has.
Oh! Sh*t!
I'm sorry.
Dain, I got your six.
What the— oh, oh God!
[Screaming]
This is not supposed to be scary.
Oh no, oh no—okay it’s just floor, it’s just floor, guys.
Woooh!
That— I’m done.
You really feel like you’re not on the ground!
[Shaken]
But VR tech can go beyond just making Dain scream like a
teensy, tiny, little baby man.
Alright.
So we’re talking to Dr. Justin Barad via robot.
He’s a pediatric orthopedic surgeon who used his interest in video game development
to co-found Osso VR,
a virtual reality training software for surgeons.
What is Osso?
It’s a surgical training platform that you can use anytime and anywhere
that allows you to practice a procedure before you operate on a patient—
which is kind of a novel concept.
So what makes VR such a crucial tool for the medical field?
Students basically that were trained with VR operated at twice
the performance level of non VR trained students, which
is a larger effect than we thought.
The last question is: what is your vision?
How do you see the future of the medical field changing as more and more people start using this tech?
If you’ve ever traveled around the world in like medical missions
or doctors without borders,
you'll see that a lot of times these regions have very, very intelligent, capable people.
But they don’t have the training infrastructure and resources that we do here.
So this is an incredible option that allows you to roll out
you know, cutting edge surgical training in a global way.
Really on the verge of an interesting kind of revolution in how we—
how you know, you basically go and see someone and eventually get surgery
and recover afterwards— and the whole process is going to be much more exciting
streamline, safer, and effective.
And of course, we still don’t know if our own reality is some kind of virtual one
put up for us by robots like in that movie The Matrix.
Which would make all of existence completely meaningless.
But we’ll see you next week!
Where we’ll dive into 3-D printing.