oh oh damn
[Music]
oh these people are panicking because
they're being asked to step out of an
elevator onto a single plank that's
suspended
80 stories in the air oh man
this game is called richie's plank
experience and by their very real
reactions
you might expect some groundbreaking
photorealistic visuals behind that
headset
but that's not the case sure it's nice
but it's clearly not
real the graphics are beautiful but the
lighting isn't quite right
things are just a little too diffused
the buildings are almost too smooth
and the plants on the ground are clearly
squared off it's hard to believe these
people aren't dramatizing their
reactions for the camera
oh god but it's not just a plank
experience
the internet is full of vr fails where
people are sucked into pixelated worlds
with disembodied parts in front of them
and this really got me thinking how is
it that a virtual world that doesn't
look very real at all
feels so real
of course the first major difference
between watching vr and being
in it is putting on the headset here's
where
vr marketing has mostly failed right
because it's always shown from a
spectator's perspective
and as a spectator you do not get the
experience of the person
in vr thong win is the founder and ceo
of romera
a company that helps businesses test and
understand new spaces before they're
built using virtual
reality vr communicates to your brain in
a different way than looking at a screen
when looking at a screen like our tv or
phone our brains read this as a flat
image the same way it would a picture
if an object on a screen gets bigger or
smaller or the person on tv moves
towards the camera
you don't feel the need to take a step
back or move out of their way
but in vr you might want to because
you're not looking at one screen
you're looking at two and those two
screens are literally right in front of
your eyes
projecting a slightly different image
into each eye
which is how our vision works in the
real world each eye takes in stimuli
from a slightly different vantage point
you can test this hold your finger up in
front of your face and wink each of your
eyes
your finger should jump back and forth
that jump
is the difference between what your left
and right eye are seeing
and the difference is between what your
eyes see conveys
depth it conveys three dimensions this
is known as stereopsis
and vr developers have spent a lot of
time perfecting it
but what uses depth if you can't move
through it
which brings us to the next most
important way virtual reality tricks
your brain
you are the camera and it's fast enough
where your brain starts interpreting it
as your perspective
head tracking allows a person in vr to
look and move around a fake world in the
same way that we look and move around a
real one
if you look to the left you'll see more
of the world to your left
and if you look down
[Music]
okay maybe don't look down other subtle
effects make virtual spaces feel more
real
like 360 audio which is a big part of
the plank experience
as you turn your head the wind will
subtly change the plank creaks
and if you listen closely a heartbeat
slowly begins to speed up
our brain takes all this new virtual
stimuli and begins to believe
this is reality
our brain has never really learned
within the last 150
000 years to actually distinguish
between computer-generated content
and the real world dr frank steinica has
been studying immersive technologies
like vr for nearly 20 years
and if all the cues that we perceive in
the virtual environment are so similar
to the cues that we get in the real
world
it is makes kinds of sense that we are
unable to clearly distinguish between
both our brains quickly adapt to virtual
environments largely because it's wired
to trust
our sense of sight there's some research
showing that approximately 80
of all the information that we perceive
from our environment are based on vision
and this allows vr developers to
manipulate our reality even further
we found out about 10 years ago is that
we
if we guide users on a circular arc with
a radius of 20 meters
they have no chance to identify that
they actually walk on a circle in the
real world
when they see a straight path in the
virtual environment you can walk an
entire virtual city without ever leaving
a room
once we believe the environment is real
and accept that we're actually in it
our brains then go on to fill in some
other blanks there is interesting
findings that for example if you are in
the virtual world in a very
let's say snow or icy environment people
feel cold
yeah although they're in the real world
in a maybe in a hot environment
outside of games vr has actually shown a
lot of promise in the medical world
from reducing pain and burn victims by
immersing them in a snowy world while
their bandages are being changed
and with exposure therapy that helps
people with phobias like a fear of
heights
and body dysmorphia it's also being used
for physical therapy
like assisting elderly people with their
balance right now we're still tethered
to a system with a headset on our faces
the graphics are nice but not perfect
and so we're not
fully immersed when we hover 80 stories
above the ground
that is we can still remember to take
the headset off
seneca cautions that it might not always
be that way we can easily assume that
within the next five to ten years or so
we will not be able to distinguish
visually computer generated content from
from real world content anymore
and then of course there are a lot of
ethical questions for now
vr might not look exactly like reality
but it follows a lot of the rules our
brain has learned to perceive
as real and that's often enough to make
a sweat
[Music]
you