2016 will be the year virtual reality (VR) makes its first, hesitant steps into the public market. Multiple tech giants will be putting serious VR headsets into the wild, and they all had something to show at gaming conference PAX Prime 2015, which took place in Seattle this past weekend.
For years, gaming industry enthusiasts have shouted the gospels of VR and all its limitless potential. With just one piece of technology, we can escape our immediate reality and enter a fully simulated alternative. It’s the dream of anyone who enjoys escapist entertainment, yet the hyper-immersive experience might be more than people are ready for.
Running on a PS4 console, PlayStation’s Project Morpheus headset currently looks like the easiest entry point for modern virtual reality. PlayStation offered a test-run of its in-development VR hardware at PAX.
For my introduction to Project Morpheus, I got to sit down with their horror demo titled “Kitchen.” I opened my eyes to a dark and derelict kitchen, tied up to a chair. As I moved the PS4 controller, my bound hands followed. Deep in the darkness, hints of movement suggested a nefarious presence. Just as any person would do in the night, I darted my eyes across the horizon. A fellow hostage attempted to cut my straps with a knife, forcing the point right between the eyes. Soon enough, I could hear something right behind me, yet couldn’t bring myself to turn around. No game has ever made me feel this physically uncomfortable.
These reactions were only intensified when I got the chance to try Valve’s VR headset, the HTC Vive. Using a series of cameras to track physical location and a pair of motion controllers to simulate hands, I had free movement around a 6-12-ft space. I walked across a sunken pirate ship, feeling a distinct lack of air in my lungs as I looked up to see the ocean’s surface above. In a demo set in Valve’s Portal, I laughed with awe when a robot my own size walked into the room. Unconsciously, I stepped out of its path as it crossed. The pit of my stomach opened wide as the walls of the room were lifted away, leaving me in the center of a seemingly infinite warehouse. To close the demo, robotic villain GLADoS — larger than any living creature I’ve ever seen — swung into the room.
Every part of my rational mind knew that none of this was real. The robots of Portal weren’t in my personal space, and the knife being pointed to my forehead was only sharp in resolution. Yet judging by my body’s reactions, a part of me clearly believed the illusion.
If virtual reality is going to dominate the mainstream, a hard fact is going to come to roost. This technology is tricking the same part of our minds that controls our basic awareness. There’s a difference between seeing the top of a 100-story ledge on a television screen and standing on top of it yourself. VR can push our entertainment closer than ever to our reality, which just might send the mainstream over the edge.
There’s an old story about the early-film pioneers, the Lumière brothers, who publicly screened a 50-second film they’d shot at a train station in the late 1890s. The train barrels down the tracks from the station. The story claims that the audience, unaccustomed to witnessing an image of an oncoming train, feared for their lives and scattered to avoid being hit.
For the first time in my life, I saw the train. My brain said to scatter.
Follow Chris Berg on Twitter @Mushroomer25