Beyond "virtual", Oxford University professor talks about the future of the virtual world

Author: Ralph Schroeder, Professor, Oxford University

Professor Ralph Schroeder is currently working at the Oxford Internet Institute. His research areas include virtual reality, the social impact of information science, and technology and the sociology of technology. He has published many books on virtual reality technology, such as Rethinking Science, Technology and Social Change (Stanford University Press, 2007), Being There Together: Social Interaction in Virtual Environments (Oxford University Press, 2010), and Knowledge Machines: The Electronic Revolution in Technology and the Humanities (MIT University Press, 2015).

Translation: Yan Pu PhD student at Oxford Internet Institute

In recent years, humans have made many exciting breakthroughs in the field of virtual reality technology. This phenomenon is partly due to the fact that many companies have begun to produce headsets that can realize virtual reality, such as Samsung's virtual reality equipment and Google Cardboard virtual reality glasses. Google Cardboard even allows the use of smartphones to assist in the realization of virtual reality equipment. How will humans use virtual reality technology in the future? I am worried that there will be no more innovations except for the end of commercialization of virtual reality for users to consume. In this article, I will explain why there is a lot more room for developers to explore in the future of virtual reality besides pure "virtual".

Oculus Rift User Demo

Google Cardboard

Virtual reality, or virtual environment, can be defined as the "presence" of a space and time and the interaction with that space and time. The most interesting virtual environments are those where people can share this "presence" and interact with others (Author's note: For a definition and explanation of virtual reality, please refer to the author's monograph "Being There Together"). In fact, we can even predict the future form of virtual reality, although we cannot predict its specific use and implementation. There are many different virtual reality technologies: for example, people can use a monitor fixed to their heads, enter a room with a virtual environment projected on the walls, or wear smart gloves to map their every move to the virtual environment, or wave joysticks in the virtual environment or tap to capture objects in the virtual environment, and so on. But there are only two senses that are most closely related to "presence": vision and hearing. A third sense, touch, is often not present in virtual environments. Two other senses, smell and taste, have also been developed and used in virtual reality, but they are less common than vision and hearing simulation.

Professor Ralph Schroeder's book Being There Together

No matter how virtual reality technology is applied in specific situations in the future, there are always only two (only two!) possible three-dimensional environments. First, take a three-dimensional image of the real world (i.e. Google Street View technology), which is a three-dimensional photographic presentation of the virtual world. The photographic presentation of reality is strictly faithful to the real world. Second, create a virtual three-dimensional world and present people (i.e. anthropomorphic images) in such a world. The second three-dimensional environment is common in three-dimensional games or Internet-based virtual worlds such as Second Life. Even if such a three-dimensional world is constructed by computer images, it can still become a beautiful world with buildings and landscapes, and it can also be enriched according to the creator's imagination, and even construct unparalleled wonders: such as designing a towering castle or a rampant monster. The same two possibilities can also be realized in the virtualization of sound. The sound of the virtual world can be either a record of real sound or artificially created sound effects that match the virtual world.

A three-dimensional photographic representation of the virtual world (Google Street View)

A three-dimensional world constructed from computer graphics (Second Life)

Although in both virtual worlds, we can interact with virtual space and time, walk around freely in it, or build buildings of our imagination. However, if we compare these two completely different virtual reality scenes, we will find that their application prospects are also quite different.

Games like World of Warcraft, which are built in a 3D game world, are popular because they are spatial: they allow users to walk around, chase, fight, interact with other players, and complete the game experience together. In this sense, these games are not just virtual environments, but virtual worlds. Even so, they are still limited to virtual reality itself. The reason is that such environments have their own rules, and players must abide by these rules to interact with the virtual world. The main activity of the player is to complete the game tasks, so compared with virtual worlds such as Second Life that allow users to play freely, the virtual worlds built in games are slightly different.

What about interaction with people? Interaction in the virtual world often occurs in a three-dimensional photo-realistic scene, but in such an environment, users often do not have their own space. For example, when you have a video conference with others, you can only interact with their heads and shoulders. Many times people do not require deeper interaction. For example, long-distance lovers often just need to turn on the camera in the room to feel like they are in the same place, even if they do not appear in each other's video. Although in similar scenarios, it is still very important to actually feel the presence of another person. I think the main use of the new generation of head-mounted virtual reality devices will be games (to create a virtual world) or movies (to present the real world in three-dimensional effects). However, I don't think this is the most refreshing way to use virtual reality. Because similar developments do not explore the true uniqueness of virtual reality technology: creating a sense of common presence through interaction with the environment and people. The biggest problem with head-mounted devices is not only that they make users feel dizzy (which is also the criticism of similar technologies), but also that people cannot get much pleasure from simply immersing themselves in head-mounted devices unless users can benefit from more other aspects of pleasure during the use process. In existing movie or game scenarios, most users can only wear the device without any extra movements. However, the real reason for wearing such devices is that users want to truly perceive their actions through spatial sensors and can move freely.

One could argue that part of the fun of online games comes from interacting with other players; similarly, the point of video conferencing is to communicate with people face to face, not to walk around in a virtual environment. Although immersion in games can make users feel good, and the visual effects and story scenes of games in recent years have been addictive, games are still very limited activities because they require completing prescribed tasks. Similarly, although immersive movies are fascinating, the audience is only guided to appreciate the works and cannot really interact with the virtual environment. The best virtual reality technology should allow users to truly experience the joy brought by the virtual environment or world itself without the guidance of tasks or stories. Current virtual reality technology has not really developed a "killer app" because when the virtual world itself does not have much interesting things, users will not get pleasure from long-term immersion. From this perspective, virtual worlds like Second Life solve this problem: developers provide users with places to socialize and allow users to create buildings with friends, and also complete other activities in them together, such as shopping, teaching, and opening exhibitions.

Second Life is still limited in what it can do, but another more successful example is Minecraft. The main reason for the success of Minecraft is that it makes immersion in a virtual world fun and meaningful, without limiting the player to a specific game objective. The interaction with the virtual environment itself is particularly important, by creating objects in the virtual space and interacting with all the objects in the space in the form of building and exploring. Minecraft is currently mainly presented on a two-dimensional display screen, and more virtual reality technology can be added to it, perhaps creating a fully immersive virtual world where users have a virtual body to walk around in the virtual environment, pick up objects and show them to other users, which would be a major step forward for virtual reality technology.

Minecraft, a successful virtual reality world From the perspective of equipment, head-mounted virtual reality is not the best technology for experiencing virtual environments, and 3D joysticks are not the best practice. Perhaps people need something like this: it can realize running exercises in the virtual world, and let users fly gliders through the city. Users can sit in a chair in front of the curved wall and "drive" the chair through the virtual world, standing up and walking around at will. At the same time, the wall always follows the direction of the user, so that even without a head-mounted device or a display screen around them, the user can still have a sense of immersion. There is also a method similar to the technology of the Wii, which allows users to not only throw balls, but also catch balls in the virtual environment.

All of this can be summarized as follows: VR can mobilize users' initiative and creativity, rather than the passive and pre-set rules of current games and video conferencing. Why not let users run or fly freely? Why not give users super powers to transform the world? Why not let users shape the virtual space according to their imagination of the beautiful world and appreciate the beauty of VR from a new perspective? Or how about creating opportunities for users to interact with others and let them explore ways to get to know each other and spend time together in the virtual world. Another way to argue this point is that VR technology has a lot of room for development. Therefore, "Minecraft" presents us with an obvious future direction: let users build their world! It also has social functions, allowing users to build together with their peers.

The future direction for video conferencing is slightly different, but still overlaps with VR: millions of people use Skype, but there is a lot of evidence that the key is not the reproduction of the image, but the sound. The purpose of people who want to stay in touch is not to simply see each other, but to be aware of each other's existence. As with the Internet itself, it is the interaction between people, not the technology itself. Over the years, I have seen many people return to a virtual world many times. What makes them stay? It is because they find friends in the virtual world and find things to do with their friends. On the other hand, why are many virtual worlds abandoned by users despite the great efforts to build them, and now they have become ghost towns? Simply because those seemingly perfect worlds do not provide users with space for communication and interesting things.

videoconference

Virtual worlds have very limited affordances: only vision and hearing. So virtual worlds are very different from the real world.

There are many possibilities for both virtual reality, whether it is a photo-realistic presentation or a computer-simulated virtual world. For the photo-realistic virtual world, we can visit places we want to go, establish real relationships with people we may not meet in the vast crowd, and gain a new perspective on the real world and interpersonal communication. For computer-simulated virtual time, our imagination space is even greater: from creating buildings, flying freely, to building cities, to establishing new communication rules in the new virtual world.

Of course, these two directions can also be intertwined: people can put a photo-realistic head on a cartoon body, or present a three-dimensional image of a real person in a cartoon world. It can be to create an animated little man dancing freely among real clouds, or a real body dancing among cartoon clouds. Whether it is now or in the future, we have these two different possibilities of virtual reality, and there are also a series of technologies that allow us to travel between the two worlds.

In short, although playing games or watching movies with VR technology can meet the entertainment needs of some people, such applications do not fully develop the potential of VR technology. The full development of VR technology will have to wait until people find out how to make the virtual world rich in connotation and suitable for increasing social experience.

From: Internet Frontier