To get to real immersion, milestones need to be skipped

[Mitbekommer]

There are more and more efforts being made to create the so-called " immersive" experience. But they are not interconnected. There is no one-fits-all approach. All of those developments, may it be the HMZ-T1 or the Omni or some force feedback device for your body, might be the best that people currently can come up with, but I already see them fading into unimportance.

I want to skip all of those developments. After all, immersion can only be accomplished by actually influencing the brain.

Yeah it's scary.

"Don't you mess with my brain, I only have one".

But to be really immersed, to have all kinds of smells, tastes, touch sensations and visual experiences, you cannot avoid accessing the brain directly.

What are your thoughts? (Pun intended)

[Mitbekommer]

I can already see the kickstarter-clone campaign of 2030:

"Totally immersive experience".

Using this tiny device powered by your own heart - connectors included - you can experience virtual reality with all of your senses. Just connect it to your Xbox -200(They will count backwards and didn't know what to name it after Xbox 1). You can connect your Xbox -200 to your personal pocket power plant(driven by tiny fuel rods). This device enables you to let the game control your brain the way you have always wanted it to do.

Don't escape into virtual worlds, make virtual worlds your reality.™

[zalo]

Grant money for this kind of stuff is hard to come by unless we drum up some hype for early tech.

Besides, direct-to-brain interfaces might not be the end game. Here are two posts I did earlier on the subject:
http://www.mtbs3d.com/phpBB/viewtopic.p ... 06#p105106

http://www.mtbs3d.com/phpBB/viewtopic.p ... 67#p103167

And I'm sure I did a post somewhere else describing a special chair that would constrain your movement on every axis to make measuring muscle impulses and stimulating stretch receptors on tendons easier...

[colocolo]

it is certainly possible. Miguel Nicolelis has done some groundbreaking research here. if you youtube his talks it will make you breathless. (adapting new senses , a possibility for us to encode some of the most discussed philosophical themes like what is smelling,seeing???)
the bigger barrier here is certainly if a brain interface is invasive or not. Right now all major accomplishements were achieved by direct invasive brain interfaces. e.g. a monkey controlling a virtual avatar or a third robot arm.
the brain seems to be a very adaptive thing as it also should be or otherwise we couldnt learn so many new things.
i could foresee invasive brain interface with a bundle of hundredthousand nanowires, but only for the far,far future when humans are like teddybears. Now, how the current situation is, sure not.
But who knows perhaps there will be noninvasive methods like nitrogen-vacancy center MRI.
as a brain can be slightly repurposed it would be awesome to see if we could one day assimilate a monkeys body(with tail) or have two wings. All those creatures have basically the same skeleton as we have since we evolutionary derived from them, so it could be that with a brain interface we could really control other bodys skeleton/muscles.
But already with STEM cool things should be possible, like controlling a T-Rex or Raptor....

[Mitbekommer]

As soon as you can be sure that you can go back to reality without any drawbacks, this technology will come. And it requires you to have a non-invasive method, some helmet you put on that alters brain functionality by transcranial stimulation looks promising and realistic.

[nateight]

I hear you, Mitbekommer. I'm still not entirely sold on omnidirectional treadmills; my immersion won't be complete until I can route around this annoying physical meatsack. I'm a William Gibson guy - I want my 'trodes! Sadly, I'm not sure we even can skip milestones like this. Drilling nanowires into brain matter isn't a great way to drive mainstream VR adoption, no matter how immersive. Emotiv's approach seems like the best bet, and even that is apparently still miles away from what we'll eventually have. But maybe after Oculus makes a few billion dollars selling Rifts? One can hope...

[blazespinnaker]

Vr is just a stepping stone to immortality.

what we really need is the ability to upload our brains to the substrate.

[colocolo]

Vr is just a stepping stone to immortality.

what we really need is the ability to upload our brains to the substrate.

i cannot share this opinion. i think if we would become immortal we would pretty sure loose our personality at some day.
real immortality is to not fear death and identify yourself with other people.
that way we would come around individual desires to survive mankind.
its basically the development of a individual selfwareness that led us into that miserable way of thinking about life. individuality is highly exaggerated, especially nowadays. Everyone wants to set himself/herself apart from one another.
we must concentrate on a immortal humankind, that is to spread our civilization throughout space.
i dont want to say that i dont fear death till now, but i cannot see the sense of a immortal individual if all beings replicate themselves already(would be easier to transfer aging personalities to offsprings technically). Only to play a bit longer funny games or whatelse???
Eternity is long, especially near the end.

[blazespinnaker]

Well... there's no such thing as 'immortality'. All things to come an end eventually. Hackers might destroy the substrate, for example. The sun can go super nova.

There's always something to fear if that's your thing.

And hey, time is an illusion (lunchtime, doubly so)

Change your clock speed and 10 thousand years could feel like 100.

I wouldn't mind living a few 100 years in silicon though, especially if the physics were interesting and the resolution was high enough. Being able to fly, teleport at will, create anything I need out of thin air. Could be fun!

(Of course, the new limited resource would likely be cpu cycles...of course, isn't that the way things are going already? Like Gibson says, we already are in VR)

[colocolo]

yeah, it would be indeed fun. and a few extra years ,too.
i have only noticed that nowadays so many people are desperately obsessed with the idea of singularity especially since we live in a world with so much high-tech.
sometimes i have just the idea to speak against this madness in order to releave people from this pressure. its not that i am in principal against it but i find it sad that so many people put their future hopes in it. i would find it better if those people just relax and enjoy live the old school way.

[Mitbekommer]

Life is boring the old-school way. What technology is offering is a drug, without it you see how little the world can actually contribute for the human brain.

[colocolo]

Life is boring the old-school way. What technology is offering is a drug, without it you see how little the world can actually contribute for the human brain.

thats far leaned out of the window. Reality is still where technology is embedded.
what is the sense of such a vast universe(called reality) where all components seem to have their function, if we suddenly can live within a chip?
it would make the universe look ridiculous. although it will be very intersting to see if one day noninvasive brain interfaces will be common at least for some real/virtual sensory touch and virtual limb control(like, look you f....god, we have created our own universe where nobody gets killed senseless). yeah it would be cool.... but i highly doubt that all will be possible much like travelling throughout space and galaxies isnt possible in one lifespan.
i guess we will live within changing times, VR will be big and yes space tourism and space energy will come back! (look out for Skylon(key) and Mirasol/Girasol spacebased solar power)
Probably brain mapping and interfaces will be big also within the coming decade. There will be A LOT
more VR freaks like us around the world...