Knee Deep In The Virtual Dream, - a psychological reaction

[apmTech]

Hi guys, big fan of future tech, I had the opportunity to spend some time with the Rift, and I wrote a stream of consciousness style reaction to the technology.
I tried to very critical as well as positive, to avoid being just another echo in the community. However, I seem to be unable to find much criticism that could not be fixed in the future and that Oculus isn't already hard at work on.

I put some effort in writing a raw and genuine reaction report, and I hope you can spare 3 mins to read it. I touch on some philosophical/psych aspects of the technology, let me know what you think.
I touch on what I call the "just real enough effect" A phenomenon that can be experienced in VR as an alternate to uncanny valley.

some quotes -

I don't think the VR train can be stopped now, for the long term. People have seen too much. The tech community has had a tiny taste of what might be possible one day and won't let go anymore.

This may not be Neo's Matrix, but if the original style and flavor of (virtual visionaries) William Gibson and Neal Stephenson's Cyberspace was an imperfect but immersive collection of computerized universes that you can inhabit by putting a device over your eyes, complete with resolution problems, very variable stereo quality, and rippling effects when you turn unnaturally hard, then this devkit is as close to Cyberspace as you will ever get, because it is cyberspace, any improvements might stray from the hacker-prototype feeling.

After taking off the head mount I look around the room. Reality feels obviously more real, like reality compared to a dream. But VR is far more interesting than the glowing rectangle monitor the developer is looking at. Whilst in VR its very easy to forget that people these days use computers by looking at a flat rectangle. Perhaps that's all you need to start a revolution.

http://www.planettechnews.com/reviews/item3922

read it here

Enjoy and let me know!

[virror]

Very interesting read, thanks for writing this : )

[Alesh]

Reality feels obviously more real, like reality compared to a dream.

Perhaps not a very good analogy. I think it's worth pointing out that "reality" is a relative term, because when you are dreaming, this IS your reality. You BELIEVE it is real, no matter how bizzare the dream is. If this was not true you would always be aware that you are dreaming as soon as the dream starts. It is only when you wake up that you realize you had a dream. Your dream reality and your waking reality are two different states of consciousness.
VR experience however is always happening in your waking reality (unless you're dreaming about VR and no matter how realistic the experience is, you will always know it's fake and that there's a "real" world waiting for you when you take off the device. So keeping this is mind, you cannot really compare VR to a dream because they are experienced within a different state of consciousness.

[apmTech]

Alesh, Yeah I thought about that after I wrote it, I was trying to capture the idea of the moment you wake from a crazy dream, you see the light coming through the window and thin, "how did I believe THAT dream was real??" - yeah I see your point about reality being relative.

BTW for all those who consider yourselves big VR fans, If you manage to get all the subtle and not so subtle allusions to VR in this writeup, you are a geeky GOD sir!