Tag Archives: reality

VR Jobs – Alternately Reality

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Occulus VR Headset -> CCP Pilot Ship -> Convert ISK to real money -> Pay to be a flight pilot -> Actually have them control a real ship in space to mine -> OMG

I daydream about the future and I wonder why some people don’t any more. They are too present in what’s happening now. The best part about daydreaming is that you can root part of it into the facts and observations of the now and link it to what may just seem to be within grasp.

People have analysed and scrutinised science fiction for predictions and facts. We have 2001 a Space Odyssey with its flat screens and its pretend gravity. Some aspects of which we’re still waiting on. There was Jules Verne, perhaps not strictly seen as science fiction by some but still the use of submarines wasn’t necessarily common. Then there’re tales such as Neuromancer and The Matrix assuming that we’ll all be taken over by the machines or use virtual reality as if it’s real; but what you don’t greatly see, or perhaps no-one is noticing. Is when the virtual reality interacts with the real. It begs the question, what is real? Why isn’t it real just because it’s digital? Physical? Are feelings nought but electrical impulses firing and we’re mimicking this?

I play Eve Online. Bare with me. The premise and role of this game is that you are a person, you fly a ship in space. Your role? Anything you want. It’s open, you’re in a sandbox environment where you can build and destroy and do as you please with money and with goods and services. In fact, it is possible to sustain your subscription to the game by making in-game money to purchase more time cards, however you may have to sink a lot of time into the game to get this far.

It practically emulates life, you (can) have a job and be part of a clan, a corporation. To simplify you can be a trader, a fighter or a miner. It’s being a miner that I’m most interested in with the point I’m trying to make here.

CCP, the company behind Eve Online have started to work with Oculus Rift, this simulation or game allows you to virtually enter a spacecraft within the Eve Online universe. The craft is also directly controlled as opposed to instructed as previously done.

So the thought I had was, what if CCP effectively became a bank. Or at least could trade/buy/sell money like Second Life. In Second Life the name says it all, you’re meant to be able to have a job, create items, goods, clothing, mainly aesthetic items but also script and 3D model items to be traded and sold. It’s entirely possible there are people in the world who make a living being paid working for others in the game or at least selling their virtual goods. Even purchasing land.

I’m saying that if CCP did that, you would have a virtual job, a futuristic job, flying a spacecraft.

I’m not done.

We can bridge this gap. We already use software programming to control real life hardware. There is a virtual jump there to something physical. You create your code and you upload it to your chip, that chip can then send out signals and control hardware. This is a high level concept and there are many details which would need to be ironed out before this would be realistic in what I’m about to suggest.

What if we really mined asteroids and you controlled the mining ship from inside a rendered simulation, or a real-time feed from home using similar or the same controls which you already used inside the game, such as Eve Online ? Perhaps you could pre-configure the commands and route to do the job or you could do it live. Latency issues aside.

Mining asteroids is more than likely really coming. How we actually mine them has yet to be ascertained. Reducing life risk and cost whereby we could control drones to do it would, as I see it, be advantageous. Perhaps we’re already refining the controls and scheme to do it? Perhaps we’re already running the simulations, maybe we’ll be doing it for real within 300 years.

I do not like sitting at Computers

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In the days when I mainly used my Nintendo Entertainment System, then the Commodore Amiga 1200 it consisted of sitting on the floor by the television. This quickly evolved into having my own, smaller, television where I then sat at a desk with the Amiga 1200.

After many years I’ve been prone to the typical pains that blight many users, lower back pain, repetitive strain injury in the wrists, neck, headaches, etc. I think to myself:

“Wouldn’t it be nicer, if using a computer felt more natural to how we interact with everyday objects. Sure, using a mouse or a game-pad can be a fast way to use items but is it not possible for me to walk, to sit, to just think and control a computer?”

I believe it is. Devices such as the OCZ Neural Impulse Actuator have came along, while not believed by many and picked up by few. This is a step in a good direction.

Not only this, though, for I also dislike computer monitors. In fact, they are such a hazard that there is written UK law on the correct installation and use of them in the workplace. So how, then, about using Vuzix Eyewear ? Or how about, Google’s Project Glass ? It’s not entirely science-fiction either as some people have attempted to put it together.

Still, this is not quite full interaction with a computer system. Relying purely on voice. It feels to me that it requires something else, something tangible to interact with. How far away are we, from the type of interaction you can get from Heavy Rain’s ‘ARI’ ?

How would such a system work? Is it possible that a ‘virtual reality’ system such as this could actually interact with the ‘real world’ ? How would it map it?

With technology such as Microsoft’s Kinect that can map an area in 3D, perhaps if it could be made in such a smaller scale or even implemented into standard rooms (or perhaps into something being worn so that it is done as it is viewed) then this can be presented and interacted with as required via some form of eye-wear or, as some are even calling it, ‘wearable computing‘ which it appears, is not an entirely new concept but is being discussed.

Still, we are a little away from the technology depicted within fiction and while the current solutions do not entirely take into account control from the mind, I firmly believe that it is possible to get there and I would love to be able to work with it.