Is VR a Gimmick?

I recently had a keyboard warrior tell me, “VR is really, genuinely unhealthy. There are case studies to prove that VR is damaging to the brain and mind. VR is unnecessary because they are gimmicky and tricky, to convince you to buy them, when in reality they have no true technological merit besides the engineering”. 

Of course, there was a lot more to it than that, but it got me thinking, do people really see VR as a gimmick?

On the face of it, it really does look like a phase, a gimmick that will come and go out in a few years. I mean, smartphone VR is pretty bad- there are hardly any good experiences and the experience is very fragmented. At best it’s mildly annoying and at worst it’s plain irritating. I’ve got a Google Cardboard headset and I use it on a LG G3 and LG G4. To be clear, when it works, it’s amazing. The way it transports you into space, a singer’s stage, a roller coaster or even your own mind, it’s simply stunning. I was wowed by my first experience.

But soon enough the annoyances set in. First, the lack of good apps to use on VR. There’s hardly any good VR apps that truly give you the experience that you want from VR. I found some good games, about three of them, that give me the experience of mind blowing that I was seeking. Not much more than that. Second, the annoying way you have to take your phone out every time you want to switch apps- there’s little to no form of a VR platform. I found an app that offered to do this but I didn’t find it useful to do what I wanted. Other things like the lack of controls you have to see where you’re going or the fact that it’s simply quite expensive to get into VR for real, make VR pretty much look like a gimmick for the ordinary person.

The better VR experiences offered by devices like the Oculus Rift or HTC Vive are simply too far off for ordinary consumers to ever buy or experience, because the amount of power needed to run them is very expensive- you need a highly specced gaming PC, and the total cost for all of that will be over a £1000 pounds at least.

So it’s easy to come to the conclusion that VR is just the next big gimmick that manufacturers want you to buy, but while that, in essence, is true, there is more to VR than meets the eye.

Let’s start off my dissecting my keyboard warrior "brother’s" argument against VR.

He says, “VR is really, genuinely unhealthy. There are case studies to prove that VR is damaging to the brain and mind”. How true is this?

First, let’s put this into context. VR is a new technology. People are scared of it; just like they are with every other new technology. There are studies done on our mobile technology and computers too, they too "damage your brain". Everything we use has some element of harm; we have to use it properly to not harm ourselves, it's obvious. Heck, when TVs first arrived everyone was just as worried about them as we are of VR: “they hurt your eyes”, “they hurt concentration”, “they are distracting”, the whole lot. There is an element of truth to them, you can’t deny it, but we’re still alive aren’t we? We haven’t been doomed by them, we haven’t become a lesser species because of them. Go back even further and look at radios. I’m sure there was as much of a fuss about them as there was for TVs. Your grandparents survived the radio and our parents survived the TV. What on earth is there to say about the VR generation? We’re going to survive that too.

So to answer the question, there’s always going to be some “bad” effect on us, but let’s be clear: it’s not “dangerous”. I mean, they’re going to be about as bad as any technology we’ve met before them. There is no real evidence to say that they damage our brain, that’s utter rubbish. If they do, it’s down to the adverse effects of our reward seeking nature binging on it to get a dopamine rush, which is something we’ve always done- it just has to be controlled and used correctly. So unless you’re an absolute nut and watch VR to seek a dopamine rush every time, which is very unlikely- there are better ways to get this done- you’re perfectly safe using VR in the correct environment, in the correct way, for a safe amount of time, JUST LIKE EVERYTHING ELSE. I wouldn’t even go as far as to say it’s in anyway bad, hence inverted commas.

The next thing, our friend says “It’s unnecessary because they are gimmicky and tricky, to convince you to buy them, when in reality they have no true technological merit besides the engineering”.

We’ve already covered the point as to whether it the next big thing that manufacturers are trying to convince us to buy; it’s true, but like everything else, if you think about it only as a trick, what good thing on this earth isn’t advertised to us?

So, is VR a gimmick or not? At face value, to us, it does seem like an awful lot like a gimmick, but I strongly beg to differ.

VR and Augmented Reality are amazingly practical and it's shown by how it’s being used in their science, in policing and journalism as well as entertainment. My favourite example is how NASA is using the Microsoft Hololense to build their next Mars Rover and prepare astronauts for Space Travel. It's irreplaceable to them: They have said many times that is indispensable in aiding their development, and it is one of the most useful technologies that they've ever got their hands on. There are some amazing videos of how NASA engineers are using AR and VR on the Microsoft HoloLens to visualise the next Mars Rover and the surface of Mars.  Virtual reality training has also made it easier for the teams of future astronauts to work together and communicate too, which is a classic application of the technology.

Police Agencies are using them to train people or to recreate crime scenes so that people can remember the incidents and so that other people can experience them. Auschwitz camps victims are given VR experiences which recreate the conditions during the war so that survivors can remember what the camp was like and hopefully flash back and remember the soldiers who tortured them, data which international agencies will use to relocate those soldiers and give them the punishments they deserve. They've already managed to use it to aid the prosecution of a surviving Nazi soldier.

VR is also being used in Journalism. The Guardian used a VR film to give ordinary people the experience of living in solitary confinement in 2016 as one of their first forays into the world of world of VR. Mobile phone companies have started to release phones in VR worlds, most notably beginning with OnePlus’s OnePlus Three launch and Samsung’s S7 launch which featured VR extensively, and the “Project Syria” VR experience by Nonny de la Peña sought to give people the experience of being a Syrian child refugee.

We all know how extensively the entertainment industry plans to use VR! Gaming is obviously a big one. Steam already has a huge section dedicated to VR games and there are some games to buy, if you can run them. VR on mobile is also mostly focused on gaming too, but like I said there aren’t many great apps to choose from yet. You can’t, however, deny that VR gaming when done right, is just amazing. You can see how much fun you can have with VR gaming if you simply search YouTube, and in my opinion, it’s the next logical step for gaming technology.

So is VR a gimmick? In actual reality*, hell no it ain’t!

It’s the next big thing; it’s about as important as TVs or smartphones. It’s a real technological advancement, it has the potential to change our lives, our society. Right now, it doesn’t have quite enough development to make it so influential, but I look forward to the day the ordinary person can buy one like they buy a TV or a smartphone. It’s an amazing piece of technology that can be applied in so many ways that we never thought was possible. It’s our own reality, and it takes us back into sci-fi, heck, it takes us INTO sci-fi! It should be given the time and attention necessary to become a very enriching experience as part of our society. Virtual/Augmented/Mixed Reality is the next generation of magic that is technology. Give it some time, it can get better.

Thanks for reading!

*virtual reality- actual reality? Haha, haha! No?

Ponderings:

VR could probably replace the TV in future- but at the expense of losing the social aspect of TV, which I think should be given a lot of thought. Instead of cocooning a person in their own world, like a smartphone or tablet, developers need to work on keeping some aspect of social interaction in VR. TV, it has that ability: it can connect people- bringing together in one place- in front of the sofa, the store front or hotel lounge. Smartphones, they connect us to the distant world while separating us from the immediate world, which I think is their biggest flaw. VR, while it has all its perks, looks like the next big advancement in isolation technology, and I don’t there’s anything good about that. 

What do you think? Comment below!