Blurring the Line: Where the Virtual Becomes Reality

By David Jagneaux
March 18, 2015 | 2:00pm

I stretched out my arm and wiggled each of the fingers on my right hand
individually; everything seemed to be working just fine. As I turned my head back
and forth, I marveled at the bright colors and familiar games surrounding me.
There were buckets for me to throw a ball into and cans stacked in a pyramid ready
to be knocked over. I reached down and curled my fingers around a small ball at
my side. Once I lifted my hand up, the ball came with it and I tossed it into one of
the nearby buckets. Every visual and auditory signal my mind was receiving told
me I was literally standing in the middle of an outdoor carnival setting, but I
wasnt.
I was actually just sitting in a chair at a booth in the middle of GDC. I was actually
just wearing an Oculus Rift on my face and a motion-capture glove from Perception
Neuron on my hand. I was actually just playing a virtual reality game, but Ill be
damned if that virtual experience didnt actually feel real to me.

Virtual reality technology is the craze right now. Every few years there is this next
big thing on the horizon, whether it be the internet, smartphones, mobile gaming
or any other seemingly marvelous advancement in technology as we see it. Whether
we like it or not, virtual reality has been that new big thing for a few years now.
Its always been an interesting balancing act between science-fiction and true
scientific advancement. Do we credit Apple with the popularization of the
smartphone, or do we credit one of the countless movies, TV shows and other
works of fiction that imagined pocket computers beforehand? Similarly, is the
Oculus Rift really aiming to be the worlds first consumer-level virtual reality
device, or is it just iterating on concepts that have existed for dozens of years?
Maybe Nintendos Virtual Boy would have a thing or two to say about that.
Regardless, its clear that the games industry is expanding beyond the restrictive
boundaries of geek culture to encompass the entirety of the public consciousness.
The previous generation of gaming hardware was defined by a wide range of
gaming experiences. Triple-A games like the Call of Duties and Assassins Creeds of
the world proved that gaming is a multi-billion dollar industry that rivals
Hollywood, while the mobile market has shown that whether were on our couches
or on a bus, everyone loves to play games whenever possible. Gaming is bigger now
than it has ever been and the market is undergoing a momentous shift towards
expansive access and diverse ways to play.
And now that shift is leading straight towards companies like the aforementioned
Oculus and Perception Neuron, among many others, that are redefining how we
interact in virtual spaces. As someone that begins to experience the basementdweller equivalent of withdrawal symptoms if I go longer than a day or two without
playing a game, I think I can speak for a lot of people when I say that Ive often felt
like a controller was an extension of myself.

When I say that, I dont mean that Im nave enough to think a controller, or
keyboard for that matter, is growing out of my arm. But rather, that I can quite
easily become so enraptured by a game that I cease to be aware of my
surroundings. Im no longer pressing buttons on my Dualshock 4 or clicking my
mouseIve been transported to the mind of my character and I am in the game.
Weve all felt it before. Roleplaying as the Commander of the Normandy in Mass
Effect, gunning down enemies in Battlefield or patrolling the streets of Gotham
inArkham Cityyou start to become the character and the character starts to
become you. With the advent of virtual reality technology, the meaning of
interactivity is quickly changing.

At GDC in San Francisco, I was experiencing first-hand the relative identity crisis
our beloved medium is going through. In one location, I saw triple-A developers,
development studios ran by a single person, international publishing studios, small
indie teams, and everything in between. In that giant overlapping void in the

middle sits all of the virtual reality technology. There are options that are priceprohibitive for indie studios and there are cost-effective VR tools. A studio can
pursue full-body interaction or just head-tracking or motion controlled hand-held
devices. It was breathtaking to see so much in-development technology on display
in a single location.
Once I lifted the Oculus Rift off of my head in Perception Neurons booth at GDC, I
immediately knew that I had just experienced something truly special. Their glove
created an environment in which I wasnt flicking an analog stick to move an arm
on-screen, I wasnt pressing a button to grab the ball and I certainly wasnt pulling
a trigger to throw the ball; I was physically interacting with a non-physical
environment. The Oculus Rift and other virtual reality headsets are little more
than glorified screens strapped onto someones head with motion tracking enabled
its impressive, but its not really changing the way I interact with games, just
how I view them. Theyre essential and innovative pieces of an overall much larger
puzzle, but mere pieces nevertheless.
In order for virtual reality to truly break out from beneath the science-fiction fueled
shadow of expectations and judgment, it has to truly offer groundbreaking
advances in interactivity. Im not sure if were there yet, but were getting closer.
One demo I experienced at GDC was at the Sixense booth. Sixense is a company
that raised over half a million dollars about a year and a half ago on Kickstarter to
develop a new type of way to interact with virtual worlds called the STEM System.
The concept was to abandon the current technology that relies on gyroscopes and
outdated motion sensors to detect motion and orientation by incorporating a more
advanced and accurate electromagnetic powered design. While testing the
handheld portions of the unit on the floor at GDC, I can attest to the fact that, as a
motion-controller skeptic, I came away impressed.

The team wisely chose a demo that pit each player on a small suspended platform
with a robust selection of differently colored lightsabers for them to choose from. I
reached out, picked up two lightsabersone for each handand saw them extend
in my hands. The STEM System allowed me to not only move my hands from sideto-side all around my environment, but it recognized depth and responded fluidly.
Because their system doesnt need a line-of-sight to the base or rely on inertial
sensors, I could wave my hands in a dancing frenzy as my lightsabers flashed and
spun around the screen. A virtual droid hovered around my head, shooting lasers
that I would deflect back at it, and my movements were represented immediately
and accurately in the virtual space. No lag, no learning curve.
A few booths away, the Virtuix Omni was on an elevated platform. Inside the unit
was a relatively tall and slender man holding a plastic battle rifle with an Oculus
Rift on his face, actually running to play the first-person shooter he was plugged
into. Instead of pushing an analog stick forward, the Omni required him to
physically move his feet in order to progress in the game. Combined with the Rift as

a headset that moved the games camera as he moved his head, the line between
virtual and reality was becoming even blurrier than before.

Waving
a
controller around
that has motion
tracking features
such as the STEM
System,
PlayStation Move
or
the
Razer
Hydra
is
one
thingyou know
that youre still
holding
that
controller in your
hand, so it serves as a loose conduit between yourself and the virtual world.
Mirroring your real-life movements in a virtual space is something else entirely. I
put on a glove and my hand was now accurately represented inside of the game. I
strap on some sensors and my bodily movements were tracked and displayed on
the screen. I moved my legs in the Omni, and my character moved in the game.
These are all real actions that I was performing in the real world. At what point is
something deemed to be part of reality and not just fiction? When does an
interaction escape the digital space and break out of the boundaries defined by the
word virtual?

Back when MMOs and other virtual worlds first rose to popularity, this question
came up then as well. For example, if a player creates an avatar in their own
likeness, shares their name and then communicates with other players using that
avatar, is that still just a virtual environment? The words are real. The emotions

that fueled those words are real. The receptions and subsequent reactions to those
words are real. So, isnt that considered reality? Well, its not that simple.
Where do we draw the line? Is it good enough to just say that something is a
mixture of both virtual reality and real reality? Surely notthat doesnt sound
adequate. As a male in my mid-20s I possess the cognitive function to differentiate
between what is real and fictionI never actually thought I was throwing a ball into
a bucketbut my senses could have been fooled.
While I didnt see it at GDC, the KOR-FX gaming vest is another step towards
bridging that gap even further. One of the biggest criticisms I hear (and have
personally levied) is the lack of haptic feedback from most forms of VR technology.
When I grabbed the ball while wearing Perception Neurons glove, there was no
feedback in the glove itself letting me know that I had touched something in the
game. This creates an inherent disconnect that took some time for me to overcome
before I was comfortable; the KOR-FX gaming vest is a step towards remedying
this problem.
The vest transmits vibrations and other forms of haptic feedback into your body
based on whats happening in the game. Are you getting shot in the back? Youll
feel that. And fortunately, it doesnt use the spinning-motors used in rumble packs
and game controllers for vibration, but instead employs acoustic feedback with
special sensors to deliver more precise and targeted feedback to your body. Its not
enough to actually hurt youdont worry about getting your ass kicked like its
training day in the Matrix or anything like thatbut its enough to immerse you in
the experience.
I dont know if some top-secret plans are in the works for all of these companies to
team up and create the ultimate virtual reality experience, but there definitely
should be. If I could wear the Oculus Rift on my head, a full-body rendition of the
Perception Neuron sensors covering all of my fingers, hands, arms, legs, and body,
in addition to the KOR-FX gaming vest and Omni movement interface, I dont
know what would happen. I have half a mind to think that I would simply cease to
exist on this mortal plane and be teleported into cyber space where my mental state
and sensory feeling would be eternally uploaded to a mainframe of gaming bliss.
Thats my utopia.

Im sure if you checked my archive of tweets, Facebook posts and gaming articles,
there are surely more than a few instances where I have publicly decried the
feasibility of VR technology for gaming. I wasnt sold on headsets as replacements
for televisions and I foolishly thought that the Nintendo Wii and PlayStation Move
were the pinnacles of motion-based input. I was wrong.
I dont know how long its going to take virtual reality technology to actually reach
the point where its widely available to the masses, but its getting closer. One thing
I do know is that with each passing year, the line between virtual and reality
becomes less and less clear.