Virtuality and Experience
“All Reality is Virtual.”
Lots of mind boggling experiments and images have been made to show off how the human brain perceives things. Check out these simple illusions, for example:
The white tile under the desk is the same color as the black tile. Another one of my favorite optical illusions is called the Shepard’s Tables, which you can view below.
The two examples are both vision based, but our other senses are also engaged from the illusory elements. Nonetheless, our experience is made up of our brain’s best guess at what our senses pick up.
Let’s remember, humans are not perfect biological entities, we have evolved and adapted to figure things out on earth in order to survive and flourish. When we step into abstract places like a 2D illustration, we can perceive literal ‘out of this world’ objects.
What makes VR tech so amazing to me is its capacity to expand human experience. There is a potential for a technological interface that integrates every aspect of our humanity — imagine using your whole body, orientation, position, and stance, to interact with technology. It would be a major upgrade to our lifestyle of putting hands on a keyboard.
These VR technology companies employ ethos to emphasize the impact of VR, and while VR may have that perceived impact, the Matrix argument of a ‘fake’ but perfect reality being more appealing than an imperfect real one is ever so present. But as the argument is refuted in the matrix:
“What is Real? How do you define ‘real’? If you’re talking about what you can feel, what you can smell, what you can taste and see, then ‘real’ is simply electrical signals interpreted by your brain.”
With this concept, and like Elon Musk has popularized, the chance of our own reality being a simulation increases in certainty as we are able to build increasingly complex simulations.
So, what if we were to assume that the life we live isn’t real. That like old civilizations and tribes, we believed to be one with the earth, that everything around what we call the self, is in fact what we are. In traditional terms, enlightenment, to become everything, as it becomes you, and the power that comes with this change in perception.
Another great thinker pointed out that the true and most accurate reality of an element of existence is abstract, and not something that can be felt or perceived. The very act of naming a thing, orders our experience and clears our head of all the other element’s this ‘thing’ is made up of.
All of this might seem like just a bunch of philosophical nonsense, but designers have these qualities in mind for whatever project is at hand. Experience creator’s must think this way in order to capture the viewer or player’s perception. Like magic, games are illusions, just a bunch of crafted, well-organized code designed to make you see or feel a certain way. The code and feelings aren’t as simple as ‘when your health reaches zero, trigger the GAME OVER screen,’ designers are in charge of experiences, and we can make your health bar zero when you are in fact invulnerable. In a recent twitter thread, designers were relinquishing their game’s secrets.
Have a look at some of them here.
As architects of the virtual world, we have a responsibility to trick people in order to provide the experience they so desperately want. Illusions are good at a magic show, but not at a bank. What is real may be hard to find in some places but trust and our humanity are the most important qualities we have, and should be kept in the forefront when designing experiences.
More articles to come — see you next month!
Works Cited:
Abrash, Michael. “VR’s Grand Challenge: Michael Abrash on the Future of Human Interaction.” Oculus, Oculus, 24 July 2017, www.oculus.com/blog/vrs-grand-challenge-michael-abrash-on-the-future-of-human-interaction/.