There are plenty of ways that people try to escape the sometimes underwhelming
reality of everyday life. Going to the movies, visiting the local watering
hole, or just sleeping until noon. But there's been a lot of buzz recently
about the idea of actually immersing yourself in a virtual world with a
virtual reality headset such as the Oculus Rift or HTC Vive. But even though
the concept of plugging a generalpurpose VR headset into a gaming PC is just
starting to take off, people have been sticking their heads into virtual
environments for quite some time. All the way back to
1962 when the world was introduced to the
Sensorama, a contraption that not only played 3D movies, but could tilt the
viewer's seat and even simulate wind and different odors. A few years later, a
headset called the Sword of Damocles came out. Man, they had better names
back then. Rift Vive, I want a Sword of Damocles. The name was because it was so
heavy though that it had to be suspended from the ceiling. Although it could only
display simple wireframe graphics, it was considered the first true VR
headset. Virtual reality NVIDIA games
didn't really start appearing until the 1980s when we started seeing arcade
games like Battle Zone that used a periscope viewfinder to immerse players
in the action and 3D glasses that were
available for consoles like the Sega Master System. 1995 brought us the
Nintendo Virtual Boy, the first mass marketed VR console. But although that
one was marketed as being a totally immersive experience, its underwhelming
monochrome graphics and difficulty of use made it one of the worst flops in
Nintendo history. However, other companies were working on PC compatible
headsets during this time, and the evolution of technology over the years
ultimately gave us the high-spec VR headsets of today. But then, how do they
work? Modern VR headsets show slightly
different images to each of your eyes to
fool your brain into thinking the 2D image on the screen is actually 3D. This
principle is called stereoscopy and is actually similar to how the screen on a
Nintendo 3DS works. To achieve a higher level of immersion, VR headsets use
special lenses to increase the user's field of view, as well as pixels with
very quick response times to reduce motion blur, meaning OLED screens have
become popular for headsets, which you can learn more about here. By the way,
unlike a monitor, which can deliver a perfectly enjoyable gaming experience at
60 frames per second, headsets have
higher refresh rates, typically around 90 Hz, and the high quality ones today,
which is important because lower frame rates, lower refresh rates, can be
disorienting in a VR context and cause motion sickness. Not what you want after
you've dropped several hundred bucks on a Rift or a Vive. Because though of the
high frame rate requirement and the headset resolutions that are well beyond
1080p, a high-end PC system is basically
a necessity. But beyond just graphics, VR headsets have sensors like gyroscopes
and accelerometers to allow for head tracking so that what you see will
change depending on where you're looking. Some headsets like the HTC Vive
even use separate external base stations and lasers to enable whole room tracking
so the system can detect the motion of your hands as well. So, as you can
imagine, these headsets don't exactly come cheap. Fortunately, other lowerc
cost VR solutions are becoming increasingly popular, such as Google
Cardboard, which isn't much more than a couple of lenses inside a cardboard box
with a slot where you can insert a smartphone. Developers have already
written quite a few apps for Cardboard, making it a way to enjoy VR on the cheap
if you don't have the coin for a gaming rig and a fancier headset. And although
this new generation of VR headsets is just now hitting the market, there's
already quite a bit of industry support, meaning that VR has the potential to
really shake up how we experience games on both PCs and consoles. Maybe one day
we'll even have VR Techquiki. I mean, after all, don't you want the experience
of feeling like you're in the same room as
me? Yeah, it's really not that exciting.
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purchase. Squarespace, you should. What
should you do? I don't know, but you should do it. So, thanks for watching,
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