One of the aspects of Virtual Reality that makes it so compelling and useful is it’s ability to fool your mind into believing that the simulated experience is real, or real enough.  In the demonstrations I’ve been doing with student’s I have them “Walk the Plank” virtually, and sometimes they have a real visceral reaction.  There were some folks who tried to walk the plank and couldn’t finish, they just could not overcome the fear that they felt.  To them that fear is real, even though the danger is not.

This past week this video kept popping up in my suggested feed and I kept ignoring it.  The video was about a mother who lost their child and was virtually reunited using VR technology.  I avoided watching the video at first, but since it kept popping up I relented and clicked.  To be honest, I found it too emotional and could only skip through.  It’s rather heart breaking, and here it is if you dare, I still haven’t watched the entirety myself.

I’m not going to break down the video, it’s not really my area of expertise, however here’s an article from VR Scout, an outfit my friend Bobby often writes for, that explains this better than I ever could.

If you take away anything from this I think it should be how VR can have a deep emotional impact on people.  At the end of the video, the woman’s daughter turns into a butterfly and flies away.  For someone who is having difficulty letting go, I can imagine that this could be an incredibly effective treatment.  As VR technology progresses I see more and more uses like this.

In my news feed this morning were several articles about Oculus doing away with the Oculus Go.  It’s a bit of a bummer, as I have 5 of these units in my office for use at the college.  The apps will continue to work, however at a certain point I’m sure that Oculus will stop creating updates and patches, and developers will likely stop making apps and software for the Go.

I can totally see why they did this.  As the articles explain the Oculus Quest is killing it, last I knew it was so popular it’s still on back order. The Quest is a fantastic piece of hardware and I rarely use the Go anymore now that I have a Quest to experiment with.  Overall this is a good sign of progress in VR, older technology being lapped by the new.  Perhaps we will see more options for the Quest, or even an updated model.

Part of me was thinking that this could be a good opportunity to buy up Go’s cheap — but I really don’t have any specific uses for it.  The VirZOOM equipment I use for the exercise bike also works with the Quest, although the Go is really all that’s needed.  In fact, visiting their page just now it seems they have updated it with video and images using mainly the quest, you have to scroll down the page a bit before you see an image using the Go.

Honestly this is one of the things I enjoy about technology, there’s always something new going on!

Going forward I hope to write in this blog more regularly.  I just went through my calendar and saved a bunch of spots for writing and posting for the next few weeks.  I’ve found that scheduling time for writing really helps to make sure it happens.