Consumer-ready virtual reality is just around the corner

Next year is touted as a potential for the ‘year of VR’ and as a wonderful precursor, people are already selling the hardware  required for only 99p. Some are even giving it away. This will ripple into higher education with video being a likely contender for early adopters. But what is VR and how does one get it for 99p (or free)? Well you need a smartphone and around 10-15 minutes of your life…

What is VR?

Virtual reality was resting firmly in the ‘cold’ part of the ‘what’s hot’ spectrum for about 20 years; but over the last 18-24 months it has leaped from the ice to the fire in a rapid way. It is now so cheap you can have it for 99p; which smacks the technology depreciation/throw-away market so hard in the face it may have to reinvent itself too (some people already talk of throwaway tablets). But what does it mean, and why does higher education care?

If you want to find out about VR I’d point you back to a previous post, or you should search around the internet a little bit. It’s an emerging technology which places screens very close to your head, and sensors to know where you’re looking, to simulate you being in another environment. It also needs a computer to power the images you see, and the movements you make to look/move around it.

Oculus Rift is a simple example of a complex tech landscape. Popularised when bought by Facebook for $lots the technology plugs into your computer and can provide you with an experience which some say is immersive, and others say is nauseating or induces cybersickness. But please remember, these are developer units; they’re not consumer friendly (yet – Q1 2016 isn’t far off). This sickness is as close as you may ever want to get to experiencing a software bug!

Oculus, and many others, share a similar trait – they need a powerful computer to use them. I’ve tried it on my Macbook Air – I had forgot the machine had a fan; it became too hot to touch (near the back). The lagginess from the ultraportable didn’t help the sickness. All in all, eww & gross. Some other laptops are better, but it’s still a little off-putting when you’re new toy needs to be put away and you need to go lie down as recovery.

Enter: the smartphone.

Google Cardboard was a mini-revolution in the VR field. Being provocative, ‘not evil’ and generally idiosyncratic in their approach, Google released what seemed like the most basic VR product possible – Cardboard. This was a few years ago now but it enabled anyone with a smartphone to start playing/developing. Developers, techies and big children started buying these and exploring a new world.

Smartphone + Video = one way to VR

Your smartphone is insanely powerful for the size of it. It has a tiny display, a powerful CPU and GPU, motion sensors, location awareness, it is personalised and portable. Slotting it into a Google Cardboard now makes it a Virtual Reality device; as it can show content and sense your every movement. It’s also low-threshold, in some sense, because you are already comfortable with it. Video on smartphones is already mainstream. So what about 360, spherical or immersive video?

One example is vrse.works who released two documentaries; Clouds Over Sidra and Waves of Grace. These two UN-backed ‘films’ were two, touching, compelling and utterly enthralling pieces of cinematic content. Watchers in a UN building, somewhere nice and safe, watched in Clouds Over Sidra how Sidra, a young girl in the Za’atari Refugee Camp and having fled from Syria, would offer a chance to explore her world. Chris Milk, Director at vrse.works commented in a TED talk how VR can be a bridge to empathy for the experiences of others.

99p VR

Google Cardboard wasn’t technically doing too much; it’s a complex puzzle the first time but you’re folding cardboard, adding lenses and sticking on a magnet. Children can do this; and many will this Christmas. The reason why? Cheap manufacturing has taken the cheap Google Cardboard and made it as cheap as the market can go; 99p! I have hunted on eBay and bought four of the rival offerings. I’ll report back with which is best, but from experience I am sure they’re all the same.

Free VR

Just to kick it to everyone – on Sunday 8th November 2015 the New York Times gave a free Cardboard VR kit to every reader.  Just to make a point? At this stage it doesn’t really matter; it got VR into another new audience, NYT readers (or their family/friends). You might even know someone with an unused voucher from their digital subscription, or willing to share theirs. NYT also released an App to share content and introduce their first documentary shot for the giveaway. Maybe, just maybe, they know it’s a part of the future landscape of journalism (like VICE News knows already) and want to break their readers in gently…

Back to the content – video first

Google Cardboard is also an app for Android and iOS. It has a video player which links to YouTube, which now supports 360 and VR video. If that doesn’t mean anything to you – STOP – and load this link (on your smartphone is best)

Welcome back to 2015

People are already making this content and there is a whole YouTube channel dedicated to it. There are also an increasing amount of apps for games, simulations, experiences, stories, social networking, explorable environments and more.

So what about higher education?

Video is the first logical step for changing HE. Who has not tried, or considered, lecture capture yet? Obiquity is likely but not so for VR, not yet anyway. To make 360/VR/spherical video you’ll need at least a 360 degree camera, which are also still quite expensive. But with this you’ll be able to capture any environment, action or event that is taking place. The trick isn’t necessarily in the editing, it’s in the experience you’re trying to capture. Imagine a researcher on a field trip; taking the watcher to a place they simply couldn’t go. Lab experiments can capture multiple synchronous events. How about an event that is so hard to replicate that you’ve only really got one shot – a rocket launching, blue moon Panda birth-type thing. The kind of event you want to capture but can’t even predict what should be in the frame, and what shouldn’t. VR video offers the playback of the whole environment, the viewer choses what to watch. It’s experimental now; but the power shifts towards the experience of viewing. Additionally; cameras can go when you can’t send a person; a volcano, to Mars or into the body – all quite tricky.

Proper VR needs a powerful amount of hardware; 99p VR does not. Video is a way in.

Limitation, there are still a few:

• You need a smartphone. The cardboard on it’s own is only going to distort the back of a pice of cardboard – very real, not very virtual.
• The official Google Cardboard app is for Android and iOS and it has a load of great content already (and more coming).
• It’s 99p. It will not feel comfortable, it’ll break, get dirty easily and probably not hold all types of smartphone.
• The really cheap ones don’t come with a strap for your head, so it’s hands-up to hold it.
• They are not shaped to any head.
• You’ve still got to put a thing on your head. Daftness points++

Summary

Throw it around, take it places and share it with people. It’s so cheap that 99p cardboard VR is worth the experiment if you have a smartphone. Also once used (or you’ve got bored of it) pass it on. Someone else can try it.

Conclusions

VR is nauseating but it also bring people right into an experience. Bugs will be fixed, hardware will improve, but this lack of gap between cheap and professional is similar to disposable cameras and SLRs. Say what you will about the smartphone requirement but it’s ever-more true that the world is connected via these devices. If they can also deliver a VR experience (and soon, capture them), imagine what’ll it be like when we’re all making the content too. It’s unlikely to become an immediate new must-have, but VR is coming and lodging itself in.

Closing thought on distance learning and virtual reality

I am learning, but the power of giving cheap VR to distance learners is certainly something to keep an eye on. This is one of my topics for exploration during 2016. I think it offers a unique and unchallenged method for connecting remote people to important things. We’ll see where it goes.

Virtual reality (VR) has been hanging around for the best part of all your life and you’ve probably never tried it. But soon you might – it’s getting close to the mainstream. Gaming is often the focus for immersive technology but movies, simulations, social media, marketing and ‘edutech’ all have eyes on VR; curiously experimenting with what’s possible.

What is VR?

“Virtual reality is an artificial environment that is created with software and presented to the user in such a way that the user suspends belief and accepts it as a real environment”
TechTarget.

Hanging around the tributaries

VR is booming in early innovation tech circles and it’s keen to play on the main circuit with the other tech that is taking over improving lives. We don’t know if this will happen, obviously, but for the sake of learning, we’re exploring what’s going on in VR and being in e-learning, we’re doing it with an educational focus. New major technologies don’t tend to come around that often, the Internet was pretty major, as were smartphones and social media. Game-changing, life-changing, readily accessible technology isn’t made easily. But when it comes; you’ll know it.

VR might not ever go mainstream, and that’s OK. 

History

The promise of virtual reality has always been enormous but has never quite lived up to the hype. The idea that you put on goggles, physically go nowhere but transform into anywhere is magical. With modern VR, this is increasingly viable – but that’s not always been the case.

VR in 2014 – “it was able to cross that threshold into presence where your brain is saying ‘Well, this is real’ and that difference is fundamentally the difference between VR that’s a promise and VR that’s actually here.”
Cory Ondrejka, co-creator of Second Life and VP of engineering at Facebook

VR was pretty bad in 1980s/1990s and did not get popular. Computer graphics were pixelated and that has a huge impact on the VR experience. You might remember any of the period between 8-bit games and Sony Playstation / Microsoft Xbox. Gameplay was compelling but the graphics were not close to realistic. The term ‘video game’ has always been slightly jarring; but now in the early 21st Century the live graphics rendering of computer graphics is very advanced; games and videos are becoming indistinguishable.

Convergence of graphics and video

Computer-generated imagery (CGI) has become very popular in the films industry. In early movies — like Jaws — big mechanical contraptions convinced us to be terrified of open water. Jurassic Park and Terminator II used CGI to encourage the real idea of fantasy and global destruction. The movie and games industries are merging; at least in terms of technology and invention. Blending CGI into real scenes has come a long way since Who Framed Rodger Rabbit; it’s now barely noticeable until something crazy-expensive or physically impossible happens. The offshoot of this is one industry can take the advances discovered elsewhere and then apply in their domain (or just gobble them up).

1990 – VR != Popular

The first steps into VR, mine at least, were to try a ‘Virtual Boy’ from Nintendo. The image above shows what it was like. Few but the dedicated player wanted one of these, Nintendo’s console didn’t sell well and sadly now they are expensive collectable items on shelves and clogging up eBay.

1990/2010 – VR = wha?

Mostly silence, ideas brewing and related technology advances…

2010 onwards

Bang – it begins. A particular Kickstarter project got some attention and raised over $2m from a modest $250k goal. The early backers got development hardware and some even had to build it themselves from kits. This, by the way, in development technology circles, only excites people. In 2014 the second development kit for Oculus was released and many more people began to play and make VR. Oculus Rift was leading the field and  many others were joining in.

Oculus and others created headsets which when worn surround your eyes with into a virtually simulated space. When you turn your head, the space changes to naturally turn with you. Look up, see up, go down, yup – down it goes. It’s the same for any other direction. During 2014 Oculus Rift was purchased by Facebook for $2bn. If VR needed extra attention; it got it in 2014.

Going mainstream – a few challenges

A good way for tech to be mainstream is for it to be useful and affordable. Google released ‘Cardboard‘, not to directly compete with Oculus, but mainly as a tech-demo / developer eye-opener. Costing more like $20 and using all the wizardry of your smartphone & some lenses, Cardboard proves that consumer-grade hardware is [pretty much] already here. It’s not very physically aesthetic, or comfortable, but it works and it’s in your pocket right now.

Smartphones might hold a part of the promise for consumer-friendly, cheap, VR and VR-related development. Hardware manufacturers are in a bit of an arms-race to get their smartphone-extenders into people’s homes. But there’s no major killer-app, yet. In other words; no-one knows why they want this & that’s problematic.

And that’s where we are right now. 

VR in education

I would be confident to say this isn’t yet a field. Few people are active in the space of education and virtual reality. But that’s not a reason to be disinterested; in fact this is a great time to get involved, play, learn and understand more.

Developing VR content

This part remains tricky – creating multimedia content usually means a lot of talk and tech for the creation, and use of, video, images and text. 3D is not a commonly cited ‘media’ within the multimedia toolkit. Support is specialist/ non-existent and creation costs can grow quickly. This casts doubt over the rise of VR in education; but there’s no evidence to suggest this should remain the case.

VR and Video

Video, largely, is easy to make – turn on a camera and ‘do your thing’. Strapping on a VR headsets puts you in a world which you can be connected to and feel a part of. VR and video means a user can move (turn, pan, tilt) within that capture (or live) experience.

Kittens

In one example the camera is placed in a centre of a cage. Using your head enables you to turn around and watch felines play, eat, sleep etc. I have never felt so small; watching tall humans walk by from my tiny cage. TALK TO ME BIG SCARY PEOPLE! I felt like a kitten. I wondered what do kittens think? Are they scared or just kinda sleepy? Kitten empathy came easily. A similar, more serious but less cute, outcome has emerged at the UN who are using VR to capture life in Syrian Refugees, and the daily life of people.

Augment, not replace, real

VR does not replace real experiences. Mostly. Instead you can explore places or things in VR that are just not possible. This might be because of cost, feasibility, scale or simply ‘freedom’. For example travelling to the sun or through the nervous system would be really, really hard, especially if you wanted to return home afterwards. Reliving, interactively, an event or experience is a huge challenge. Seeing every possible angle requires many eyes. With VR opportunities arise that were only imaginable before. VR, however, can be used to just add a new layer, perspective or experience onto the existing.

In education VR offers chances for connecting, disseminating, exploring or revisiting – and probably more.

Connect

Loneliness is cited as a problematic component of distance learning. I am not sure, yet, if VR can solve this challenge. But loneliness can come in many forms; if one is simply not feeling part of a group or culture; then I see this as a very cheap way of connecting someone to their campus, cohort or subject. International flight, as a means of connecting people, seems potentially wasteful. Instead VR might offer opportunities to connect people in ways we’ve never quite had before or just simulate stuff we do right now, meeting, talking, showing, etc.

Disseminate

Using VR to share findings with others. A top researcher may never have the time to explore all their findings, patterns, data, visualisations or other outputs from their research. With VR others can explore it as much as they like. There may brew open, shared environments – imagine ‘Physicsverse – a space to dump all your experiments’ simulating known physical rules, VR users can go and play, and combine, all the experiments. Maybe even discover something new..?

Explore

A camera can travel to places human bodies struggle with – in VR you can live the experience as if you were there. Gestures might control the robotic camera, and then you’ve got a live, immersive experience. Virtual worlds can be a model of fantasy or mapped out reality. Google have already snapped many of the world’s streets to a level of detail that you can now, in VR, go and walk down.  If you want to…

Revisit

VR provides a re-liveable experience for common, or abnormal activities. What is it like to be on the Apollo Space Programme, a kitten (see above), waking into a building, going down a hill on a roller coaster, skydiving from a plane or even being eaten by a cow. Video and models can capture or create the scenery but VR can let you visit time and time again. During each iteration you may focus on a different area; imagine a film where depending on which character you follow the film adapts to your viewing habits. Or you could rewatch that lecture, if you want to =) 

 

For now

I honestly have no firm idea but it’s really interesting to try and find out. We have some Oculus Rift and Cardboard VR kit to try and understand what it all means. The future is exciting in this space – but it’s not quite ready yet. VR will remain on the periphery for a little while longer. But don’t let that put you off; it could be quite transformational.