Speaker 1: Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
Speaker 1: It's ready. Are you get in touch with technology? With
Speaker 1: tech stuff from how stuff works dot com. Hey everyone,
Speaker 1: welcome to the podcast. My name is Chris Pallette. I'm
Speaker 1: an editor here at how Stuff Works, and sitting next
Speaker 1: to me is writer Jonathan Strickland. How do you and
Speaker 1: we're virtually next to you. Yes, we're of course talking
Speaker 1: to you from the wonderful sunny beach where the waves
Speaker 1: are are lapping up against the shore. Very tranquil environment,
Speaker 1: you know, lots of nice cold tropical drinks. Nice Peto
Speaker 1: by the way. Thanks. You know I'm I'm I'm far
Speaker 1: more buff than uh than I may appear in real life. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's the beauty of virtual reality. Yeah, yeah, I'm virtually happy. Nice. Okay,
Speaker 1: So we are obviously going to be talking about virtual
Speaker 1: reality today, yes, um, and you might wonder what the
Speaker 1: heck happened to virtual reality? You know, it's funny when
Speaker 1: you brought this up and Jonathan said he wanted to
Speaker 1: talk about virtual reality, and I started thinking, uh, you
Speaker 1: know what happened to that? Because you know, it was
Speaker 1: all the rage people used to talk about it. All
Speaker 1: the time, and now we weren't. I said, Jonathan, what
Speaker 1: do you want to talk about about virtual reality? He said,
Speaker 1: what happened to it? Oh? Well, there you go, exactly
Speaker 1: what I was wanting. So so let's give you some
Speaker 1: background virtual reality. The concept um, though not the term
Speaker 1: the concept, has been around for many decades. Back in
Speaker 1: nineteen a man by the name of Ivan Sutherland wrote
Speaker 1: a proposal called the Ultimate Display, and he was kind
Speaker 1: of making a theoretical display that would be you know
Speaker 1: what he considered to be the the ultimate in computer
Speaker 1: displays and um, obviously by the title, that's just a
Speaker 1: little repetitive redundancy for you. Let me reiterate. Okay, So anyway,
Speaker 1: the Ultimate display. Now, his his concept was that the
Speaker 1: display would show a virtual world that would be um
Speaker 1: as real to the user as the physical world the
Speaker 1: user was actually in. So there'd be no way to
Speaker 1: tell the difference between the virtual world and the physical
Speaker 1: world from from just from your experience in it. Um,
Speaker 1: although the two could the two could differ physically, like
Speaker 1: you could make a virtual world on the moon, for example,
Speaker 1: But to the important thing is is that to the
Speaker 1: user it would seem absolutely real, and uh, he kind
Speaker 1: of envisioned this sort of display, having a head mounted
Speaker 1: display or h m D, which one of those big
Speaker 1: clunky helmet things that fits over your head, and then
Speaker 1: that provides you all the visual and audio that you
Speaker 1: need UM and that it would also incorporate sound and
Speaker 1: touch uh to make this big picture. So that was
Speaker 1: kind of his idea in a way. He's sort of
Speaker 1: like the grandfather of virtual reality. Or we'll skip ahead.
Speaker 1: So this idea never fades away. People always keep it
Speaker 1: in mind and and in certain uses it comes to play,
Speaker 1: like in in military uses in particular, things like creating
Speaker 1: putting a camera on the outside of a plane and
Speaker 1: UH and hooking it up to a head mounted display
Speaker 1: within the plane so that h person in the plane
Speaker 1: can look around and see and help someone like the
Speaker 1: pilot land the plane because they can they have a
Speaker 1: view directly beneath it, for example, that kind of thing. Sure,
Speaker 1: and they even have weapons systems that use that kind
Speaker 1: of technology where your the camera controls the weapons so
Speaker 1: that when the pilot turns his or her head, they
Speaker 1: can look at a target and the gun has already
Speaker 1: pointed whatever it is that they're looking at right right,
Speaker 1: So so the military drove a lot of this early innovation. Eventually,
Speaker 1: other scientists were saying, hey, there's some really cool things
Speaker 1: we could use this to do, but it's hard to
Speaker 1: get funding because you have to convince people that it's
Speaker 1: it's a worthwhile endeavor. Uh. To that end one In
Speaker 1: the late eighties, that's when the term virtual reality started
Speaker 1: to come into play and the media picked up on it.
Speaker 1: And that's when you had an explusion, particularly in the
Speaker 1: early nineties, that's when the media really went nuts with
Speaker 1: this term virtual reality. And part of the problem was
Speaker 1: that they built up that they being the media, built
Speaker 1: up this this vision of this amazing virtual world that
Speaker 1: we would all get to go and play in, and
Speaker 1: we you know, the there were no limitations. You could
Speaker 1: have all the information at your fingertips, you could have
Speaker 1: you could live out your wildest fantasies in this virtual environment.
Speaker 1: Holidack essentially, yes, good good star Trek the next generation
Speaker 1: reference although as we all know, if you go into
Speaker 1: the holiday, something will go wrong in moriarity will try
Speaker 1: to kill you. But anyway, yeah, exactly, though, the next
Speaker 1: generation kind of take on virtual reality was sort of
Speaker 1: what the media was playing this up to. Be to
Speaker 1: the point where people were really excited, and it sounded
Speaker 1: like it was just right around the corner, and that
Speaker 1: any minute now we'd be able to put on some
Speaker 1: sort of suit and be able to experience things like
Speaker 1: I've always wondered what would be like to I don't know, uh,
Speaker 1: sled down a huge icy mountain and I could do
Speaker 1: this safely in my own home, and I would have
Speaker 1: all the feeling and the experience of doing that. But
Speaker 1: in reality, I just take the suit off, I'd be
Speaker 1: in my living room, I'd be perfectly safe. Or I've
Speaker 1: always wanted to pretend like I'm some sort of a
Speaker 1: super soldier, even though I'm a pudgy computer guy. I
Speaker 1: want to put on the suit and go out there
Speaker 1: and do a high risk mission and see what that's
Speaker 1: really like. But the reality was sadly lagging quite a
Speaker 1: bit behind this media perception. In fact, the chasm was
Speaker 1: enormous between what the media was saying or what they
Speaker 1: were kind of promising, and what the reality could actually produce. Um,
Speaker 1: I don't know if did you ever get to do
Speaker 1: a virtual reality game at all? Now? I've never played
Speaker 1: a virtual reality Okay, well, children, sit back, Jonathan's gonna
Speaker 1: tell you a little story. The year was nine. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I was. I was in high school. Uh, and um,
Speaker 1: there was a mall that was not too far from
Speaker 1: my house. Uh, the Gwinnette Play Small. Yeah it's been there. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's different now, but back then they had a small business.
Speaker 1: And the only thing the small business did was it
Speaker 1: essentially rented out time on virtual reality games. You would
Speaker 1: go and you pay a certain amount to get five
Speaker 1: minutes of playtime in this virtual reality game. And the game,
Speaker 1: by the way, the main game they had was Dactyl
Speaker 1: Nightmare and um, it's odd, so it was like a thumb. No,
Speaker 1: it was supposed to be a ptero dactyl. They called
Speaker 1: it Dactyl Dactyl Nightmare. So you would with other people,
Speaker 1: I think up to three other people, so four player game,
Speaker 1: and you had a little control that you would hold
Speaker 1: in your hands that would represent a gun in the game,
Speaker 1: and you had a head molond display you'd wear and
Speaker 1: you would be Um, you'd be inside the stand on
Speaker 1: a little pedestal that had a little guard around it
Speaker 1: so you wouldn't you know, fall off, and you had
Speaker 1: a control on the handle of the the little controller
Speaker 1: you had you had a button control movement. You could
Speaker 1: just move forward, so whichever way you faced you push
Speaker 1: the button, that's the way you would go. And then
Speaker 1: you had a trigger where you could fire the slowest
Speaker 1: moving bullet you've ever seen at your opponents, lower than
Speaker 1: in the matrix. Okay, the second slowest bullet you've ever seen,
Speaker 1: and uh and so, and occasionally a terrodactor would come
Speaker 1: down and pick you up and drop you, which was
Speaker 1: a good way to for you to lose a life.
Speaker 1: Not that impressive, I gotta tell you not um not
Speaker 1: impressive really at all. It was actually a big letdown
Speaker 1: compared to what you're thinking all virtual reality is really
Speaker 1: gonna you like. And that was kind of the case
Speaker 1: across the board. You had all these people try these
Speaker 1: games out and other applications, and they were so primitive
Speaker 1: in comparison to what everyone thought of thought virtual reality
Speaker 1: was really gonna be. Like the bottom fell out. Funding
Speaker 1: for virtual reality projects kind of dropped out because people
Speaker 1: just lost interest. It's just like the sort of the
Speaker 1: same problem NASA has with the Space program. If there's
Speaker 1: not a lot of interest in it, they have trouble
Speaker 1: funding the program. Same thing for virtual reality. So it
Speaker 1: actually got to the point where people began to hate
Speaker 1: the term virtual reality because it had the stigma attached
Speaker 1: to it, which is why you don't really hear the
Speaker 1: term now. Now you hear virtual environments. Right, it's the
Speaker 1: same sort of thing. It's a little bit more of
Speaker 1: a broad definition than virtual reality was. But in general
Speaker 1: you're talking about the same stuff. It's just a different name.
Speaker 1: And the reason behind it is because virtual reality just
Speaker 1: became such a loaded term, right, So there you go,
Speaker 1: that's what happened to virtual reality. Well then, but I've
Speaker 1: heard the term virtual environment applied to things like Second
Speaker 1: Life or Google Lively or Sony Home. Right. Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: that's where the broad definition comes in, so, you know,
Speaker 1: because you don't have to wear special equipment to do that,
Speaker 1: although you can, Yeah, there are people who do, I'm sure. Now.
Speaker 1: That's the thing is that virtual environment is a more
Speaker 1: broad definition in right, So essentially, any any computer environment
Speaker 1: you create in a way is a virtual environment, right. Um.
Speaker 1: But the way that the term is being used within
Speaker 1: the industry, the old VR industry, you need a little
Speaker 1: bit more than that. Um. The main concept for virtual
Speaker 1: environments in this industry is called immersion right now, Immersion.
Speaker 1: Immersion is that feeling you get where the environment you're
Speaker 1: in seems real to you, right, Okay, So uh Now,
Speaker 1: ideally you get to the point where you feel that
Speaker 1: environment you're in is as real as the physical environment
Speaker 1: your body is in, and in the perfect example, you
Speaker 1: would even forget about your physical body entirely. You would
Speaker 1: just concentrate on the virtual one and that would be
Speaker 1: real to you. Um. Now, The interesting thing here is
Speaker 1: that immersion does not depend solely upon the graphics quality
Speaker 1: of the program or um or even the sound quality. Uh.
Speaker 1: It really depends on how interactive is this environment, how
Speaker 1: when you turn your head, is there any latency? Latency
Speaker 1: is is the delay between an action and the way
Speaker 1: the computer shows it to you. So like if you
Speaker 1: turn your head and there's a slight delay, it's very
Speaker 1: disconcerting and it ruins the immersion experience. Yeah, because you're
Speaker 1: no longer being fooled into the idea that you are
Speaker 1: somewhere else exactly. That's an artifact of real life. It
Speaker 1: kind of makes you feel like you're maybe slightly drunk
Speaker 1: or drugged or something, and in fact can lead you
Speaker 1: to motion sickness. It's called cybersickness UM in virtual reality terms.
Speaker 1: But yeah, it can really it can disorient you because
Speaker 1: you know your your brain is telling you, hey, I'm
Speaker 1: looking to the right, but my view is lagging behind
Speaker 1: my actual actions. It's interesting because in virtual reality studies
Speaker 1: they found out that the human I and mine can
Speaker 1: perceive a delay of as short as fifty milliseconds, which
Speaker 1: is that's an incredible fraction of the second, and you
Speaker 1: can detect it. So that's a big challenges is decreasing
Speaker 1: that delay so that it becomes imperceptible. UM. But that
Speaker 1: that can lead to immersion. Also, things like haptic feedback,
Speaker 1: which you know all about because you you edited the
Speaker 1: how haptics work, right, that's true. UM. Haptic feedback is
Speaker 1: essentially anything that makes you feel like you're actually touching something,
Speaker 1: So UM, that can be anything like um they're they're
Speaker 1: medical devices that are used to actually do surgery UM
Speaker 1: or to train people who are doctors, and that gives
Speaker 1: some haptic feedback. So I mean, really, if you're controlling
Speaker 1: a robotic arm with the use of this this mechanical equipment,
Speaker 1: electronic mechanical equipment, UM, you know a robot is going
Speaker 1: to be you know, it's not gonna have any feeling
Speaker 1: to it. It's gonna just you know, slice into whatever
Speaker 1: is around, you know, without being discriminatory other than what
Speaker 1: happens to be on the camera that the that the
Speaker 1: doctor is looking at. And there are some pretty subtle nuances,
Speaker 1: you know, depending on whether you're cutting muscle or whatever.
Speaker 1: So the doctor needs to be able to feel that
Speaker 1: to know exactly what's going on as he or she
Speaker 1: is working. So these haptic devices, you know, provide some
Speaker 1: sensory feedback to them, some tactle feedback so that they go, okay,
Speaker 1: you know, I need to go just this far and
Speaker 1: no farther to to you know, complete this surgery. Amounts
Speaker 1: of resistance that kind of thing, right, and there are
Speaker 1: there are still different kinds of devices that that you
Speaker 1: can use. You can put on gloves that have uh
Speaker 1: different little motors and vibrating modules in there to give
Speaker 1: you the sense that you are touching things that they
Speaker 1: resist your fingers so that you make it makes your
Speaker 1: hand feel as you close it that you are holding,
Speaker 1: for example, a ball, because it is holding back your
Speaker 1: hand to to you know, give it that feeling that
Speaker 1: oh there's something there, you know, because you actually can
Speaker 1: feel it. And these things are you know, some of
Speaker 1: them are quite large. UM. So you know, you may
Speaker 1: be putting on some some pretty large gloves. But it's
Speaker 1: got a sensation, gives you the sensation that you are
Speaker 1: actually touching something, and it adds to that perception that
Speaker 1: you are in another world. Yeah, and I at c
Speaker 1: Yes somewhere electronic showcase, I actually tried on some stuff
Speaker 1: that that had haptic feedback UM devices built into them.
Speaker 1: There was there was a vest that you could wear
Speaker 1: the Yes, it was designed for first person shooters, so
Speaker 1: when you got shot, it would They had little air
Speaker 1: bladders in them and the air bladder would inflate suddenly
Speaker 1: and thus you would feel an impact against your skin. UM.
Speaker 1: And because the vest was so tight, it was you know,
Speaker 1: it had to be because otherwise you wouldn't really sense
Speaker 1: this UM. But it meant that you felt it. It
Speaker 1: was it was not something you could ignore. But they
Speaker 1: also had a helmet that did the same sort of thing.
Speaker 1: And and that's the Here comes another interesting part about
Speaker 1: virtual environments and the research that goes into them. Because
Speaker 1: it's still hard to get funding for these things, they
Speaker 1: often appropriate devices that were designed for other industries and
Speaker 1: and apply them to virtual environments. So the video game
Speaker 1: industry in particular is huge when it comes to this
Speaker 1: sort of stuff. Uh, they'll you know, people who design
Speaker 1: virtual environments will actively seek out devices in the in
Speaker 1: the video game industry that they can then repurpose for
Speaker 1: virtual environments. So things like this kind of vest which
Speaker 1: would let you feel impact that could become in handy
Speaker 1: in a virtual environment really helps with the immersion. So
Speaker 1: when you see something happen to your virtual self within
Speaker 1: a world, and usually this is in a first person view,
Speaker 1: because that helps with immersion. It's it's when you do
Speaker 1: third person that you don't really you still have a
Speaker 1: sense of detachment, sure, but when you see something coming
Speaker 1: at you and then you feel the impact through something
Speaker 1: like this, it definitely reinforces that sense of immersion. Well,
Speaker 1: the video game industry is all about immersion and virtual
Speaker 1: environment exactly. And uh, you know, as we were, as
Speaker 1: you were talking, I was just thinking of an obvious analogy.
Speaker 1: Would the flight simulator, uh, you know, the flight simulator,
Speaker 1: I can't even say simulator. That's lovely, the flight simulator
Speaker 1: that that you that you play on your desktop is
Speaker 1: very uh similar to the kind of machine that they
Speaker 1: used to to train pilots in, right, and that was
Speaker 1: atually very early application of virtual environments. Again we're going
Speaker 1: back in military. Yeah, but well, the airlines use them,
Speaker 1: and of course the there's a simulator for the Space Shuttle,
Speaker 1: I believe, UM, and there were for the Mercury capsules
Speaker 1: even in the Geminy gem and I. I don't care
Speaker 1: what the astronauts say, but they said it. I know
Speaker 1: they said it. I'm still saying gem and I, Okay,
Speaker 1: But they were using virtual environments to to do some
Speaker 1: training too. So those are those are things that that
Speaker 1: the public might have actually seen, that they might be
Speaker 1: aware of. And there's some there's some uses that are
Speaker 1: going on right now that the public might be aware of, UM,
Speaker 1: depending on Sadly a lot of it's uh sadly in
Speaker 1: the sense that it's not a fun application. It's it's
Speaker 1: a good application of virtual environments. But medical applications besides
Speaker 1: the telepresence and surgery that you're talking about, UM, one
Speaker 1: of the useful uh ways you can incorporate virtual environments
Speaker 1: and treatment UM involves psychological treatment. UM. There are experiments
Speaker 1: being run at Duke University and Emory University, where doctors
Speaker 1: are using virtual environments to simulate situations where patients with
Speaker 1: phobias can can kind of confront their fear um in
Speaker 1: a way that ultimately they know they're perfectly safe. Ultimately
Speaker 1: they know they're inside a doctor's office and they don't
Speaker 1: have they're not actually confronting what it is they're afraid of,
Speaker 1: but because the sense of immersion is a powerful one,
Speaker 1: their bodies react the same way they would if they
Speaker 1: were actually encountering their real fear. For example, fear of heights. UM.
Speaker 1: If you are a psychologist and you're a psychiatrist and
Speaker 1: you're treating someone for a fear of heights, and you
Speaker 1: happen to have an office in a one story building,
Speaker 1: your options for treating this patient are become pretty rough
Speaker 1: when it comes to actually, you know, confronting the fear
Speaker 1: head on. It means you have to go to a
Speaker 1: different building. You have to you know, you may have
Speaker 1: to secure permission to go to a certain floor or
Speaker 1: anything like that. UM virtual environments, you could create an
Speaker 1: environment where you appear to be at the top of
Speaker 1: a tall building and you can walk right up to
Speaker 1: the edge virtually and look down. And the interesting thing
Speaker 1: is after a couple of minutes where you kind of
Speaker 1: get oriented, patients have shown the same physical reaction to
Speaker 1: the virtual environment as they would if they were in
Speaker 1: a real one. And that using this as sort of
Speaker 1: uh a kind of therapy where they get used to
Speaker 1: it over a period of time, they can uh, they
Speaker 1: can really make a lot of progress. In fact, some
Speaker 1: psychio psychiatrists and psychologists have reported that their patients come
Speaker 1: back and say, hey, you know, after we went through
Speaker 1: these sessions, I took it upon myself to go to
Speaker 1: this hotel downtown that's got It's a fifteen story hotel
Speaker 1: and I went all the way to the top and
Speaker 1: I walked all the way to the window, and you know,
Speaker 1: I was really scared. It was really nervous, but I
Speaker 1: did it. And it's amazing because without this treatment, they
Speaker 1: would never have taken that kind of initiative. So that's
Speaker 1: kind of an interesting approach. There are other ones as well.
Speaker 1: UM fear flying is a common one. It's also being
Speaker 1: used for people who have u UH veterans who are
Speaker 1: coming back who have have problems afterwards. You know, that's
Speaker 1: that's a big use for them. Sure, it's that's that's
Speaker 1: kind of where a lot of the funding is going
Speaker 1: into now because it is a an application that you
Speaker 1: can see direct results from. So what if you fear
Speaker 1: fear itself? Nice? Um? Yeah, that one, that one that
Speaker 1: was tricky. Yeah, I would imagine so at least two
Speaker 1: to replicate in in a virtual environment. Yeah, Well, I
Speaker 1: want to talk about one other things. We did talk
Speaker 1: about haptics earlier. Sure, I want to talk about passive haptics,
Speaker 1: which is kind of virtual environments. Passive haptics are when
Speaker 1: you incorporate real objects and you connect them to the
Speaker 1: virtual world. So usually in this case, you're your virtual
Speaker 1: environment actually requires that you have a room where the
Speaker 1: a lot of the the images you'll see are projected
Speaker 1: on on maybe the floor and the walls and the ceiling,
Speaker 1: and you're wearing special glasses to complete the illusion. But
Speaker 1: you put in real physical objects that are mapped to
Speaker 1: this virtual environment, and if you, as a person in
Speaker 1: the physical environment, interact with these, you see that reflected
Speaker 1: in the virtual environment. Again reinforces that sense of immersion.
Speaker 1: It's pretty cool, you know. So, like you see a
Speaker 1: ball and you push it, Uh, you would actually feel
Speaker 1: the ball, because there really is a ball there, and
Speaker 1: you'd see it move. The other neat thing about this
Speaker 1: is that you can trick the mind and create an
Speaker 1: environment that's much larger than the physical virtual environment that's
Speaker 1: that's many times larger than the physical one. UM. You
Speaker 1: can trick the mind into thinking you're walking in a
Speaker 1: straight line. And really, if you were to be an
Speaker 1: independent observer, you would see that the person inside the
Speaker 1: room is walking in a circle, but in the virtual environment,
Speaker 1: it would look like you're walking in a straight line. Right,
Speaker 1: So in a way, you've just created a room that's
Speaker 1: larger on the inside that it is on the outside.
Speaker 1: To tell what, I'm kind of fascinated by virtual environments
Speaker 1: and reality and technology behind it, you know. I was
Speaker 1: thinking though that there are some some holdovers from it, UM.
Speaker 1: You know, talking about CS. I remember the my View
Speaker 1: personal video player that they have, UM. It kind of
Speaker 1: looks like a very small version of the head gear
Speaker 1: that you used to see in the virtual reality UM stuff.
Speaker 1: But basically what it is is, UM, it's a When
Speaker 1: I say personal video player, it's literally a pair of
Speaker 1: glasses that you put on your you know, put on
Speaker 1: your face and it plays you know, hooks up to
Speaker 1: your personal video player and plays the movie or the
Speaker 1: video podcast or whatever on the lenses of your glasses,
Speaker 1: so you're actually watching you know, you're it's sort of
Speaker 1: a mini immersion type of thing because you're showing yourself
Speaker 1: that um. And remember the old virtual game boys still
Speaker 1: still feel those headaches. Yeah yeah, yeah, but they had
Speaker 1: a problem with latency. Yeah, imax. They're all kinds of
Speaker 1: things in reality. I mean, you've got there's a new
Speaker 1: camera that actually will tag things that you see in
Speaker 1: real life. It'll tag it and remember it and and
Speaker 1: uploaded and share it. Um. Where you can point a
Speaker 1: camera at a building and push this little button and
Speaker 1: it'll pop up and tell you what that building is.
Speaker 1: I mean, that's the same sort of thing. These are
Speaker 1: all these applications that came out of the research from
Speaker 1: virtual reality. Yea, so there it still exists. There's just
Speaker 1: bits and pieces of it then incorporated into different materials, right.
Speaker 1: So it's it's pretty interesting stuff. No, it's not not gone.
Speaker 1: It's just maybe gone underground and sort of assimilated into
Speaker 1: a way where you wouldn't necessarily recognize it immediately. It's
Speaker 1: it's cool stuff. And uh, well, I guess that's a good,
Speaker 1: nice long conversation about virtual reality. But if you want
Speaker 1: to learn more, we have a whole suite on virtual
Speaker 1: reality at how stuff Works. A good place to start
Speaker 1: is how virtual Reality Works. There. That's live right now
Speaker 1: at how stuff works dot com, and we'll pop to
Speaker 1: you against soon. For more on this and thousands of
Speaker 1: other topics, visit how stuff works dot com. Let us
Speaker 1: know what you think. Send an email to podcast at
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