Lentis/Virtual Reality

Overview

Virtual Reality (VR) is a computer-generated simulation that augments reality. It has been on the rise since the late 1960s and hasn’t fully come to fruition. Nevertheless, VR’s current advantages are being utilized in many sectors of life. For example, it is revolutionizing how doctors teach and build trust in patients, and helping police departments train officers and improve community relationships. These new developments in technology have great potential, but must be accompanied by an understanding of the society they are part of. While the future of VR is ambiguous, it’s direction has diverged from its start in entertainment and expanded into a multitude of professional and practical applications.

Applications

Health

The medical field is founded on research and development of new technologies, which is why the utility of VR in health and medicine is high. Surgeons are able to train in realistic simulations that are low-risk. This benefits the patient as well; these simulations are a great way to educate the patient, which allows for better treatment. Another area where VR shines is in PTSD and phobia therapy. In this treatment, patients are gradually exposed to the stimuli that trigger an adverse reaction. Virtual is the keyword here, since it’s not real it alleviates a lot of stress and allows the patient to overcome the mental block. A similar approach is taken with recovering drug addicts. The subject is slowly shown stimuli that may cause a relapse, which will reveal the trigger and help them say “no” when it actually occurs. Stroke and head injury victims also benefit from VR because it allows them to practice navigating and balancing in different terrains, which increases their mobility. A virtual environment can provide a distraction for patients whom anesthesia may be dangerous in order to manage pain. Physical therapy has also integrated VR by creating precise workouts and stretches that can be analyzed .

A recent innovation of virtual reality in the medical field has been 3-D modeling . These models are unlike any done before, they are interactive and use real people. Sandi Rodoni, a three-time patient for aneurysm surgery got to use this kind of model first hand. The model combined Sandi’s MRIs, CT scans, and angiograms to construct a 3-D representation that could be rotated and zoomed in making it completely interactive and immersive. Before her third surgery, she was able to put on a VR headset and see inside her own brain! The doctor was able to point out the inflamed blood vessel and teach her how they remedy it. The testament from Sandi, “Because I had been through this before, I thought I knew it all until I saw this,” exemplifies how useful this technology can be. It’s clear that the benefits of VR are felt in the medical industry and more advantages are still to come .

Policing

The issue of police brutality and bias is a key issue in current American society. Excessive use of force by police has a disproportionate impact on people of color. Numerous studies have shown that both racial biases and high stress can lead to errors in shooting decisions made by police officers. There is no simple fix for this problem, but there is a growing consensus that significant changes must be made in the way police are trained.

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), which advocates against police misconduct, states that it works to promote improved police training and increased collaboration between police departments and community stakeholders. When asked about the potential applications of virtual reality in police training, Jeffery Robinsin, the deputy legal director of the ACLU, explained that the technology has potential, but that its impact will depend on how it is used. He offered several key questions that must be considered: “Are these simulations going to be racially biased? How are these programs set up?”

The NYPD has recently turned to virtual reality in multiple areas. It has used VR in training in order to expose officers to high-stress situations so that their actions in those scenarios can be measured. Because this training is done virtually, mistakes do not result in actual harm being done; the goal is for these mistakes to be corrected before they are made out in the real world. The NYPD is also using VR for community outreach. The department’s “Options” program allows young people to enter a virtual simulation where they are presented with various scenarios, and must make choices regarding what to do in each case. The scenarios are designed by the local youth, and promote emotional intelligence and deescalation. Involving the community in the design of the program was important; as the police commissioner says, “public safety is a shared responsibility, and it’s crucial that we include the voice of our city’s youth in neighborhood policing.” Just as with officer training, the goal of the program is for individuals to make mistakes in the simulation and learn from them, so as to not make those mistakes in the real world, when there are real consequences. Working with the community in New York City to develop the "Options" program promises to be more effective in achieving the common goal of a safer community than a program developed without any outside input. The local residents are just as significant of stakeholders in the program's success as the NYPD is.

VirTra is a technology company developing a platform for virtual police training. They differentiate themselves from other simulation-based training by using “photo-realistic technologies” so that the virtual subjects an individual interacts with during training look like actual humans. VirTra is working to address the issue of implicit bias in police training by creating multiple similar “scenarios that are identical to each other” except that the variants include participants of different races. This way, the results can be used to “evaluate if there are bias issues affecting the use of force.” The company also provides scenarios that can be used to detect gender bias. The goal is for these biases to be identified before they result in the misuse of force in the real world. Efforts like these to keep racial bias out of virtual simulations, and furthermore to attempt to detect such bias in users, are steps in the direction of addressing the concerns raised by Jeffery Robinson of the ACLU regarding how VR technologies are used in practice.

Limitations and Concerns

While there are many use cases for virtual reality, questions about the medium’s viability persist. A primary concern is that the technology simply isn’t there yet. There is currently no commonplace item that introduces haptic feedback, the mimicking of the physical sensations that people experience daily because the standard form of control is via one-handed controllers. These controllers diminish the immersion for the user and potentially limit the effectiveness of VR as a tool. In a similar vein, there have been concerns over the safety of the user while immersed in virtual reality. A study has shown that fully-immersive VR leads to users having roughly the same balance as when their eyes are closed. This inherently poses a risk to the user because as the immersion quality increased, the user’s balance dropped further. Falling while disturbed holds special relevance with the current generation of VR due to the highest fidelity headsets requiring a large cord to connect them to a computer with graphics capabilities. This problem, while it can be overcome, does prove to be an obstacle that the user must overcome to have a more immersive experience.

Outside the realm of technical limitations, there are also issues regarding human interaction and VR. One of the most common symptoms of VR use is motion sickness which can drastically limit immersion. This and other human responses to VR, such as eye strain and disorientation, do not seem to disappear as the virtual realm’s quality increases but is a result of other, unstimulated senses. This implies that should the technical aspects of VR reach a standard that can fool the user’s mind cordlessly, other factors would still need to be improved to actually provide full immersion to the user, such as stimulating other senses and refinement of the way the user interacts with the system.

The issues with human interactions with technology do not stop here, however, as Virtual Reality also brings sexism with it. Researchers Stanney et al. have found that Virtual Reality headsets, like the HTC Vive, do not build headsets that can adjust to the interpupillary distance (IPD) of women as often as men. This leads to an increased likelihood of motion sickness because the headset does not fit the user, similar to how poor-fitting glasses can disorient the user. This resulted in some men’s rights advocates arguing that “It’s not VR’s fault! It’s biology!”, among other comments. They argue that if the product doesn’t fit, it doesn’t fit, since it can also affect males this way. Given the fact that computer scientists are only 18% female, it is more plausible that the headset was scarcely tested on female users, resulting in the unintentional bias observed with IPD adjustments.

Reality Labs (Facebook/Meta Platforms)

Reality Labs is a company of Meta Platforms that is responsible for their AR and VR research and development . Its origins began in August 2012 as Oculus, a company that developed the Oculus Rift, a VR video game headset . In 2014, due to Oculus’ lack of funding, Facebook (now Meta) acquired Oculus for approximately $2 billion and combined it into Reality Labs, which was Facebook’s VR/AR business. While Oculus' headsets were originally built for gaming, Facebook saw potential in its uses for other developing fields, such as video calling and teaching .They have since developed headsets like the Meta Quest and created Horizon Worlds, which is their VR videogame.

In 2022, Facebook changed their name to Meta Platforms to reflect their changing of focus from being a social media platform to building the metaverse, an internet-based virtual world that can be accessed with their VR/AR headsets. Meta estimated that they would be spending $10 billion in developing the metaverse and its hardware .

Meta Headsets

Virtual reality headsets first began as very bulky and expensive devices. There were many commercialization attempts by several companies that led to failure because of the price of parts and how advanced the technology was for its time. In 2013, Oculus developed a headset, called Devkit 1, at a much lower cost ($300) and was more advanced than the devices that came before it. Future enhancements to this device included an OLED display and insertion of black frames to improve images and decrease dizziness. One of their most significant improvements was an external camera to track location and to change viewpoints depending on how the head is positioned .

In 2016, the original Oculus Rift headset was released on Steam VR and Oculus Home platforms. It featured Oculus Touch controllers, which allowed the user to interact with the VR environment. It featured a much lower price point than the VIVE, a headset created by HTC, and was operatable using both the Oculus Touch and conventional Xbox controllers. One downside, however, was that it required a PC to operate, as it did not have computing hardware of its own (e.g. a graphics card or CPU). The headset is visually plain and has a black rectangular visor. The headset uses 2 external sensors, powered by a computer, to track the movement of the headset and Touch controllers. Titles on the Oculus store that are compatible with the Rift headsets include EVE: Valkyrie, a multiplayer space dogfighting game, and Lucky's Tale, a platformer video game. The Steam VR platform also includes Virtual Desktop, which allows one to view their computer screen in a VR environment, allowing a user to perform tasks or watch videos from within their headset.

After Meta’s acquisition, they released the Oculus Quest, which no longer required a PC because of its mobile computing hardware. It also features hand tracking, allowing players to use headsets without the use of a controller, and a much faster bootup time. Since then, the Quest 2 and Meta Quest Pro have been successors and feature mainly performance and ergonomic enhancements to the device.

Relation to Traditional Social Media

The metaverse was intended to be an extension of traditional social media, not a replacement. Most social media platforms used today are owned by Meta such as Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp .

Some ways that it is different from traditional social media is the interaction with other users. In these applications, users interact with people in a “shared” virtual space. Some of the most popular ones are VRChat, Rec Room and Horizon Worlds. In each of these applications, user interact with each other in a “lounge”-like setting. Users can play games with each other and speak with each other through voice. Big Screen is another very popular way for users to interact with one another with the difference being that it is in a "movie theater"-like setting where users primarily watch movies together.

There are also many popular Multiplayer VR Games where users can interact with each other such as Among Us, and Echo VR. Among Us first came out as a very popular mobile/PC video game where players team up to find the "imposter" in the team. The various elements in the game such as lying and voice-chatting became enhanced once translated into virtual reality. In virtual reality, users can use their body language by using their controllers, which couldn't be done before on mobile/PC. This, mixed with real-time voice-chatting, ease of controls, and a first-person view, the game soon rose to the top of the Oculus store.

Corporate Interest

There is a lot of corporate interest that is going into Meta’s jump into the metaverse.

Meta’s profits were starting to stagnate and in June of 2022, had its first decline in revenue since going public . This was due to lack of growth in their social media applications such as Facebook and Instagram. They face competition from the very popular social media platform TikTok. They also face ad competition from Apple's privacy changes on it's operating system as well as Amazon.

This has led to Meta trying to build the next big thing that users use, which is their “metaverse”. This is also why they chose to change their name from Facebook to Meta for metaverse. This has not come without problems, however. They invested over $10 billion into virtual reality in 2022 and have reported a $3.67 billion loss.

Their jump has also led to issues such as their stock decline. Meta stock decreased 71% between November 8, 2021 and November 8, 2022 based on Google's stock tracking functionality. This can be seen due to investors not having as much faith in the metaverse that Meta is pushing.

On the upside, however, there have been numerous large companies attempting to join Meta’s metaverse. Google has announced that they are pushing applications such as Google Maps in the future. Microsoft has already integrated many applications such as Office 365, Excel, Word, and games. Binance has been bringing NFTs to the metaverse. And Epic Games has been bringing VR games to the metaverse.

Community Reception of the Metaverse

The metaverse has received both positive and negative reactions from the global community. On the one hand, many people have praised the metaverse for its potential to revolutionize the way we interact with the digital world, due to the virtual platform that the metaverse provides for users to communicate, work, and play with others from all over the world. On the other hand, some potential users have raised concerns about the security and privacy implications of the metaverse.

One issue that has thus far impeded mainstream adoption of the metaverse is the relatively low consumer awareness of the platform. In one study conducted by marketing agency Billion Dollar Boy in 2022, only 28% of US and 22% of UK respondents claimed to understand the metaverse well enough to explain it to someone else. About 20% of participants also reported being confused about the metaverse and how it differs from other VR applications.

A separate survey from Ipos similarly found that less than one in five Americans were able to correctly explain what the metaverse is. However, this survey also showed that a large number of people have at least some knowledge of the metaverse, with 38% of respondents claiming to be familiar with the platform. Although many people may not fully understand the metaverse or what it is trying to be, interest in the platform remains high, with just under a third of participants who were informed about the metaverse during the study expressing curiosity.

Another potential issue facing the metaverse is consumer concerns regarding privacy and data ownership, as a platform such as the metaverse allows for a wide range of user data to be collected, and potentially monetized or misused. Given Facebook's previous record of mishandling user data in the Cambridge Analytica scandal, in which user data was collected without their consent to help inform political advertisements, such concerns may be warranted.

Potential Impacts on Future Social Interaction

The metaverse has already begun to alter our current social interactions, as people are able to communicate with one another in a more fluid and dynamic way in the virtual space. Through the metaverse, people can interact with one another in real-time, much like they can in real-world interactions. The metaverse also has the potential to change the way we interact in the physical world, as it allows for people to stay connected even when they are not physically present. Through the metaverse, people can attend events, meetings, and classes remotely, allowing them to still take part in activities despite the limitations of physical distance.

Two of the main products from Meta in the metaverse are Horizon Workrooms and Horizon Worlds, designed for office use and entertainment respectively.

Horizon Workrooms is a VR environment that simulates a traditional office work or meeting space, and allows participants to interact in VR much as they would if they were actually present in the office. This, along with the recent expansion and popularity of working remotely following the Covid-19 pandemic, could lead to a rise in the viability and availability of remote jobs, which could have a dramatic effect on how people interact. Since there would no longer be any need for employees to attend meetings physically, it would likely decrease the frequency of workplace interactions, particularly face-to-face interactions.

On the opposite end of the spectrum is Horizon Worlds, a simulated VR game environment centered around interacting virtually with other players. Technology like this could make gaming a more social experience for players due to the increased immersion, while also having strong similarities to more traditional social media, and could potentially integrate everyday social interactions even more tightly with the internet.

Conclusions

Virtual reality, like many other forms of technology, has exciting potential applications in many areas of society. This interest has expanded past the initial focus on entertainment, and now includes the areas of health and policing, among many others. However, it is important for the people developing virtual reality systems to work with and understand the people they are building these systems for. Both the positive and negative impacts of the technology on the target groups must be considered. Analysis must not stop there. As with essentially any new development, there will be non-obvious, yet significant, effects on other groups within society. It is the responsibility of those developing the new technology to pay attention to these relationships as well.

There is great opportunity for further analysis of the applications of virtual reality in many domains, such as education, research, and the military. In all of these fields, VR systems should not be developed in a vacuum. Those which are developed in collaboration with direct and indirect stakeholders, and which consider their impact on society, will likely prove more successful and should be studied.