"In the beginning, there were mainframes" - Live VR talks (in VR, about VR) that blew my mind
I've recently been borrowing my girlfriends GearVR to see what state consumer-level VR is in. I didn't expect to find a thriving world filled with other headset-donning virtual people that you can talk to. If you're looking virtual world beyond the cheap frills of typical VR party tricks, I strongly suggest spending some time in AltspaceVR. I was introduced to it by listening to a Duncan Trussell podcast (in my podcast client) that was hosted and recorded to a live VR audience in VR.
In AltspaceVR I have fought with people in a medieval cavern, played frisbee golf, shared videos of our local Theme Parks with people I just met using the communal YouTube room, all using my face as the controller. You can enter this world with virtual hands by using the Oculus Touch or HTC Vive controllers, which have been described to me (by people in AltspaceVR who have hands) as feeling like you are 100% in this world. The precision is scary. There are of course, bugs in this digital world. There will likely always be, but it will only get more real as time goes on.
This future we're moving into is making me feel like we are about to become virtual wizards, only limited by the limits of our inputs.
This rapid transformation in society is biblical in scale. In this talk hosted in VR, Robert Scoble & Shel Israel discuss the technologies that companies like Microsoft, Apple, and Google are betting their entire strategy on: AR, VR, and AI, and how these technologies may converge to bring something forward that we have never seen before.
This talk was hosted live in AltspaceVR to a live VR audience. It's really worth a listen, and if you have a GearVR, Oculus, or Rift (soon coming to Daydream) I strongly suggest spending some time in AltspaceVR, hanging around, making some friends, going to events like these talks, or just playing around and exploring virtual world during an exciting time in its development.
Something new is coming.
fishbrain
I'm not affiliated with anything I've mentioned, I'm just truly excited that this even exists, right now, and curious to its future.
This post (as well as my own experience in GearVR) is the inspiration for this post:
https://medium.com/@AltspaceVR/something-new-is-coming-4e5921ccddb1#.xvnwockiq