Feb 2018 v01 online

As someone who works in the research and
development of realism in virtual reality, I often
find myself always obsessing over the little visual
features that make some something look real, be
it the sharp yellow contrast of the sun hitting a
carpet floor, or the small erosion on the corner
of a bedside table. It’s important to me to notice
the subtle things in reality that need to be
brought over into the virtual world. The biggest
thing that gives us the discomfort of the
is the lack of these tiny features;
perfection or symmetry, something that is too
straight or too snappy. What makes the things
in the virtual world seem more and more real
are damage, age, wear – reality comes with
imperfection.
Virtual reality has reached a point where we
are able to make environments feel real. I’ve
seen people cry, cower in terror, receive
education and even medical treatment in VR.
The impact that can be had by experiencing as
little as a realistic-looking room in virtual reality
is already jetting the platform miles ahead of
anything that we could have anticipated. In my
own work, I’ve used VR for medical treatment
studies, crime scene investigations, safety
training – and that’s only a fraction of what
global developers have been working on in VR.
Many companies are using it to its full potential
– not just for entertainment, but as tools for
efficiency. However, as with every worldchanging
technology, you must always stop to
wonder when it will be that we cross the line.
Developers can see the upcoming dilemmas,
but perhaps shrugging it off is easy when you
think it’s too far away to worry about. We
haven’t been able, yet, to reach that level of
intelligent realism that could create true harm
– but one day, we may well reach that point. As
players, developers, and those with a special
interest, we all need to be aware of the harm,
the cost, that nobody wants to talk about.
Picture the scene in 2004 film Harry Potter and
the Prisoner of Azkaban, where Professor Lupin
whizzes his spider around the classroom with
his wand. The students are laughing, but the
atmosphere quickly turns cold. All of a sudden,
they – and we – realise that the spider is
struggling, hurting, and about to die. We are
uncomfortably aware that there are
consequences of manipulating this living thing.
With realistic VR, sometimes the same
consequences are in question. The closer
artificial intelligence comes to real life, or an
approximation of it, the closer our interactions
become to the manipulation of life for the
amusement of other people. It’s all well and
good to make a perfectly realistic imitation of a
chair. People can manipulate the chair, abuse it;
what's the worst that can happen? But it may be
different when you start bringing more
intelligent subjects into high-end, photorealistic
virtual reality worlds. It’s probably safe to
assume that most readers haven’t tried this kind
of VR, which requires a high-spec computer, a
lot of room, and expensive virtual reality