back to article Brain plague or estate agents? I know which I'd prefer in Virtual Reality

Life in a London firm is tough: it’s full of jewel heists, flying bullets and car chases. Well, this was the case during my last foray into Virtual Reality. London Heist is one of the showcase games for Sony’s PlayStation VR experience from Sony and it’s virtually perfect, making me feel like the lead in a Guy Richie gangster …

  1. an ominous mass

    Another classic read is ...

    The city and the stars

    Arthur C Clarke

    has VR within VR

  2. Mage Silver badge

    Or Anvil

    Anvil (C) 1998 by Nicolas van Pallandt

    Several books before 1980 by John Brunner

    Also Robert Sheckley

    some here:

    http://vr.isdale.com/WhatIsVR/frames/WhatIsVR4.1-Fiction.html

    I think there are stories from mid 1950s & early 1960s before ST-TOS

  3. TRT Silver badge

    "But what is reality?" asked the gnomelike man.

    He gestured at the tall banks of buildings that loomed around Central Park, with their countless windows glowing like the cave fires of a city of Cro-Magnon people. "All is dream, all is illusion; I am your vision as you are mine."

    There was a moment of chaos. The liquid before Dan's eyes clouded suddenly white, and formless sounds buzzed. He moved to tear the device from his head, but emerging forms in the mistiness caught his interest. Giant things were writhing there.

    Pygmalion's Spectacles, Stanley G. Weinbaum, 1935.

  4. m0rt

    There was a Terry Pratchett short story published in 1990. I read this in about '91. I did a quick google search and it has been included in the short story anthology 'A Blink of the Screen'.

    It is also talked about here, on reddit. https://www.reddit.com/r/9M9H9E9/comments/4jq493/just_remembered_a_terry_pratchett_short_story_i/

    Basically, somone dies whilst immersed in VR. Thing is, according to the online world, they aren't dead.

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Silently awaiting P0rnHub VR...

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Why wait? http://www.pornhub.com/vr

  6. Paul Hampson 1

    Unincorporated man= Serious version of red dwarf Better than Life

    No mention of red dwarf's Better than Life? (1988)? Ooops sorry obviously only a list of serious sci-fi. Similar premise as described for the unincorporated man but no plague, a much more believable drug analogy.

    And it's funny.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Unincorporated man= Serious version of red dwarf Better than Life

      dwayne dibley!

  7. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Combine all

    VR estate agent who lulls your suspicion by virtual sex, but turns out to be a zombie!

    Total win!

  8. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    the 1983 film Brainstorm

    Absolute classic.

    The VR recording system used a 2-inch wide optical tape, which was quite believable.

    But the bit I remember most was when they did a remote demonstration via a phone line - using an *acoustic coupler* modem no less. Happy days.

  9. Yugguy

    You fancied Wesley Crusher????

    You must have been the only person in the world who didn't want to flush him down a jeffries tube.

    1. Bucky 2

      Re: You fancied Wesley Crusher????

      We hated him because he depicted what we all understood as a teenaged living hell as though it were some kind of utopia. It was a betrayal.

  10. A. Coatsworth Silver badge

    apps (... ) from (...) CNN, Hulu and Netflix.

    The real world in the virtual world. Or the virtual world is the real world.

    The whole thing reeks of Second Life... and I for one wouldn't mind if it crashes and burns the same way.

    VR obviously has its applications, and there will be niches where it actually can be a game changer, but all this overhype, this painting it as the next greatest technological revolution, gets really tiresome.

  11. Pascal Monett Silver badge

    "2D porn just wouldn’t cut it any more"

    Um, I've heard that 2D porn has one great advantage : you're not shutting yourself off from the world and therefor are not liable to be totally surprised by someone walking in on your, ahem, fun time.

    If you remain tuned into the world around you, you have time to recover and set things right when you hear the garage door open (I've been told).

    In any case, I'm quite sure that VR has a place, most likely in gaming (obviously). I do not see that VR is going to bring anything to teleconferencing, not does it improve in any way people analyzing floor plans. What does VR bring to a virtual tour of a building that a flat screen does not ? A mouse costs less than a VR headset and likely always will.

    This whole VR fad is like 3D cinema. It's nice to see a new tech becoming available, but the hype will have to pass before we see the true, boring applications that actually survive and thrive.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: "2D porn just wouldn’t cut it any more"

      "This whole VR fad is like 3D cinema"

      The point surely is that 3D cinema doesn't really work. The only people who see the 3D effect properly are the ones directly in front of the centre of the screen; everybody else is off to the edge to some degree and yet is seeing the image they should be seeing if centred. It is unsatisfactory for most of the audience.

      VR is per user and so the off-angle effect doesn't happen. It can be made to work as intended.

      1. Yugguy

        Re: "2D porn just wouldn’t cut it any more"

        My brain does not like it when what my eyes see and my inner ear feels are not the same.

        I don't think VR will ever get past that until they can bypass the physical send signals directly to my nerves.

        Which I would NEVER want to have done to me.

        1. Brangdon

          Re: "2D porn just wouldn’t cut it any more"

          Get a Vive and play Roomscale games. Without those, you move around the virtual world by moving around the real world, so there's no dissonance. It means the games are limited to a few square metres (usually however much floorspace you have available in your home), and use teleport to travel larger areas, which can break disbelief, but it eliminates nausea.

  12. Mark 133

    Time to get real, not playback...

    > VR made a false start in several films during the 1990s.

    Don't forget Strange Days - perhaps not fully interactive VR, but the notion of shady geezers selling bootleg VR grot out of a van, and paying people to make it seemed far more plausible than the likes of Lawnmower Man, and presaged the internet porn industry pretty well to boot.

  13. allthecoolshortnamesweretaken

    Another one for the movie list:

    World on a Wire (Welt am Draht, 1973) by Rainer Werner Fassbinder. Based on the novel 'Simulacron-3' by Daniel F. Galouye. It has VR inside VR. Has aged remarkable well and still is worth watching.

    As to the VR-and-porn debate: anyone who lived through the 'cyber sex' hype two decades ago will be very sceptical.

    As to VR in general: those who can actually profit from using VR in their work already use it. The gear gets better all the time, but that's about it.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      That's just given me a flashback to being in college in 1998 and having a foursome in an old, HTML chatroom for the alternative genre (Dungeon of the Damned if I recall) and thinking I'd hit the big time. This was whilst I had a girlfriend with whom I had real sex, but I rated the HTML stuff far more exciting.

      WTF did I do with my youth....

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