Living deeper and deeper in cyberspace

The difference between cyberspace as we have known it for years and the new one that is just emerging, including thanks to the development of virtual reality technologies, is huge. Until now, in order to take advantage of the digital continuum, we have simply visited it more or less frequently. Soon we will be completely immersed in it, and maybe even just a periodic transition from the cyber world to the "real world" ...

According to futurist Ray Kurzweil, we usually live in the first half of the 20s. work and play in a virtual environment, visual type "total immersion". In the 30s, it will turn into an immersion that involves all the senses, including touch and taste.

Submit your coffee to Facebook

Facebook is building a great infrastructure with the goal of sucking our entire life into the digital world. The Parse platform is cited as an example of this endeavor. In March 2015, the F8 conference was held, during which Facebook spoke about its plans for the company it acquired two years ago (1). It consists in providing a set of development tools for devices from the Internet of Things (IoT) sector, that is, gadgets connected to the network and interacting with each other.

The platform is designed to connect smart home devices to wearable devices and everything around.

Thanks to this tool, it will be possible, for example, to design an intelligent plant irrigation system controlled by a mobile application, or a thermostat or a security camera that records photos every minute, all of which will be controlled by web applications. Facebook is about to release the Parse SDK for IoT on three platforms: Arduino Yun, Linux (on the Raspberry Pi), and real-time operating systems (RTOS).

What does this mean in practice? The fact is that in a simple way - by entering a few lines of code - simple devices from our environment can become elements digital reality and connect to the Internet of Things. It is also a method of creation (VR), because Parse can also be used to control various visual devices, cameras, radars, with which we can virtually explore remote or hard-to-reach places.

2. Image created in Magic Leap

According to many experts, other platforms, including Oculus Rift, will also develop in the same direction. Instead of being limited to the world of a game or movie, connected glasses can bring the world around us into virtual reality. This will not be just a game from the creators of the game. It will be a game that can be played in the environment chosen by the user. This is not about augmented reality (AR), even as sophisticated as Microsoft's HoloLens or Google's Magic Leap (2). It will be not so much augmented reality as virtuality seasoned with reality. It's a world where you can take a real cup of Facebook coffee and drink it there.

Facebook has admitted to working on apps that use virtual reality, and the Oculus purchase is part of a larger plan. Chris Cox, Platform Product Manager, spoke about the company's plans during the Code/Media conference. Virtual reality will be another addition to the popular social network's offering, where multimedia resources such as photos and videos can now be shared, he said. Cox explained that VR will be a logical extension of the service's user experience, which can provide "thoughts, photos and videos, and with VR can send a larger picture."

Virtuality known and unknown

In the early 80s, William Gibson (3) was the first to use this word in his novel Neuromancer. cyberspace. He described it as a collective hallucination as well as an interface of sorts. The operator of the computer was connected to it via a neural link. Thanks to this, it could be transferred to an artificial space created by a computer, in which the data contained in the computer were presented in a visual form.

Let's take a moment to look at how dreamers imagined virtual reality. It can be reduced to three ways to enter an artificially created reality. The first of them, found so far only in fantasy literature (for example, in the Neuromancer mentioned above), means complete immersion in cyberspace. This is usually achieved through direct brain stimulation. Only then can a person be provided with a set of stimuli, while depriving him of the stimuli emanating from his real environment.

Only this will allow you to fully immerse yourself in virtual reality. There are no such solutions yet, but work on them continues. Brain interfaces are currently one of the most dynamic areas of research.

The second way to transition to VR, in a rather imperfect but rapidly evolving form, is available today. We provide the right stimuli through the real body. The image is sent to the eyes through two screens hidden in a helmet or goggles.

The resistance of objects can be simulated with suitable devices hidden in the glove or throughout the suit. With this solution, artificially created incentives somehow overshadow those provided by the real world. However, we are constantly aware that what we see, touch, smell and even taste are computer illusions. Including therefore, for example, in games we are much more risk-averse than if it were reality.

The last and most superficial way to enter cyberspace it's actually everyday life today.

It's Google, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and every corner of the internet's cyberspace. It can also be all kinds of games that we play on the computer and console. Often this absorbs us very strongly, but nevertheless, the stimulation usually ends with an image and sound. We are not "surrounded" by the world of the game and do not make movements that imitate reality. Touch, taste and smell are not stimulated.

However, the network is a new, natural environment for humans. An environment in which he would like to join, become part of it. The dreams of transhumanists like Kurzweil no longer seem like the complete fantasy that they were, for example, two decades ago. A person lives and is immersed in technology in almost all aspects of life, and a network connection sometimes accompanies us 24 hours a day. The vision of the Belgian thinker Henri Van Lier, vol. the world of dialectical machineswhich weave ever denser and denser communication network, are being realized before our eyes. One of the steps on this path is the existing global computer network - the Internet.

It is interesting that the entire non-material part of human culture is becoming more and more virtualized, detached from physical reality. An example is the media, whose messages are separated from their physical basis. Content is important and media such as paper, radio or television become only possible but not physically necessary channels.

Accept all your feelings

Video games can be addictive even without the most advanced VR equipment. However, soon players will be able to dive much deeper into the world of virtual gameplay. All thanks to devices like the Oculus Rift. The next step is devices that bring our natural movements into the virtual world. It turns out that such a solution is at hand. All thanks to WizDish, a controller that transmits the movements of our feet into the virtual world. The character moves in it only when we - in special shoes - move along WizDish (4).

It seems no coincidence that Microsoft first bought Minecraft for 2,5 billion, and then donated HoloLens glasses. Those who are familiar with the game and know how AR Goggles from Redmond work will immediately understand the wonderful potential of such a combination (5). This is reality plus the world of Minecraft. Minecraft game with elements of reality. "Minecraft" plus other games, plus friends from reality. The possibilities are almost endless.

To this we add additional incentives to virtual world even more like reality. Scientists from the British University of Bristol have developed a technology called “touch in the air”, which makes it easy to feel under the fingers the shapes of objects that are three-dimensional projections.

owe virtual objects they must give the impression that they exist and are under the fingertips, all thanks to the focusing of ultrasounds (6). The description of the technology was published in the specialized journal "ACM Transactions on Graphics". It shows that the tactile sensations around the object displayed in 3D are created by thousands of tiny speakers that are equipped with a projection system. The system detects the position of the hand and responds with an appropriate ultrasonic pulse, felt as a sense of the surface of the object. The technology completely eliminates the need for physical contact with the device. Its creators are also working on introducing the ability to feel changes in the shape and position of a virtual object.

Known technologies and prototypes of "virtual touch" are usually reduced to the generation of vibrations or other simple signals felt under the fingers. The Dexmo set (7), however, is described as giving more - the impression of resistance to touching the surface. Thus, the user must "really" feel the touch of the real object. The resistance to the fingers is real, since the exoskeleton has a complex braking system built into it that stops them at the right moment. As a result, thanks to the software and the brakes, each finger stops at a slightly different point in the virtual object, as if it had stopped on the surface of a real object, such as a ball.

5. HoloLens and the virtual world

7. Various Dexmo Glove Options

In turn, a group of students from Rice University recently developed a glove that allows you to "touch" and "catch" objects in virtual reality, that is, in the air. The Hands Omni (8) glove will allow you to feel the shapes and sizes, "in touch" with the virtual world of objects.

Thanks to the feedback computer worldwhich is seen by a person in appropriate equipment and with the sensations created in gloves, a touch equivalent to reality must be created. In a physical sense, these sensations must be met by the air-filled fingertips of the Hands Omni glove. The degree of filling is responsible for the feeling of hardness of the generated objects. A young design team is collaborating with the creators of the Virtuix Omni treadmill, which is used to “navigate” in virtual reality. The mechanism of the device works on the Arduino platform.

Replenishment virtual sensory experiences He continues: “Here is a team led by Haruki Matsukura from the Tokyo University of Agriculture and Technology developed a technology for creating a fragrance. The aromas emitted by flowers or a cup of coffee seen on the screen come from capsules filled with scented gel, which are evaporated and blown onto the display by mini fans.

The flow of scented air is modified in such a way that the scent "emanates" from those parts of the screen where the scented object is visible. At the moment, the limitation of the solution is the ability to emit only one scent at a time. However, according to Japanese designers, it will soon be possible to change the aroma capsules in the device.

Breaking barriers

Designers go further. Image perception will greatly simplify and improve bypassing the need for expensive and not always perfect optics and even the imperfections of the human eye. Thus, a project was born that allows understanding the semantic difference between the words “see” and “see”. Virtual reality glasses, which are becoming more and more popular today, allow you to view images. Meanwhile, an invention called Glyph, which electrified not only the Kickstarter crowdfunding platform, will allow you to simply see, because the image from it should be displayed immediately on the retina - that is, as we understand it, partially replacing the eye. Inevitably, associations arise with the aforementioned Neuromancer, that is, the perception of the image directly by the nervous system.

9. Glyph - how it works

Glyph is designed for more than just play equipment. It is expected to work with smartphones and consumer electronics such as video players. For gamers, it has a head tracking mechanism, a built-in gyroscope and an accelerometer, that is, a "bionic" set of virtual reality. The company behind the Glypha, Avegant, claims that the image projected directly onto the lower part of the eye will be crisper and clearer. Nevertheless, it is worth waiting for the opinions of doctors, ophthalmologists and neurologists - what they think about this technique.

Previously, it was called, in particular, about immersion not in the virtual world, but, for example, in books. It turns out that work is underway on a technology whose task will be to convert texts into 3D images.

This is what the MUSE (Machine Understanding for Interactive StorytElling) project is trying to do, which is defined as a translator of text into virtual reality. As prof. Dr. Marie-Francine Moens of Leuven, project coordinator, says the idea is to translate the actions, entities and objects in the text into visuals. Improved components for processing the semantic language of texts have been developed. These include recognition of semantic roles in sentences (i.e. "who", "what does", "where", "when", and "how"), spatial relationships between objects or people (where they are), and chronologies of events. . .

The solution is aimed at children. MUSE is designed to make it easier for them to learn to read, to help them develop inference, and ultimately to better understand the text. In addition, it is supposed to support the memorization and establishment of mutual links between texts (for example, when reading a text devoted to the exact sciences or biology).