The first thing I want to establish is that I can’t see very well. As soon as the glasses come off the entire world looks like a blur. I once described a face as “one giant mess with a mountain sticking out of the middle”. The mountain was a nose and when the offended party tried on my glasses they ultimately agreed with my assessment. The reason I bring this up is that this week I had the chance to try a thousand dollar Virtual Reality headset and have been preparing myself to pass judgement on a piece of technology that I can’t afford anyway. So, here I will tell you my experience in Virtual Reality.
1. I became one with the universe.
As my friend took my glasses (which would not fit under the headset) and turned the large apparatus on I first stood staring into total darkness. Then the stars appeared above me and in front of me. As I turned around I was greeted with a vision of the sun. I placed my hands in front of me and could no longer see them. While they could still be felt, the only thing I could see was the controllers I held completely unobstructed. Then I loaded into what may have been a prison.
2. A robot guided me.
The first thing I was greeted with when I left my place in the cosmos was a white, relatively empty room. I was assured that there was supposed to be noise and, after a brief period of technical difficulty, I found myself back in that room. The furniture broke away from the floor with a rumble and disappeared beneath the floor. Finally, a robot awoke behind me and taught me how to create balloons, teleport and shoot lasers. While I was confined in this room a group of what I presume to be civilians entered. Although I could not approach them, I did create balloons for them. I then fired lasers at them. They fled and my friend and operator told me that I was done with the tutorial. It is then that a fact occurred to me, I came from the cosmos and had limited god like powers over this world. I could be a benevolent god or a malevolent one- really it was my choice. Then, I entered “The Lab.”
3. I learned the other reason this isn’t a household technology.
As “The Lab” loaded in, I could make out more of the civilians and quickly established to everyone in the room that I would be their benevolent God— as long as they provided me proper tribute. When the place finally loaded in, I could make out the blurry designs of a conveyer belt that I wanted to check out but the game wouldn’t let me teleport over to see. I could make out a blurry slinky run past me and out of my reach. I would later learn that this was a dog that you could pet. I was then directed to a game called “Sling Shot.” At first, I had no idea what I was looking at. The game was on a large platform- which was slightly unnerving- and involved throwing talking, metal balls at boxes. Unfortunately, I couldn’t tell where each box began or ended. Ultimately, my Operator told me the objective was to hit the red boxes to cause explosions. He also encouraged me to throw as if I was destroying the bourgeois — a proper task for a benevolent God. In order to avoid offending his Libertarian tastes by choosing a person who was too Randian, I chose to imagine that I was destroying Donald Trump’s secret storage space of wooden boxes. Somehow I caused him seven million dollars in damages (which I had to squint to see) and while no other round hit that height, I truly hoped Mr. Trump had box insurance. It was on the completion of each “Career” that I found myself with no option to restart. I would have to load back to “The Lab” and then back to the minigame. I had discovered the reason other than price that made VR headsets unviable for most people: There were no games, only tech demos.
4. Some men just want to watch the world burn.
Next up was a friend of mine. As our Operator, Mike, put the headset on our friend, Matt, he nearly jumped back a foot upon finding himself among the stars. I believe he thought himself an astronaut for a moment. He was allowed to skip the tutorial and was jumped straight to “The Lab.” After a few minutes of total indecisiveness, split up by his petting the dog that run around the level several times, he settled on trying his hand at archery. By which I mean he used the same hand he held the bow with to also knock and fire his arrows. He may have been the single worse archer I have ever seen. Still, I salute the effort and as his castle door was broken down by the people he was supposed to shoot with arrows, the world around him burst into flames. He then simply sat down and stared forward announcing “some men just want to watch the world burn”.
5. Lessons
