How close are we to deep dive/full immersion VR ?

Obsessed_With_Gaming

Will it happen within our lifetime ( in 20-50 years)?

By using Elon Musk's Neuralink (Neural Lace 2039???) ,NerveGear, nanobots, mind uploading maybe?

And if we were to achieve this would anyone still want to live in the real world apart from people who are maintaining the system and certain religious groups?(or at least take breaks from full dive VR)

And is this inevitable? 

Digikid1

Hope not.  That is a line that should NEVER be crossed.

MAC_MAN86

People are already living in a "human zoo". Single men get labelled MGTOW (”Men Going Their Own Way”). Much like single-parent females. Hardly interested in humans nor the outdoors but instead save up for holidays abroad. Once they get over cabin fever they are in their own world. Given the alternative of having to support another human plus being trapped by unplanned offspring with debts incurred from borrowing way too much to finance it all and then considering it falling apart and giving away half your assets then life in VR can be a reality. No doubt many of you are there right now! I bet most of us did worry in apprehension what if we prefer VR to daily life? I thought this just as getting into fps was getting more real and made me still think I was a Soldier walking on dark footpaths or in my car treating it like I could handbrake it around corners. People will sure enough become zombies!

Nekto2

It would be great to work in VR, but live in real life
You could change your colleges avatars to kitties. And you will save time on way to work.

LuluViBritannia

That will never happen. The "full dive" technology (like the one in Sword Art Online, or Matrix, or in any other VR show) requires a direct link to the brain, which means: reading and writing the brainwaves. Reading the brain electric signals is fairly easy and already feasible today ; writing them, on the other hand, is simply not possible as it requires surgery to implement a ton of electrodes.

Full dive isn't necessary anyway. People need to understand that Virtual Reality is not a replacement of reality. It's a middle step between virtual worlds and the real one. As a computing technology, it will stick to audiovisual and haptics, and does not need to go further.

It's not forbidden to dream, of course ^^, but don't take fantasies as realistic expectations. Full dive is just that : a fantasy. It's very cool in the movies, but seeing it as the future of VR will only bring the real VR down.

Mradr

Not 100% true tho... We could get very close with in the next 100-200 years as from as full brain read and writing. Granted how we do it might bring up questions - but we can already give some sight back to people that lost their eye with a fake eye. Sure it's early stages - but we already shown we can do both to a basic understanding. With in the next say 50 years I could see us already having most of our inputs trick using some sort of feedback system. Touch, temperature, taste, sight, and smell right now has research papers already in how close we can get. Right now - I seen different technology in their early stages giving off demos of what they can do with those already. Taste and smell going to be the hardest to replicate while touch, temp, and sight being something we could have in the next 25 years to blow us away currently.

In the next 25 years:
1) We will have figured out a way to increase pixel count to a point you can't see them and with soo many it will be hard to know if you are looking at a real wall or a fake one (8k res with 16k upscaling or more).

2) We will have feedback systems that will recreate temperature and touch for our hands for both input and more realism. 

3) We will have switch from LCD or very close to switching from them into eye focus projections.

4) Glasses style VR will be a thing instead of the bulky design we have now. I say - at least 75% smaller than they are now at least.

5) We will have flat lenses that will allow us to take away bulk - smaller designs - increase FOV - and adjustable focal points. 

6) Focal points will be a thing along with Eye tracking and FOVA rendering.

7) Built in hardware that revivales computer hardware (it might come in a box instead you strap to your side).

8) Inside out tracking - allowing us to have freedoms that current static tracking doesn't allow

9) Early ideas on how we can move and do things without having to have a controller anymore

10) Increase FOV to a point it matches or closes matches your current FOV. There will be people saying it goes over their current eye rotations and others saying they still see black boxes if they move their eyes in a direction.

11) We will have figure out a way to track your mouth for avator usage. With eye tracking - we will also use that for aviators too. Taking this one step more - possible just scan your full face before you put it on.

12) AR with VR will be a thing - VR will support AR elements that will allow passthrough gaming and sight so will not want have to take it off as much. 

13) With scale - we will instead be doing 1 - 1.5 - 2 - 2.5 - 3 - 3.5 - 4. The .5 are refreshes that include the newest tech but may not include new designs. Time between refreshes will be something in the 3-4 year range enough time for them to release a new HMD on every level - PCVR - Basic VR - Mobile VR. The idea here is that they will move features up focusing/squeezing as much performance as they can from the lowest device (micro optimizing) and applying that to the highest.

LuluViBritannia

I was sure somebody would bring up the bionic eyes topic ^^, which is why I kept this link warm:

https://www.allaboutvision.com/conditions/bionic-eyes.htm

I quote: "the current implant has only 60 electrodes. To see naturally, you'd need about a million."
In order to get only one "VR eye" you would need about a million electrodes. Double that to get the full view in full dive. Then, count how much you would need for touch, temp, taste and everything else.
Now give me the price of the whole system. I know one electrode is very cheap, but millions of it? Plus the cost of the surgery operation? 

It's simply not a viable solution, hence it won't happen.
For example, in the case of the sight, the current system (one screen in front of each eye) can already give you a proper result without the need of any surgery. Once the current issues have been resolved (resolution, FOV and lenses), VR systems will already give a proper sight in VR without any surgery.

Mradr

LuluViBritannia said:

I was sure somebody would bring up the bionic eyes topic ^^, which is why I kept this link warm:

https://www.allaboutvision.com/conditions/bionic-eyes.htm

I quote: "the current implant has only 60 electrodes. To see naturally, you'd need about a million."
In order to get only one "VR eye" you would need about a million electrodes. Double that to get the full view in full dive. Then, count how much you would need for touch, temp, taste and everything else.
Now give me the price of the whole system. I know one electrode is very cheap, but millions of it? Plus the cost of the surgery operation? 

It's simply not a viable solution, hence it won't happen.
For example, in the case of the sight, the current system (one screen in front of each eye) can already give you a proper result without the need of any surgery. Once the current issues have been resolved (resolution, FOV and lenses), VR systems will already give a proper sight in VR without any surgery.

They said the same thing only a 100 years ago about computers. I say it's really early stages. The fact that it can be done gives reasons - that cost and production could make it fairly cheap over a given time. Along with time - improve on the system so maybe wont take a million points - but a sensor they can track million points. 

One way would have it resets itself over and over creating a image out of scan lines instead of raw input data. Do this fast enough - it wouldn't require half of what it take to recreate that image. What - 240 times? Cut that number in half if you up your grid array to double and then you can shut it down to 120 fps. Granted I am just using numbers here as I don't know how much resolution an eye can really see to how many electroids it takes to get a line, but the idea would still hold true for such a thing to happen in.

True - but the idea here is that it was possible to read and write back to the brain. A feed back system instead doesn't require writing to the brain and instead uses our hardware (such as skin) and recreates pressures and textures of an object that our brains (along with sight) will think it's touching an object. One way to do this is to use our own senor hardware like nerves and touch to recreate the idea in our brains. 

Send the right signals down our nervous system (won't require surgery) you can recreate a rock in your hand. Not saying this is easy work here - but it is possible. On the other hand - the question - is this right - might come up. Meaning the technology might come along - but delay longer than it would normally to make sure it comes into the right age of such a technology of power. Sometimes slow and study does win the race lol. 

MAC_MAN86

All this technology and every time we need to change a light bulb or change a bathroom tap valve we need to call out a professional!
It takes them extra time to find out the correct sizes of imperial/metric and then try to find the parts locally is a nightmare.
Surely, it is far greater to simply miss out a generation of tech (whatever it maybe circa) then widely accept a manufacturing standard to stick with it. This is a modern day problem of a throw-away society. I could only dream of a world in which everything is compatible and parts are available!

Luciferous

Anybody seen Black mirror episode 

San Junipero

Don't read about it before hand as you'll spoil it. Just watch it (guaranteed you will love it) and tell me if your perspective is challenged.

falken76

This would NEVER take off if it requires surgery.  I sure as hell wouldn't get any surgery to play games or even have access to an actual holodeck.  Not happening.

LuluViBritannia

They said the same thing only a 100 years ago about computers.

They said we would need surgery to use computers? Then they were damn wrong, lol.
I get your point: tech keeps improving to some extent, never say never, I know all that. In that case, that point simply doesn't apply as I'm not saying the tech is not feasible (okay, I did say the words "not possible" once, my bad, I take them back xD). I'm saying it will always be unpractical and that the current system will be just as immersive anyway.
Again, I'll give the example of sight.
- You could have surgery to get bionic eyes that can give you true sight in a VR world.
- OR you can just use the current VR system, that will give you just as good a sight without the need for any surgery. There's a clear winner here.

About the computers 100 years ago, what they did say is it would never take off if it kept the size of a big room. And they were right: computers took off because they got practical as they kept getting smaller and more powerful. The same for cellphones: the first generations were so big and not portable, so they didn't sell well. Then, they got smaller and this is what made them go mainstream.

As for this full dive solution, it will simply never be practical as you simply can't avoid surgery and the millions of electrodes. Hence, it will never happen.

And we're just talking of the tech side here. There's also the human side. The very fact that it requires surgery makes it not a viable solution for most people. Every surgery comes with a risk, and when we're talking about the brain, every risk is lethal or, at best, can make you mentally defective. It would be a shame to drool on your knees for the rest of your life just because a non-required surgery went wrong, don't you think?

Personally, as much as I love VR, even if Oculus themselves were to release a full dive tech, I certainly wouldn't take it if that required tempering with my body.

shadowfrogger

LuluViBritannia said:

never be practical as you simply can't avoid surgery and the millions of electrodes. Hence, it will never happen.

There is quite a lot of technology that we don't have access to, In terms of surgery.  It might not be required for full dive technology

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC153496/

Although unfeasible today, you could create ultra sonic waves to interfere and send false signals instead. You could hijack the nervous system.  Although the computing power and precision to read and write in real time is unthinkable today.  We don't really know if full dive needs surgery or not yet.

Also, there may be a future where humans start to diverse with logic driven biological or technological evolution.  It might be common place one day for a percent of the population to just get cybernetic implants from a early age.  Of course there would have to be near 0% failure rates.  The thing is, it's hard to comprehend how fast technology advances will be in 20years. We won't be using current tools and methods, We will have tools that speed up anything we are researching on a order of magnitude that is hard to imagine compared to current process.  We are also just started a AI revolution(over next 10-20years) akin to previous industry revolutions but on a much faster scale.  We won't see the sudden jumps until generation 3 VR devices, But from there on out, that is really when things will get nuts.  100-200 years for full brain read and writing is far too conservative IMO

Digikid1

We would be better off just figuring out how to build force fields and making REAL holographic stuff instead of the fake holograms that we make today. 

We need a REAL holodeck style tech. 

MAC_MAN86

Nanobots are now being used in Surgery. We are there now!

Mradr

Guess we're closer to smell o vision than I thought, but it looks like it might be a fake or limited understand. Either way, it looks promising if it is true.

https://uploadvr.com/electrical-nose-stimulation-could-let-you-smell-anything-vr/

If they are for real - than this will be deployable over night as this is one key area where VR would shine above all other ways to take in media. I say this feature alone would draw in thousands of people and give way to new ways we take pictures (image + smells) of places we been and seen.

Though can't lie xD having rods up my nose sounds a bit unpleasant, but I guess long as I can breath - having the ability to smell a rose can't be all that bad xD - maybe? 

RedRizla

Mradr said:

Guess we're closer to smell o vision than I thought, but it looks like it might be a fake or limited understand. Either way, it looks promising if it is true.

https://uploadvr.com/electrical-nose-stimulation-could-let-you-smell-anything-vr/

I don't believe it for a second