Comments on "Enhance Virtual Reality"

Virtual reality would be very useful in the implementation of emergency escape plans. Also extraction and SWAT teams could use virtual representations of buildings to simulate operations.

I believe virtual reality is good to enhance, but eventualy people will absorb themselves within something that is not real, which could lead to more problems in the future if this kind of reality opens up to the public. We already know that humans now arecontrolled by their ipnones and tablets, just think of how much that would increase with the future of virtual reality.

i like the idea and so ods my grandma

this be cool

While comment by Julia ("reality-based human, houston") below is extremely, absolutely correct in many ways, I also believe that in the ENGINEERING field, a proper VR is badly needed as a design tool; but in its present form, it is leaving A LOT to be desired! Take for example the way present day design engineers handle their simulators, 3D-engineering software tools and similar systems: It is a shame that to be able to modify a set of engineering drawings or 3D models, they need to gather a lot of skill and practice, and still have to wrestle with very rudimentary computer peripherals, like a mouse or trackball and a keyboard! Just imagine being able to setup a realistic view of an installation (an Offshore drilling rig, for example) and actually "grasp" a given structural member with a pair of gloves and relocate it or bend it, or even break it! and then see in a matter of a few seconds the effect of their manipulation... or imagine a group of so called "automotive designers" having to service by themselves a simulated repair to a newly designed car or truck; there are documented cases of terrible designs made with the "help" of today's "design tools", that produced unserviceable vehicles (just read about the V10 bi-turbo pickup truck that needs to have its complete passenger cabin to be removed to be able to repair one of the turbos, then they had to reinstall the cabin to be able to start the engine to test the repair, and then had to uninstall it againto fix it again, because the damaged component simply is not accessible/serviceable either from the hood opening or from the bottom of the raised vehicle! Think about the recent tragic and damaging accident of the Deepwater Horizon drilling Platform that sank in the Gulf of Mexico, killing several persons and causing the worst environmental disaster in the history of the Offshore Industry in the Gulf of Mexico. A reasonably good VR system could have been used to demostrate the chain of events that caused the accident, the true extent of the damages and more importantly: how to properly design a drilling platform to avoid design errors that made the accident so terrible and the damaging loss of control of the well.

But wait a minute! What about the fearsome accident in the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Central after the Earthquake in Japan... imagine to be able to simulate many different kinds of damages, and more importantly: what things can be tried and which actions can be detrimental and should NOT be attempted!.

In a nutshell, trying to properly design installations, vehicles, etc. with the rudimentary tools available to most designers and engineers is only going to produce mediocre performing designs, and all too often, the very same design tools make it EASIER to design-in mistakes and errors, but hide them so the designer believes the design is OK, when in reality it has problems and unsuspected risks.

I dream of a set of design tools that would be SO easy to handle, that old, truly experienced engineers (that presently have a lot of hassle with 3D CAD type of models), could be able to use them to quickly demonstrate younger engineers where their design is going to fail miserably, before more time and expenses are thrown into it, before discovering (usually too late) that the "design" was seriousky flawed since the beginning.
(Tell Airbus about their failure to identify gross incompatibility between wiring schemes in their huge Airbus A380, 800 passsenger jet before it was too late, that seriously put the company on the edge of complete chaos, and delayed the delivery of their latest model for a long time, almost breaking the company!).

Someone told me that the artists or "draftsmen" that produce the animated films at PIXAR or DISNEY, use a full complement of advanced interfaces to be able to produce their beautiful images and motion effects. It is a shame engineers still have to battle thru mouse and keyboad to produce engineering drawings of vehicles, nuclear plants and offshore platforms, that sometimes fail and produce catastrophic consecuences. amclaussen, 30+years designing petroleum and ofshore installations.

while improving VR might be interesting, I'd be loathe to call it a "grand challenge." While it is great to see Grand Challenges of Engineering! I was surprised to see that engineering (or automatically extracting from the detritus stream) more reusable/recyclable materials wasn't on the list. It always feels like much of the "stuff" we throw away can be recycled (well beyond newspaper, cans, and bottles). Engineering could turn us all into green recyclers!

I've just started researching into the applications of Virtual Reality and to be honest... I can't see any reason why we couldn't use it for anything that we wouldn't normally do. Of course wheres the fun in that. I'm sure we'd all much rather be sent to a world that we ourselves have made. Think about it with things like PS3's Little Big Planet and PC's SPORE around already, we could just as easily create our own worlds and characters that we could interact with. Given a bit of imagination people could even adapt this for eductaional purposes. Even then there are things like interactive desks and whiteboards which it can be used with. I mean imagine walking past a shop window or mirror that has an interface showing you what they have in stock and that can even show you what you'd look like wearing them. The daft thing is that all the technology is out there, its just a matter of putiing it all together. But as all new developments the problem is that humanity will take time to accept these things. 'Humanity's reach exceeds its grasp'

I would like to see a VR life support system that is used for deep space travel. With the support of a body suit that uses muscles, along with the VR world to keep the brain and body occupied for the long journey.
Or if we don’t find anything out there!
The world is going to become a very small place very quick! If we could create a world in VR that was real enough to trick the senses into believing it was real all the laws of known physics are applied and it’s not a perfect world! (The movie “The Matrix” hit on that a little) We could have the world “plugged in” You could choose, so to speak “What you want to be when you grow up!” and then “Plug in” and “Have your dreams come true!”
I am currently trying to design such a system as well as writing a sci-fi novel based on the above fore mentioned! And then there will be “Virtually no Reality!” (insert book “Plug” here!)

Personally, I like the old idea of using virtual reality (or VR) to play and feel my video games like never before, but I also believe that once that happens VR will take off in ways we can't even imagine. Do I really want to play a game where getting shot feels like getting shot? Maybe once, but it'd get old quick. Would dying really feel like dying? That would be terrifying but I believe there are much broader uses. I believe VR could become the new internet. Not only would people be messaging each other through text and video, but now face to face in any setting in a way that may only be able to be described as real aside from the advertising (as I drink coffee with you on Google moon ). I'd think that if we got that far, then things may really take off. Now you could make an avatar, if you will, though not so much in a video game sense, but more in the walking on a beach with your grandfather and he looks like he did when he was 25, health problems nonexistent sense. You could talk, laugh, eat, drink, and swim together actually feeling the current and tasting the salt water as waves roll by (meanwhile your grandfather lies in a hospital with a terminal illness). From a war veteran who lost one or more limbs to a quadriplegic who would otherwise never move again, let alone feel it, it would be more than just a game. It could actually give a person a reason to continue because although they may be in a seemingly hopeless situation they could, for at least a short time, completely forget their ailments and go any where with anyone, do whatever they wanted and feel it, smell it, and taste it. If we gained a better insight into the human brain and learned exactly what caused blindness and deafness you could literally allow somebody to hear or see for the first time. That may seem a little far fetched, but we're already working on rebuilding certain "broken connections" in the brain that cause blindness shortly after birth and have made slight but undeniable progress. Beyond that we might even begin to download memories, thoughts, possibly entire lifetimes of knowledge and experience. It all might seem pretty ridiculous to think about but the more we learn about our own mind, the more it starts to look like a computer. A powerful and squishy computer, but a computer nonetheless. All you might have to do one day is plug in.

I have often wondered what percentage of humans would choose, if given the chance, to spend the rest of their lives in a virtual reality similar to the one seen in the Matrix movies. It seems like this choice, as well as the effectiveness of psychological treatments discussed in the article, would depend on the level of attachment a particular person has to the real world. On a related note, is the increased mechanization of our world decreasing that feeling of connectedness to the physical world? I think that enhancements to the believability of virtual environments allow for many of the traditional mental/emotional needs of humans to be satisfied through that virtual world rather than the physical world. If, at some point in the future, all work currently done by humans is accomplished by self-sustaining robots, will there be any need for humans to leave their homes? If we can gain all the benefits of interpersonal interactions, exposure to the outdoors, and recreation from the virtual worlds on our computer screens, will there be any motivation to leave our computer chairs? When virtual reality and the real world inevitably become indistinguishable, it will be interesting to see how humans respond.