Virtual reality is not enough

Originally published 10 September 1990

Put on the Eye­Phone stere­o­graph­ic dis­play gog­gles. Crank up the audio head­set. Slip your hand into the Data­Glove. Plug your­self into a supercomputer.

Wel­come to vir­tu­al reality.

The world of vir­tu­al real­i­ty exists before your eyes as a bril­liant­ly col­ored 3‑dimensional image. Turn your head and the view changes. Move your hand to touch, lift, point, or direct. Step into the image and move about as real­is­ti­cal­ly as if you were walk­ing down the street.

Vir­tu­al real­i­ty exists only in the mem­o­ry of a com­put­er, but the sights and sounds of that phan­tom world seem vivid­ly real. Your motions and ges­tures are com­mu­ni­cat­ed to the com­put­er and the com­put­er gen­er­ates the appro­pri­ate sense stim­uli. To the out­side observ­er you are a black-gloved spas­tic in a fun­ny-look­ing mask. Inside the mask you walk on the sur­face of the moon, escape to a desert island with your fan­ta­sy lover, pilot an Air Force jet through bil­low­ing clouds, or dive with whales to the bot­tom of the sea.

The soft­ware for these vir­tu­al expe­ri­ences is not yet avail­able, but the gear is ready and wait­ing. If you have a cou­ple of hun­dred thou­sand dol­lars you can buy the Eye­Phone, Data­Glove, com­put­ers and pro­to­type soft­ware from an out­fit called VPL Research in (where else?) Cal­i­for­nia. If you don’t have that kind of mon­ey, hang on a few years. The tech­nol­o­gy for cre­at­ing vir­tu­al real­i­ty is devel­op­ing fast, and wild­ly exot­ic soft­ware will not be far behind.

Be what you want to be

With­in 20 years com­plete vir­tu­al-real­i­ty suits will be avail­able: spe­cial clothes, gloves, and masks that sense your every move­ment and com­mu­ni­cate with a com­put­er. The com­put­er will cre­ate images before your eyes, sounds in your ears, tac­tile sen­sa­tions in your fin­ger­tips, maybe even scents in your nose, all in response to your move­ments and reactions.

Drop down to your local Vir­tu­al Real­i­ty Super­store and rent “Expe­di­tion to Mars” on ROM cas­sette. Or “Joust­ing with Gala­had.” Or “Tryst­ing with Guen­e­vere.” Slip into your VR suit. Expe­ri­ence the vir­tu­al real­i­ty of your choice.

In vir­tu­al real­i­ty you don’t just play Pac-Man, you are Pac-Man. In vir­tu­al real­i­ty you don’t just vis­it Epcot Cen­ter, Epcot Cen­ter comes to you. In vir­tu­al real­i­ty every per­son is an astro­naut, every per­son is Don­ald Trump, every per­son is Top Gun.

Ho hum.

I was think­ing about all of this today as I went for a walk in the woods. No bells. No whis­tles. No razzmatazz. Just old-fash­ioned brown and green ordi­nary real­i­ty. Soft pine nee­dles under­foot. Dap­pled sun­light on the wood­land floor. The call of chick­adees. A flash of red on the head of a downy woodpecker.

The woods revealed them­selves slow­ly, guard­ed­ly, in response to gen­tle inter­ro­ga­tions. Crim­son berries of the wild lily-of-the- val­ley. Waxy covens of Indi­an pipes. The col­or­ful caps of rus­su­la mush­rooms prov­ing them­selves capa­ble of a broad­er palette than mere rus­set. The blue iri­des­cent shine of a drag­on­fly that some­how had made its way far from the pond to die among the oaks and pines.

Noth­ing vir­tu­al here, just real stim­uli detect­ed by real sens­es and processed by a real brain. The tap-tap-tap of a nuthatch. The first faint antic­i­pa­tions of autum­n’s decid­u­ous glo­ry. Hints and traits. That’s what the nat­u­ral­ist John Bur­roughs said: “The good observ­er of nature exists in frag­ments, a trait here and a trait there.” Or again: “One secret of suc­cess in observ­ing nature is capac­i­ty to take a hint.”

No hints and traits in the worlds of vir­tu­al real­i­ty. Vir­tu­al real­i­ty grabs you by the col­lar and yanks you in. Psy­che­del­ic col­ors. Rock-and-roll sounds. And that’s why we’ll like it. The space shut­tle ris­ing on a pil­lar of fire, and we’re in con­trol. The roar of the For­mu­la One rac­er, zero to one-twen­ty in five sec­onds. Pow sen­sa­tions. Schwarzeneg­ger mus­cle. Pac-Man in paradise.

What’s miss­ing? “To know is not all,” said John Bur­roughs, “it is only half. To love is the oth­er half.” He’s not talk­ing heart- thump­ing romance. He’s not talk­ing R‑rated pas­sion. He’s talk­ing atten­tion to detail. He’s talk­ing recep­tive­ness. He’s talk­ing patience, and sat­is­fac­tion with hints and traits. He’s talk­ing reality.

Real real­i­ty, the New Eng­land wood­lands on a crisp late-sum­mer’s day.

Who’ll mind the old store?

Mean­while, the whiz-bang com­put­er mavens of Cal­i­for­nia are cook­ing up vir­tu­al real­i­ties to make the heart leap to the throat, cyber­space fan­tasies as inti­mate as your wildest dream and as real as poly­ester. The ulti­mate tri­umph of the syn­thet­ic. Walk-in Nin­ten­do. Gog­gle-eyed, boom-boxed Dis­ney­worlds of the mind.

Noth­ing wrong with that. I’m as ready as the next guy to don Eye­Phones and Data­Suit and go to the moon.

But when we all have access to vir­tu­al real­i­ties, who will attend to this one, the ordi­nary down-to-earth world out­side, the real­i­ty of the New Eng­land wood­lands in ear­ly Sep­tem­ber? When we can wig­gle our Data­Gloved fin­ger and sum­mon up the vir­tu­al fan­ta­sy of our choice, who will lis­ten for the nuthatch?

Vir­tu­al real­i­ty is only half. To love is the oth­er half.