My Journey into Virtual Reality

Back around 20 years ago when I was a kid, there was a device at Toys"R"Us claiming to be virtual reality and my head spun with wild imagination of all the possibilities it potentially had.  Growing up, cartoons and shows had plenty of references of what virtual reality would be like and what it was capable of.  I've always been fascinated by the idea and its potential in entertainment with videogames in particular.  I begged my parents to get me that "device" and they bought it to prove a point about how bad it was going to be.  So put on the headset, strapped the two gloves and single leg detector on and turned on this "Virtual Reality" game that had me fighting off ninjas.  To my dismay, I quickly realized how high my expectations were.  I was expecting to be able to punch and see the reaction of the enemy getting hit with at least 16-bit quality graphics.  Instead, I was presented with an LCD game (liquid crystal display that had predetermined images) that had a backlight and the sensors on the gloves and leg only detected any kind of motion.  Still, I tried to play it and remember it very well.  Punching left or right attacked enemies up close, while punching and kicking at the same time threw out a fireball to attack distant enemies.  Enemies hit would flash and disappear if killed.  My parents described my experience playing the game looking like I was having a seizure as I was flailing my hands and leg, wildly (the motion detection wasn't very good).  Disheartened by the disappointment, I asked my parents to return the device after I conceded that they were right about it being lame.  At that time, I held on to the belief that technology would advance enough where it would fulfill my Virtual Reality dreams and allow me more freedom in a better looking virtual environment.

Years go by and get excited about things like the R-Zone, Nintendo's Virtual Boy, and eyewear that allows you to connect to a TV to make it as big as a theater screen.  Each time I mentioned wanting one of those, my parents would always bring back up the Ninja fighting virtual reality toy I got as a kid and admit Virtual Reality still isn't at the level of my expectations yet.  Two decades later, Virtual Reality is talked about a lot and reaching consumers at a mainstream level.  I kept a close eye on it and wondered when I should check it out.  At first, it was a gimmick where we only had the headset and still played with a keyboard and mouse or a gamepad.  It wasn't until they introduced motion sensing controllers that I thought things were getting interesting.  There were still some problems though.  There weren't that many games and the ones available looked awful.  You needed a bit of room to setup the motion sensing towers and to move around in.  You needed a strong computer to be able to process the games and stream it onto the headset.  You needed to setup the cords to hang overhead if you didn't want them wrapping around your legs.  And it was also expensive (most VR sets were $1200+).  So I made some prerequisites to determine whether I should consider looking into VR: Cheap and affordable, wireless without the need for motion sensing towers, and games that I actually want to play.  In the past few months, the Oculus Quest 2 was released and had a lot of people talking about it.  I realized it fulfilled all three of those points.  Christmas passed and my parents told me on Christmas day "we didn't get anything for you because we have no idea what you want."  I told them they didn't need to get me anything, but they asked me quite a few times what I wanted or what I even liked.  I caved in and told them, "well, I'm pretty interested in Virtual Reality recently and think it's the right time for me to check it out."  Immediately, they laughed and brought up the Ninja fighting game again and I laughed with them saying "I promise things for Virtual Reality has certainly changed."  The Oculus Quest 2 was sold out everywhere and I eventually found a special offer and so my parents agreed to pick it up for me.

Three weeks pass by and I'm already prepared to give up on the idea of VR and wait longer.  The package shows up all of a sudden and I'm dumbstruck by the surprise.  So I spend half the day setting it up and figuring out how it works.  After that, I started playing some games.

Initial Reaction

I couldn't stop saying "WOW, THIS IS SO COOL!"  It was one thing to read articles, hear from friends, and watch videos about VR, and a totally different thing to actually experience it.  It was very much what I wanted out of VR two decades ago, but was still very surprised we actually reached that point in technology to actually do it!  The ability to looking around, up and down, and behind and see the entire environment of a game rather than seeing everything on a screen was a wild experience in itself.  Having depth perception and knowing how far something is and the ability to manipulate objects freely rather than pressing a button was both realistic and yet so unreal at the same time.  Being able to convey a realistic sense of darkness, spatial distance, light, is such a different feeling compared to seeing darkness, depth and lighting on a screen.  Needless to say, my mind was blown.

Motion Sickness

A lot of people experience this when playing VR and I thought I'd be immune to it since I play so much videogames already.  I was wrong.  On the 2nd day of playing VR, I decided to ride a virtual roller coaster and my goodness I felt so sick afterwards I thought I was going to throw up.  I was hoping to just have that adrenaline rush of going fast, but from some reason my stomach was doing backflips which is strange because I never had these feelings on a REAL roller coaster.  The sickening feeling stayed with me all night till the next afternoon.  Playing other games and having to move also made me feel queasy.  This continued for nearly a week before I started to adjust to moving around without feeling like I'm going to fall over.  It was an interesting and unpleasant feeling, but it's worth it after getting past it all and being able to play for hours with no problems.  I can even jump off high places in-game or go upstairs without feeling sick anymore.

Fatigue and stamina

Despite an entire year of push-ups, squats, and planking as well as 3 months of Ring Fit Adventure, I got sore and tired very quickly the first 2-4 days of playing VR.  I wasn't playing anything that required too much exertion (yet), but having to stand up for so many hours was wearing down on me (I was playing 6-8 hours per day in the beginning).  I didn't think playing VR would get me tired or even sweat.  But then I played the boxing game Creed and was sweating like crazy after 3 fights.  I soon realized how incredible VR potentially has for building up stamina and strengthen my leg muscles for me.

Physical Health

I've now implemented VR playing into my daily routine of exercise alongside Ring Fit Adventure and still doing push-ups and squats.  Amazingly, I've lost 4 pounds in the past 3 weeks!  I hope I'm able to continue to lower my weight, tone my body and raise my stamina.  Beat Saber and Until You Fall helps with arm movement and tensing the leg muscles.  Pistol Whip helps with my back, sides, and legs.  Creed helps strengthen and tone my arms, core, sides, leg, and definitely stamina.  I'm hoping to pick a few more physical intensive games to work with.

Mental Health

Maybe it's all the exercise.  Maybe it's the abundant amount of sensory stimulation and new experience.  Maybe because it fulfilled a long sought after wish.  Maybe it's how it's connected me to my friends in a different way.  Or maybe I'm just having so much fun playing VR.  I've definitely feel more stimulated, happy, and active these past 3 weeks that I haven't felt for a long time.  It might also be due to the fact I've been home for over a decade and haven't really seen much change in scenery that "traveling" to so many different worlds and environments really got my brain excited.  Not to mention that the pandemic has kept me in the house for the whole year.  VR is doing wonders for my mental health and I hope it continues to do so.

Social Aspects

I was expecting VR to be a bit more isolated and lonely, but I've actually been interacting with my friends a lot playing in VR.  I have 4 other friends with VR headsets and we played some games together.  There's something odd and personal about seeing your friends in VR compared to seeing them in-game on a screen that I can't quite explain, but it feels nice.  Even without a VR headset, we got our other friends to join us in VR Chat as there's a desktop mode which allowed them to join us for playing certain games, have Karaoke night, and play an FPS altogether.  It also reminded me of a project I worked on in College where I wrote up a potential invention where augmented reality would allow people to play online games together and interact or fight one another to promote being active.  That is partially possible now with VR as a lot of online games allows player to sword fight, box, and shoot each other in virtual space.   We're honestly not that far away from augmented reality as it's already been touched upon (such as Pokémon Go).  It's really cool to see real life movements and gestures being able to be transmitted and conveyed to other players online.  I hear VR has really helped people get over the feeling of loneliness and social anxiety over the past year with the lockdown in place.

My Top 3 Games

What I think

Virtual Reality is such a wild experience and I honestly believe this is the future of entertainment and possibly of life.  The potential it possesses in training, studying, working, exploring, learning and connecting with other people has barely scratched the surface.  Virtual Reality has been used in different professions for quite a while now and it can only grow and improve with its reach with the mainstream consumer.  I've been having so much fun playing VR the past three weeks and I'm planning to pick up some more games for it this weekend as the Lunar New Year sale has kicked off for a lot of platforms.