In the past few months I've become completely immersed in virtual reality and its seemingly infinite possibilities. Because it's still a growing field, I've been able to engage with others who have thrown themselves into the adventurous (and often glitchy) field of virtual reality.

Gaming in VR

Most people associate VR with video games. While the gaming world is not even close to the only field in which VR will have an immense impact, the link seems natural.

One of the main trends I've noticed is a tendency to stick to comfortable ideas; understandably, as the entire field is completely new and no one really knows what audiences will enjoy. A series of games are coming out which could just as easily be played on a regular console without VR support.

One such game is Negotiator (demo link for the Oculus DK2 attached), which is being developed by 4PM Games with Bojan Brbora as the project head. It has a cinematic narrative that takes the player into the life of military hostage negotiator Jonathan Martell. After a botched negotiation that leads to a celebrity's death, he tries to move to a different part of the world with his family to escape hostile media and harassment. However, he gets taken hostage along with his family in the new country and must successfully negotiate his way out of there.

The game features puzzles as well as shifting perspectives -- to move through certain sections of the game, the player has to play as someone other than the main character. It will be interesting to see how that impacts the players' immersion, will they feel removed from the situation because they're changing perspective? It also has results affected by the player's choices -- so your actions have consequences. Having played TellTale's Walking Dead games, in which the player's actions can get characters killed and can alter the storyline, I've felt the tremendous guilt that making the 'wrong' choice gives you. How will that be impacted by VR?

The Negotiator is definitely an interesting idea, and I would probably have played it on a non-VR platform, but that begs the question: when will we see games and ideas that are specific to VR?

Exploring empathy

Outside of major media outlets, like the New York Times or Discovery, independent journalists and smaller outlets are trying to create immersive journalism. For example, Tom Perry is a journalist who works on international stories, and is currently working on a 360 series about conflict in Asia-Pacific. He emphasized the way virtual reality and 360 video can increase empathy, pointing to this article. Since there are already many groups working on immersive journalism and creating empathy -- such as Emblematic Group and Empathetic Media, I don't want to dwell on the subject much longer. What I will say is that media outlets, big and small, are realizing the immense impact that virtual reality can have on drawing the audience into a story, and VR use will likely increase among most media outlets.

Data journalism

One field where I haven't seen much production yet is data journalism. Some groups, like VRtices, are currently working on it. They mentioned that the user interface is difficult to get down, which is understandable. When asked how they model a typically 2D experience (like dataviz) to a 3D space, they said, "most data is multi-dimensional, 2-D dataviz has just been an accommodation for mankind."

It's been easy for me to find simple VR dataviz, and even guides on creating it. What I mean by 'simple' VR dataviz is basically 3d rectangles as bar charts and sphere as points on a graph. While I signed up for a  Virtual Cove beta (a tool that aids in creating VR dataviz), I haven't heard back from them and can't comment on the process of creating these kinds of tools. Still, the VR dataviz that is most prevalent are simply 3D graphs and structures that don't fully use the VR space to take the user into the data and into the story. Instead of simply having a 3-D graph, how can we use the data as a tool to tell a 'multi-dimensional' story, as VRtices sees dataviz? Whether that means walking through the graph and into the actual story, or having the graph transform with the changing story, we need  more than just data in VR for its own sake. If we can't figure that out, I just don't see the benefit of simply having graphs in VR.

To mixed reality... and beyond!

Clandestine is an AR mobile game in which aliens come to the Earth and you have to fight to survive. It's creator, Corey King of Zenfri Inc, bills their company as one that enjoys experimenting with new media. Their app uses GPS to pinpoint your location and place characters, missions, and objectives on a map of your area. Using the camera on your phone, you can look around the room and "see" characters in the game within your space. I've reached out to its creator and am waiting for a response, but based on previous research on the subject (and having tried several mobile AR applications myself), some of the biggest challenges facing mobile AR are that it has to deal with a large amount of information, requires GPS, and is a big drain on battery.

Having tried Clandestine and Solar (a mobile AR app that places the solar system on a map and allows you to walk through and around it), it's clear that the field is still new and needs a lot more development to reach a higher level of believability. Both are great applications that I would be glad to recommend to any friends, but they represent some of the first steps into this emerging field.