My experience in the first class was not my first experience using VR. I was introduced to it over the summer when I got to play with the Samsung Gear VR in the Innovation Lab. It was an incredible experience, yes, but I wanted to learn how I could do it too. I watched the New York Times VR video in the NYTVR app called "The Displaced." The storytelling techniques were effective because I got information and felt empathy with the people in the video. There were technical errors on the part of the people making the video (ghosting for example). I felt like I was there in the scene, but I was invisible to those in the scene itself. People walked around me as if I wasn't there, but I felt present in the scene itself if that makes sense. Because the camera is fixed, I am able to look around, but I don't have the ability to move forward or backward. The head tracking was not smooth using my cardboard headset. It seemed to be a bit shaky when I turned around. When I used my phone's screen instead of the cardboard view, this problem went away. I tried it with other videos and other apps and the same problem came up. It seemed the phones did a better job with the screen view than they did with the cardboard view. It is obvious that one would need an Oculus or Samsung Gear in order to get the cardboard view to not be shaky like it is with the phone screen. The same applies to the resolution of the videos. In cardboard, it seemed to be low-res, but on the phone screen, it was smooth, clear, high-res with natural movement.

The nausea question is probably my biggest challenge with VR. I have a medical condition called benign paroxysmal positional vertigo or BPPV (or vertigo), which makes watching VR videos very difficult for me. The nausea will hit me very quickly, even though the video is fine for everyone else. My ears, my eyes and my brain aren't on the same page. The condition is caused by calcium crystals in my ear floating freely in the ear canal when they're not supposed to. These crystals normally act like buoys and tell your eyes and brain whether you're laying down, standing up, upside down or turned to face to your left or right. Because mine float around as they wish, I get extremely dizzy to the point of being nauseous. With the VR gear on, I can't tell where I am in relation to the room. So when I take the gear off, I turn a lovely green color and have to lay down. This is going to be my biggest challenge to overcome this semester by a long shot, more than trying to figure out how to stitch video or film scenes is to be able to watch them without getting sick.