Rivita Goyle

While walking through the shopping mall sometime back, I saw a couple of people wearing their iPhone on their eyes and moving around in a strange fashion. A part of me was curious and a part of me was amused. What are they doing I thought? I had seen gamers playing video games in a 3 dimensional setting in a TV show too. The concept had definitely been there for some time, specially within the gaming community. Over a period of time “Virtual Reality” started becoming a more popular term.  Being a musician, it only interested me once Virtual Reality started leaking into music videos. While watching The Weeknd’s music video “The Hills”, I realised I cannot experience it in its entirety because I did not own a VR headset. Ever since I have been at Syracuse University, I heard a lot of people talking about 360 video and Virtual Reality. It is often described as the next big form or communication and storytelling. Being inquisitive about technology, I wanted to learn more about Virtual Reality too and therefore ended up enrolling for the VR storytelling class.

I was very excited to experience Virtual Reality for the first time. I was a bit surprised when I took off the headset because my eyes felt funny. I assumed that it was probably because I was wearing contact lenses. After researching online, I came across a couple of articles that discussed headaches and nausea caused by VR. This can happen for several reasons – maybe the lenses were not adjusted right or I was moving my eyes too much but it is quite similar to motion sickness.

I also wondered how I would put the head set on if I was wearing my glasses instead. After asked Professor Pacheco about this, he explained that some headsets are compatible with glasses while others are not.

After finally watching a couple of music videos with my headsets on, I was not entirely impressed. I felt as if there is a lot of room for improvement within the quality of how virtual reality is presented. While it is impressive that one can move around and look at the surroundings of the artists, it would be nice if the scenes looked more real. The most fun I had was while painting in virtual reality, I could paint around myself and move in my own painting. This was the only time when I felt as if I was really a part of the virtual world!

It kind of made me sad to look around myself and see everyone else in the class wearing their VR headsets, they were in another world. I was also a bit scared to stand around anyone wearing the headset incase they moved and didn't realize that they accidentally knock something over. I wonder if there will be a day when we will see people wearing VR headsets as they walk around on the streets? Looking at it from a humanitarian level, will VR technology cause a further disconnect amongst human beings? I also wonder, if there are people who end up believing what they see in the virtual world is true.

The main question that rises into my mind is how does sound work within the world of Virtual Reality. Does it move as we move through the virtual world, do the sounds get louder, softer or muffled depending on where we are walking through in the room. How is this achieved? Does the sound artist go through the process of recording the sound in different textures and then the algorithm triggers the sound most appropriate in the given location of the video or does the sound artist only record one sound and the algorithm manipulates it accordingly? There are definitely unanswered questions, research and room for improvement in the world of VR. However, the biggest question remains – is it here to stay for the long run? Who knows, but I am excited to find out and be a part of this journey.