Virtual reality, the next platform


  Last February 21, Facebook’s founder & CEO Mark Zuckerberg appeared in the Samsung Electronics’ event hall in the Mobile World Congress, a worldwide mobile industrial exhibition, and gave a keynote speech. On that day, Samsung unveiled the next generation smartphone, ‘Galaxy 7’, and a 360-degree camera, ‘Gear 360’. The Gear 360 is a camera loaded with front and rear lenses, so it can record spherical videos that can display virtual reality. Mark Zuckerberg came on stage at the end of the event and said, “VR is the next platform. Pretty soon, we’re going to live in a world where everyone has the power to share and experience whole scenes as if you were just right there in person.” In addition, he commented that Samsung will go a long way towards developing VR-related hardware. Facebook started to support a spherical video in 2014, and they cooperated with Samsung and released the VR headset ‘Gear VR’ in November of the same year.

The upcoming VR era


  Facebook is not the only company that notices and utilizes VR. At the end of March this year, Samsung Electronics started running VR roller coasters with the Gear VR in Six Flags, the nationwide amusement parks in the U.S. The VR roller coaster uses a VR video that synchronizes with the movements of the roller coaster. Watching a dragon-riding VR video while riding a roller coaster raises the level of immersion and vividness so much that you can feel like you are actually flying on a dragon. When sliding down a steep slope or loop, the level of immersion reaches the highest point. In a short time, you can experience the VR roller coaster in Korea. Lotteworld in Seoul is now investigating ways with VR Coaster Co. of Germany to show a VR roller coaster. Also, the Ministry of Science, ICT and Future Planning will support the relevant VR theme park technical development for 2 years starting now.
  KT is preparing the ‘5G Olympics’. The 5th Generation Mobile Networks(5G) are capable of achieving peak download speeds of 20 gigabits per second. This allows transmitting massive multimedia contents like spherical video simultaneously, so you can watch the ski jump tower or ice arena from any angle you want at home with a 360-degree video via 5G as if you were in the stands or stadium bleachers. Besides, you can experience the winter games indirectly as if you were in the games via simultaneously transmitting video through a subminiature camera, which will be attached to an athlete’s helmet or outfit with no inconvenience.

Problems that VR will cause


  If you only expect good aspects from VR like vivid indirect experiences, it is your hasty conclusion. Dangers from VR also exist.
  The timely health and medical information site Web MD of the U.S. raised the side effects of VR, such as seizures, disorientation, dizziness, headaches, along with eye strain, eye twitching, double vision or other visual abnormalities. In reality, the early adopters, who have used the VR headset ‘Oculus Rift’ that was released in 2012, reported that there has been eye strain with extended use and it took even a week sometimes to recover. Furthermore, they have complained about the occurrence of dizziness or headaches while using it and also complained about an afterimage where they could see the pixels even though they closed their eyes after use. Oculus Rift’s health and safety warnings state that these kinds of symptoms can occur and you shouldn’t use it if these symptoms occur.
  The online venture capital information site Venture Beat forewarned that the use of VR may cause our brains to confuse virtual and physical events. It is said that as virtual environments facilitate richer perceptual, spatial and emotional experiences, it will cause more mental and social problems than existing 3D games cause. When addicted to 3D games, the Game Transfer Phenomenon, like seeing objects turned into something you saw in 3D games or hearing sounds from games when you’re falling asleep, can occur. There was even a traffic accident where one driver swerved to avoid virtual ‘land mines’ on the highway. In addition, all sorts of incidents or fatal accidents caused by 3D game addiction were already existing problems. What is worse, virtual reality has a potential danger that could accelerate these problems. According to research by the University of Hamburg, when they put a subject in an immersive VR environment for 24 hours, with short breaks every two hours, the research subject was confused about being in the virtual environment or in the real world and mixed certain artifacts and events between both worlds. This research shows that VR causes brain confusion faster than 3D games.

To hedge against the problems that VR will cause


  It is certain that new technology brings new problems. Smartphones brought us lots of conveniences, though it also brought lots of problems, such as the youth’s concentration disorders, smartphone addiction, etc. Nobel’s dynamite, which was developed for civil engineering, construction or mining industry use at first, became a weapon of mass destruction and has taken lots of human lives. Likewise, VR will offer users a novel pleasure along with more realistic indirect experiences, whereas it can cause health deterioration, mental disorders and various incidents or accidents due to VR addiction. Of course, the users themselves should endeavor to have proper usage habits, but the relevant developers should strive to minimize physical, mental and social problems before they release the new experiences that VR will offer.

By Min Tae-kwan
tk36@cbnu.ac.kr
By Lee Eun-hye
eh37@cbnu.ac.kr