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Screw VR, Holodecks Are the Future!

Screw VR, Holodecks Are the Future!

For over a year now, a company called The Void has been working on a VR project best explained as a real life holodeck. They’ve recently come into the news as a result of their partnership with Sony. It’s not clear why they partnered, but we can assume Sony wanted to further promote their Ghostbusters movie.

To show off its ever-improving holodeck, The Void made Ghostbusters Dimensions . Instead of movie magic, The Void incorporates a lot of the latest technology to give us the most immersive experience possible today. Two of the main components are the stage, and the suit. The suit also uses haptic vibrations, and includes a vest, a headset, and backpack (as the equipment is wireless). The stage is ever-changing as The Void works to perfect it, but it is a room built specifically per game. The walls and floor use haptic vibrations to simulate all sorts of experiences, like balancing on a narrow beam or feeling the texture of a cave wall. The ceiling is littered with cameras to track the players’ movements and both the game and The Void developers work to guide your experience accordingly behind the scenes.

Guiding your experience includes all sorts of wild details I never would have thought of. Blasts of humid air when approaching a cave, for example, and they’ve even experimented with smell in the Ghostbusters Dimensions game (Nosulus Rift, anyone?). Even the problem of space (the stage is only so big), has been solved by The Void, as quoted by Curtis Hickman: “It would look like a straight hallway. And if I told you to walk down the hallway… you would walk in what you believe to be a straight line. But in the real world, you’re actually turning by 90 degrees or more as you walk. You just subconsciously don’t know it because I’ve made you believe that you’re walking a straight line… To you, in VR, it seems like it goes on forever and ever. But in the real world, we’re able to confine that space to a manageable size.”

I have no doubt that in a few years time, probably less than a decade, this will be a theme park type stage where you can pay for the time and equipment used. But let’s get down to business. How can we bring something like this holodeck (for the sake of brevity, we’ll just call it that) into our homes like in Star Trek ? Well, we have the current VR tech like HTC Vive and the Oculus Rift. But it isn’t quite the same. The Void’s holodeck is just that, a stage with a great deal of setup involved before you can enter and play. It’s not something like the current VR sets, where you only need to set them up once and can play multiple games. The Void’s holodeck is clearly meant to be a public recreational stage, not a setup within your home. Then again, give The Void twenty odd years and I bet they’ll come out with something that can be set up in your gaming room, no problem.

Screw VR, Holodecks Are the Future!

In addition, the sheer immersion that The Void provides in their holodeck is unprecedented. The haptic vibrations, “infinite” space, and lack of gloves or controllers are above and beyond what any VR tech can provide. No matter how many times you go in to the same game, it will be a different experience based on where you go and what you do. Especially with a team right there, guiding you, even Ghostbusters can feel great after the seventh time.

In the end, I think VR will win out because of price and home setup. You don’t need to travel out of your house to experience it and even at the price of the HTC Vive, The Void is probably quite costly. But since The Void’s holodeck wins out on immersion and experience, I think it’s going to spread as a public attraction quite soon. Sony is on the picture too, partnering with The Void for an even better technology (who knows how that will affect the PSVR). So for now, get used to your VR at home, because The Void is going to give you a whole new world when it’s ready.

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