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Is Virtual Reality the Future? Facebook Thinks So.

Facebook is now Meta. Well, kind of. Last month, Facebook changed its parent company’s name to Meta, a nod to the company’s growing focus on the “metaverse.” Now, this doesn’t mean you’ll be liking vacation photos on meta.com any time soon. The company that owns Facebook is now Meta, not the social network itself. But why did Facebook change its name? First and foremost, it signals a shift away from social media, toward a more unique (and less controversial) form of technology: Virtual reality. 

Although virtual reality has existed in some form for decades, the technology is now becoming advanced enough to offer legitimately useful features to consumers and businesses. For example, Meta showed off its VR prototype during its name-change announcement video. The company showed off a virtual meeting room filled with cartoon avatars. The goal, Meta states, is to create a virtual meeting place that is nearly indistinguishable from a real meeting place. With more people working from home than ever before, this appears to be a useful goal. After all, Zoom meetings simply don’t have the same amount of interactivity and socialization as in-person meetings. VR could very well become the future of work. However, the widespread adoption of VR technology is still a long way away.

The History of Virtual Reality

The origin, and even the definition, of virtual reality is disputed [1]. After all, modern VR headsets are what the public thinks of when “virtual reality” is mentioned, but technology that advanced simply didn’t exist just a few decades ago. However, virtual reality experiences have still existed for decades. One of the first items that could be considered a virtual reality product is the View-Master, a goggles-like device that showed stereoscopic photographs. When utilized correctly, the user’s entire field of vision was dominated by the three-dimensional image. Although primitive, the View-Master may have been the first virtual reality device to appeal to the general consumer. This product ultimately highlighted just how immersive future virtual reality technology could be.

Beginning in the 1960s, researchers began to realize the potential of this futuristic technology. Specifically, they began to utilize virtual reality for military and flight simulations [2]. This allowed soldiers and pilots to train under realistic circumstances. Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, virtual reality was mostly used as a training tool for professionals, as the technology was far too expensive for mass-market appeal. 

However, beginning in the 1990s, VR technology became advanced (and inexpensive) enough for companies to begin crafting virtual reality experiences for the general consumer. Ever since then, virtual reality has become intertwined with the gaming industry. In the early 1990s, video game giants Nintendo and Sega began creating virtual reality consoles, with marketing that promised to transport players to an immersive, realistic world [3]. The hype of virtual reality was at an all-time high. However, this optimism soon began to dwindle. In 1995, Nintendo released the Virtual Boy, a virtual reality video game console [2]. However, soon after its release, consumers were quick to point out the major drawbacks of virtual reality. The console itself was uncomfortable and dizzying, and only showed games in black and red [4]. For most consumers, this virtual reality product simply wasn’t realistic enough, and the console flopped.

Modern Uses of Virtual Reality

After the commercial failure of the Virtual Boy and other early VR headsets, the technology was mostly relegated to professional use. However, with the recent rise of newer, more realistic and more comfortable VR headsets, it may finally be time for virtual reality to enter the mainstream. 

While the VR market has undeniably grown, consumers still mostly see virtual reality as a cool gimmick, rather than a necessity. Today, most of VR’s use is for gaming, and while the industry has found a niche group of enthusiasts, just 34 million total headsets have been sold in the last five years [5]. Additionally, while the cost of virtual reality technology has dropped, headsets still aren’t affordable for all. For example, Oculus, a VR headset company owned by Meta, prices its cheapest headset at $299. While the technology has evolved and prices have dropped, committing to virtual reality is simply too much of a financial commitment for many.

The Future of VR

With Meta turning its focus to virtual reality, VR is certainly here to stay. But how will VR be utilized in the future? Will it become a business necessity, like Meta seems to think? Or could it continue to grow as a gaming product? Finally, can VR finally overcome its gimmick label? Simply put, there are a lot of questions about the future of virtual reality that we simply don’t know. However, a major company like Meta shifting its focus to virtual reality presents an opportunity to the industry that it has never had before. Meta’s massive, public commitment to virtual reality could usher in the widespread adoption of this emerging technology.

However, public acceptance of VR isn’t the only potential downfall to the industry. A common concern regarding virtual reality is the technology’s privacy and security. Modern VR headsets are filled with sensors, cameras, and microphones. Of course, headsets need this technology to function, but the data collected through this technology needs to be guarded securely. Put simply, virtual reality collects unique user information. With this information, advertisers can learn even more about you to sell their products. Even worse, there are no regulations for data collected through VR, further putting user privacy in the backseat [6]. So while virtual reality may offer new opportunities to connect and play, it also gives advertisers a new way to collect even more information on users.

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[1] Schnipper, Matthew. “The Rise and Fall and Rise of Virtual Reality.” The Verge. https://www.theverge.com/a/virtual-reality/intro.

[2] “History of Virtual Reality.” Virtual Reality Society, January 2, 2020. https://www.vrs.org.uk/virtual-reality/history.html.

[3] Karpf, David. “Virtual Reality Is the Rich White Kid of Technology.” Wired. Conde Nast, July 27, 2021. https://www.wired.com/story/virtual-reality-rich-white-kid-of-technology/.

[4] Greenbaum, Aaron. “Here’s Why the Virtual Boy Was a Complete Failure.” Looper.com. Looper, August 4, 2020. https://www.looper.com/233207/heres-why-the-virtual-boy-was-a-complete-failure/.

[5] Alsop, Thomas. “VR Headset Unit Sales Worldwide 2024.” Statista, July 19, 2021. https://www.statista.com/statistics/677096/vr-headsets-worldwide/.

[6] Maslin, Jared. “Concerns with Privacy in Virtual Reality.” Data Science W231 Behind the Data Humans and Values, March 2, 2021. https://blogs.ischool.berkeley.edu/w231/2021/03/02/concerns-with-privacy-in-virtual-reality/.

The Hidden Danger of Virtual Worlds

On a summer afternoon, a number of Microsoft employees were invited to attend a training seminar.

But, instead of grabbing a pen and heading to the boardroom, they plugged themselves into a set of headphones and fired up Second Life.

This online social “game” was huge for a number of years in the early 00s, mainly because it offered average, everyday citizens an escape from the monotony of real life. Through a digitized landscape, users could create new “lives” that were as hedonistic as they chose.

For Microsoft employees, the pixelated replica of the Microsoft building was the location of their training seminar. But it wasn’t just Microsoft that jumped on the bandwagon – big-name rock stars lined up to perform virtual gigs and real-life travel companies sent correspondents into the melee to report on the latest developments.

For all intents and purposes, Second Life was real life – except you could enjoy it from the comfort of your own home.

The “game” (a term which should be used loosely in this context because, well, there’s actually no way to win at Second Life) was inspired by Snow Crash, the 1992 novel by Neal Stephenson. In the book, citizens navigate around a digital world created and run by independent entrepreneurs – a concept that’s becoming more and more real by the day.

The purpose of Second Life isn’t to gather as many gold coins as possible or figure out a mission set by a wiry old wizard. Instead, it is simply a digital escapist fantasy that allows users to be whoever they want and do whatever they want away from the restrictions of the real world.

While the possibilities were (and still are) endless in Second Life, one phenomenon was quick to surface; that normal people submersing themselves in the game were acting pretty much the same as they would in real life. This made it a fascinating environment to study the social behaviors of people in a pre-built stage.

Sure, stories emerged of people having affairs on Second Life that affected real-world marriages but, for the most part, people used it to escape reality and… do pretty much the same as they were doing in their real lives.

What is the Metaverse?

Let’s backtrack for a minute.

The Metaverse is a term that dates back to Stephenson’s sci-fi novel. It was the name given to the virtual world in which the characters interacted and lived, and it’s now the term being given to a blockchain project that essentially aims to replicate the real world in a digitized format.

In Snow Crash, “players” moved around as Avatars while the central strip – known as “the Street” – could be built on by developers, creating an even more entangled version of reality.

The goal of the Metaverse project is to build an entire universe where digital assets and digital identities are the basis of transactions to create a new kind of ecosystem that has the potential to completely change human society.

Even back in 1992, Stephenson had an insightful eye into what the future might hold for humanity. Today, our lives resemble those of the characters in the book – our work and lives are becoming more and more digitized, with people spending more time online than offline.

The way we communicate has undergone a complete transformation, where we now send clipped messages via the internet rather than having to face talking to real people. Soon, we might see even more transfers – both human and asset based – taking place on the blockchain which will shift the entire economic world.

It can be a hard pill to swallow, but some might argue we’re already halfway there. Enter the New Reality.

With people increasingly living their lives out online, there’s one big elephant in the room that keeps bubbling away below the surface – data privacy.

The Metaverse and its Effect on Data Privacy

In the real world, we don’t have to enter a username and a password to wake up in the morning and, when we pass people on the street, our full names and addresses aren’t typed out in a bubble above our heads.

Online it’s a different story. And, in fact, with the likes of Second Life and social platforms like Twitter and Facebook, users seem to be actively willing to hand over their information to access their feeds.

This raises the question of whether privacy will soon be regarded as an outdated social need or whether it will evolve into something else entirely. At the moment, the rules of the online world are considerably more open and vague than those in the real world, but this might have to change when the Metaverse comes into play.

Why?

Because so far, most virtual reality games and landscapes are built in a “walled garden” format. They run behind corporate firewalls and aren’t interconnected in any way. When you enter one world, you’re essentially caged in and avatars can’t travel between two different digital worlds. In this case, security isn’t necessarily a priority, because data isn’t being transferred from the hands of one corporation to another.

The problem arises when virtual worlds are built on open source software. This means avatars can travel between different virtual landscapes. And, for now, the majority of these platforms are built by developers in their spare time, which means that security is a low priority for them.

Take OpenSimulator, as an example. This software powers over 300 different public worlds and even more private ones, covering an area of 15,000 square kilometers. The software means anyone can set up a virtual world via the Oculus Rift without having to break the bank.

MOSES, one of the worlds built with OpenSimulator, is owned by the US Army, and the problems with security are already doing the rounds. At the moment, it’s difficult to know how to go about addressing data security issues when this new digital landscape is so new (despite its fictional origin in the 90s).

For now, it seems, the Metaverse is an experimental place to dabble in the future of humanity. The fresh excitement of it and the relatively unknown future it holds means security isn’t necessarily a priority for developers.

But soon, when more and more people start venturing into their online lives, we’ll have to sit down and seriously think about what data privacy means in this new landscape, particularly when it comes to things like authentication, content protection, and secure communications.

But, if Second Life is anything to go by, the population of people who are ready and willing to escape reality and immerse themselves in an online parallel universe are more concerned with who they will be there than who will take their information.