gonnn

Because in a fully inmersive virtual reality system you wouldn't be wearing headphones to hear what is happening in the game and you wouldn't be looking to a screen like in the Oculus Rift, you would be in a dream state paralysis and the process would have two parts (that is what I understand, it may be wrong): One would be reading your movements so you could do them inside the game and prevent you from doing them in reality with something like anesthesia, for example. The other part would be to write in the brain the information that your sense would catch from the game if it was real life, that is what you see, feel, hear... This is the reason why the most optimistic people in the matter think that this VR would come in 10 or 15 years, if no more than that, and not in 3 or 5 years. This should be researched first to help people that suffer disabilities, it could make blind people see by writing in the brain the things seen by a camera, or deaf people hear by writing the sounds that a microphone captures, for example.

Even though I agree with you in your arguments, I think that we can't really compare a fully functional Virtual Reality system to a regular videogame, and the addiction that it can cause may be very different. We can see thousands of different videogames, with different ambientation, plot, characteristics... Some are cinematographical, others are dark and scary, you can explore, fight, survive and many other things that we don't have the chance of doing in everyday life (if we could nobody would play videogames). The great majority of players play to feel like they can do things impossible otherwise. For example, I enjoy playing Battlefield, but wouldn't risk my life in any of the situations seen in the game. I like playing Assassin's Creed, but I am kind of a pacifist and wouldn't kill anybody or jump from buildings. What I try to say is that a fully functional virtual reality gives you the chance to be whoever you want to be, but not like in a videogame where you are sitting in your couch, but live all this things. You can kill, fly, fight, do parkour, and whatever the game developers think about, and do this in a game that you feel like the real world. While you are playing your reality is the one in the game, you are an assassins jumping from buildings in Jerusalem, a survivor running away from zombies, a knight fighting a dargon. You can be all that in a short period of time and even though the great majority of us aren't addicted to videogames we can't say that we will be the same with the virtual reality. What I am more concerned about, even though I would completely support developing VR and would probably buy it the first day, is that exposing young people whose minds aren't completely developed to a reality where they can be merciless killers, for example, would have terrible consecuences in their minds. And I am worried about this because in SAO Asuna and Kirito would be like 16 years old or so, and a huge amount of videogames players are kids or teenagers, and they are the people that would buy these games. English is not my first language so I make a lot of mistakes while writing, but I hope you all understand what I mean.

I though about the restriction because in my opinion, nowadays a huge amount people would prefer to spend time in the virtual reality than in the real world. If it's correctly developed you can do almost whatever you want, and, for example, if anybasketball fan had the money and time to play in this NG, would more likely prefer to play with Michael Jordan in the United Center than studying, working, or doing anything else. That's why I think that some restrictions in time could prevent it from being completely banned because of the psycological dependence that it can generate in some players, just like what happens with drugs, for example.

Moderation note: This post was split from How Long Until We Could Make A Real Sword Art Online (sao) Nerve Gear Type Device, because that long thread is being broken up into threads by subject to make them shorter and more readable. This thread is for discussion of concerns about possible abuse or misuse of immersive virtual reality These are very good questions about the technical part of the project, although i don't think i can answer them I will make another question, but from the psycological aspect of the VR. Could the use of such a device be banned or restricted to normal people? Having in mind only the recreational aspect of the Nerve Gear, could this cause problems to average gamers, such as lower the productivity in work, lack of sleep, no socializing... coming from a posible "abduction" that the game could cause to people? I mean, if you can go to a world like the one in SAO, beautiful and thrilling, or any other imaginable world and do things such as fly, fight, travel, on your own home, could this cause the lost of motivation in real life? Wouldn't work or deal with ordinary problems became dull and unsatisfying when you can do all you dreamed about in different worlds, beautifully created (and maybe photorealistic) only by plugging a device and putting a helmet on? Can people who spend a huge time in a virtual world "forget" the difference between the virtual and real world and have the same behaviour on both? If we develop VR to a point where we can drink or eat and "feel" it like in SAO, could people die of thirst while playing? (maybe it's a bit extreme example, hope you understand what I mean). This is what iI fear most about the project, not the technical difficulties, as I have huge faith on science, but who could people deal with this, maybe bringing a new conception of the world or making develop psycological problems as the result of not being able to deal with reality after going to a perfect world. All I can think of is a restriction of the device that could only let the players be one or two hours playing and disabling the device for the next three or four hours. Maybe a little extreme, but even I can think of the idea of going to explore new worlds, or do sword fights to see how people felt in ancient times much more appealing than my everyday life.

I saw this some time ago and find it completely amazing. Even though the movements are still very basic and mechanic, in a few years this can be developed into a completely fine limb that can be used in everyday live. Things like that is what draw me to science since I was a kid, just imagine explaining to someone of the eighteen century that a man can move a robotic arm conected to this body just with his thoughts, it's crazy! If we can connect the movements into a computer instead of a robotic limb and prevent the movements with the system explained by Craig I think that we could have done almost everything to make the project happen, leaving the software problems aside, but if we compare the graphic desing of videogames from ten years ago to the one's developed today we can see a huge development in the matter, so I don't think there is a real difficulty in creating the virtual world with the technology of ten or twenty years in the future.

Thank you Craig, have been reading the forums for a while, but when I saw this thread, decided to create an account, as this is one of the projects i would like to work in the future. I don't think I understand the shared dream concept, as we all dream different things we would need to create a common place for both dreamers, which would be in fact the same as a completely inmersive virtual reality, but forcing the players to be sleeping when playing, which would reduce it's potencial as a casual, accesible for everyone, game. I find the idea of the use of pontine tegmentum to stop the movement as a great soultion. This could keep all the vital functions of the body and put away the idea of inhibitors, which would make the proccess of development much more difficult. I'm not sure if all the pulses that come from our brain are the same, but in case we can differenciate each one of them, copy even the slightlies movement, and use the pontine tegmentum to create a state similar to a dream in our body, maybe the idea of a virtual world could stop being science fiction in 20 or 25 years, and as the only thing we would need is to read the electrical pulses the idea of a device like the seen in SAO may be the solution, so we could put away the idea of intrusive surgery.

I have seen the link and I think that the device is awesome, but to create a virtual reality we would need to go a little bit forward with it, not only read all the pulses, which should the actions that we do unconciusly too, but we would need to prevent the pulses form reaching the body and make them go to the receptor, which must be an inhibitor too. The thing that concerns me about this is that although in a few years we will probably be able to read and differenciate all the pulses we should probably need intrusive surgery to place the inhibitors in a place that doesn't prevent the pulses from happen, but from reach the rest of the body. I'm thinking about it in a way not like doing a videogame only, but as a way of reproducing of a missing limb into a prothesis, which could be a huge step forward in medical science and is highly relacionated with the virtual reality system portrayed in SAO. Next year i will enter university to study biotechnology, so I'm not sure if what I'm saying is correct, these are only conjetures based on what i have studied in biology, which isn't much at the moment.

Hi all, i have been reading this thread and find the ideas amazing. I think that if we could differenciate the electrical pulses that come form our brains and codify them for different actions in the game just like the way a computer works when you press the keyboard and the words appear in the screen then half of the work would be done, but I'm not sure about how this can be done because: I don't really know if the electrical pulse that your brain sends to move your right hand is tha same that sends to move your left feet but in a differet nerve, if that is the case, then we would have to place specific receptors in all the nerves that come from the brain, which would be much more difficult than the first case. In case we can differenciate the electrical pulses, we should also inhibit them to prevent the movement that we want to do in the game to be made into reality, but we cannot inhibit the ones that are used for vital functions such as breathing and all the others organs, which should be kept working. But if we don't transcribe the breathing pulses into the game, we could not be able to breathe insisde the game (not really a problem but maybe it result in less inmersion) so its not only about inhibit and recreate in the wirtual world but inthis case we could have this actions replicated and done simultaneously in both, the real and virtual world. I'm sorry for my English, its not my first language, but i hope you can understand what i mean even if i use wrong vocabulary sometimes.