Can Virtual Reality Adequately Substitute for Actual Reality?

By Soha Mahapatra

As we move into a day and age where new technologies are emerging every second, we start to lose our concept of reality. Our days, nights, and everything in between are filled with screens, from the tiny supercomputers in our pockets, to our regular TV binge sessions. But some groups have taken this incorporation of screens to the next level, by engineering a reality completely separate from our own. The question behind this creation of new realities is a question of outcome. Is the integration of virtual reality a step into the realm of possibilities, a gateway into giving others access to the unknown? Or is virtual reality slowly trickling into our daily lives leading to a society that doesn’t have a true grasp of reality?

The first part to understanding this topic is understanding exactly what virtual reality is. Virtual reality is a 3D, computer generated environment.

It is composed of factors that make the user of this technology seem like they are physically in the reality the computer is projecting. Virtual reality is experienced through a person wearing a headset or helmet, which when put on, blocks out the person’s surroundings and replaces them with sounds and sights engineered to make the user feel like they are somewhere else. Most programs allow the user to interact with their surroundings; moving around, picking up objects, and overall immersing themselves in the reality. Some of the leading players in this field are Oculus, Google, and Microsoft, well known companies which make affordable and accessible VR experiences a consumer can use in their own home. As we find more and more uses for virtual reality, the industry itself is steadily growing and streaming into our daily lives.

The reason the VR industry is growing at such a rapid rate is because of the newfound uses for this technology.

Healthcare is one of the most notable of these uses. Virtual reality is used to stimulate scenarios for training individuals in the field of health care, as well as help patients with significant phobias address these issues with cognitive behavior therapy in a controlled, engineered environment. Entertainment, experiences, and travel are all big parts of the virtual reality market too. VR headsets are used for gaming, as well as immersing users into an entertaining world of their choosing, such as an amusement park or zoo. Virtual reality technology also offers ways to see landmarks, go on tours, and visit sites from your own living room. Platforms for social interaction through virtual reality are also widely used. VR technology also has a variety of uses in the scientific field, such as use in space and military training, use in psychology through the possibility of embodying someone else and their reality, and use in transportation through helping development of “smart cars.” These are just a few of the potential uses, because when you can engineer any new reality to experience, the possibilities are practically endless.

However, the guiding issue isn’t the lack of benefits of engineering a reality, because there is certainly an abundance of uses for the technology. The problem is the pending replacement of our actual reality with one made up of pixels and code. Currently, virtual reality only appeals to the user’s sight and hearing, so the reality they are in doesn’t have any aspects of taste, smell, or touch. However, as the technology starts to develop more, this can be engineered. Once we are at this point, at a point where a world just like ours, only catered to our specific preferences and desires has emerged, do we lose ourselves? Do we just abandon the reality we currently live in for one which is completely fabricated? While this technology is incredibly far off, the abandonment of society has already begun, as we see people start to move towards interacting on a virtual platform instead of face to face, or preferring to ride a virtual roller coaster, instead of a real one.

The uses and benefits of VR are significant, but we also need to keep in mind that it is not actual reality.

While technology can simulate scenarios and experiences, it cannot simulate the beauty of the natural world. It cannot simulate the feeling of sun on your face, waves lapping against your sand covered feet, and the smell of the salty sea. The evolution and integration of VR technology will be incredibly important to the progression of our society, but in the midst of this progression, we should remember to keep ourselves in touch with the real world, and realize the importance of not slipping into a universe of pixels.