"... on whether virtual reality can improve the emotional well-being of older people. Donning 1-pound (470-gram) headsets with video and sound, the four could imagine floating weightless with astronauts and get a 360-degree tour of the station. In other programs, residents can take virtual visits to Paris, Venice, Egypt or elsewhere around the globe; attend a car rally, skydive or go on a hike.... The goal is to see whether virtual reality can improve their mood, strengthen their relationships with staff and make them more receptive to technology."
From "Can virtual reality help seniors? Study hopes to find out" (WaPo).
I liked this comment: "VR does wonders for seniors. My friend an I spent 4 days straight protecting the world from Zombies. Felt great. We must of shot a million of 'em. And for the anxiety, the beer helped a lot."
Virtual travel sounds great to me, and not just for old people. Able-bodied, able-minded people should, perhaps, be encouraged to see the world this way. Compare the carbon footprint of real world travel and virtual travel. And with virtual travel, you're immediately transported to all the best places, with no time (and money) spent on airplanes, no exposure to disease and crime, no jet lag. And your view of the place is free of other tourists. You can have only local people there, and they can (be programmed to) enjoy meeting you and talking to you. They'll show you around and pursue subjects — history, architecture, fashion, cars, politics — geared precisely to you.
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10 comments:
Carol writes:
"VR, hell...I would be happy at my age just to watch drone flyover footage from all over the world--the Amazon, Tuscany, the Bronx, wherever. I get a little of that on the weather channels. Do you remember all the travelogues that used to be on TV? Yeah that's what I'd like now, Rick Steves without the restaurant shots. I feel like the old ladies on Monty Python who would watch hours of M10 traffic on the telly because it was more interesting than anything else."
There's that TV show "Aerial America".
James the lesser writes:
Having virtual people do pre-programmed interactions with you sounds like it would get boring or uncanny valley pretty quickly. It would be better than not being able to see it at all, though, and I'd do it.
Perhaps a hybrid system would work. Suppose you built a facility (like Universal Studios?) within which your customers could walk (or wheel) to explore the virtual environment. Within the virtual environment you have costumed employees who interact with (and in places sell concessions to) your patrons--something like Colonial Williamsburg. The interaction/concession areas could be swapped out easily for those of the next session's exhibit. Customers in the same physical location might be in different virtual sections of the city/museum/moonbase.
If you wanted to do Pompeii, you could simulate an earthquake in a much more realistic way than any home system could do.
If they did the prep work for a museum tour right, you could get as close as you wanted to the Mona Lisa--and have the network bandwidth to support the more detailed resolutions.
The patrons would have to wear headgear, but also some arm and leg lines to let the system know where they are, so that they can be virtually clothed to blend in for other patrons. I don't think stocking costumes for customers would work well.
Mikee writes:
"Old people do well when they get stimulating attention? In other news, water is wet. The means of control for a placebo effect in this study would be of interest. One would expect a "Hawthorne Effect," wherein those old people, normally ignored, are treated to attention and care, and demonstrate improvements in measured behaviors. This improvement will happen no matter what the attention and care is. Just changing their environment stimulates them in a postive way. Works on factory floors, classrooms, and business offices too. Increase the lighting - productivity goes up for a while. Decrease the lighting, same thing. Leave the lights the same, and tell the workers they're being studied, and their productivity improves - for a while. The Hawthorne effect has been known as a real, verifiable thing since the 1950s, and if NOT mentioned, let alone controlled for, lends rather a large amount of doubt to the conclusions of the study."
Art writes:
I love Aerial America … easy show to binge on a weekend morning.
Regarding our VR future, you should watch/read “Ready Player One”. It’s a story about our near dystopian future where folks live in dense ghettos but use a networked VR app called the OASIS to get away from it all. Ready Player One was my favorite movie of 2018. I’m in the middle of reading Ready Player Two.
Personally, I’m not a fan of VR, too claustrophobic for me. On the other hand, I love well implemented augmented-reality solutions. I use Peak Finder on my phone to tell me the names of our local mountains. SkyView is cool too, to help me navigate the night sky.
MikeR writes:
This. I'd like to visit wonderful places, but I hate travelling. Forget about "carbon footprint"; the prospect of getting there and back is miserable enough that I rarely go anywhere. Plus, some places are miserable even once you get there: I'd like to see many things in Washington DC, an hour away, and my wife wants to go, but parking there and getting around is just awful.
All I want to do is see these things up close, so if I could do it virtually - very well done - that might hit the spot.
You-all seem to be assuming that the other end of the connection would be a well-done virtual reality. Why not put most of the hardware on the far end, and have actual tours there, with real tour guides who walk to these places with enough gear to record everything 360 degrees? But maybe there's no point: Generally the touristy thing (waterfall, forest, Mona Lisa) just sits still and it's the tourists and tour guides who move around, so you might as well record the touristy thing once and just add in the tourists and tour guides when they schedule it. Looking forward to it.
Assistant Village Idiot writes:
James hints at the other possibilities with his mention of Pompeii. (You only need to walk over to the physics dept to discuss this with him personally, BTW. Edit that out if you like.) Not only can you visit Paris, you could visit Paris 1927 or Conan Doyle's London with VR. It would take some extra research to "build" the structures that you can no longer film, but it will gradually become more available. Because people will find that accurate versions of history are much less fun than they hoped, companies will start marketing histories that people prefer. Because who will stop them?
We are only in the foothills of curated reality, which people will believe more than the real thing.
Clyde writes:
I can see the utility of VR for the future entertainment experience, but when I travel, I go to see people, not places. If I go to Michigan, it's to see my mother. If I go to New York City, it's to see my brother and his family. I'm going to Texas in October for a family reunion with cousins and at least one brother. None of those experiences could properly be shared via VR. Not to mention other things beyond sights and sounds that cannot be replicated via VR: Foods that are regional specialties, like New York pizza, a real Philly cheesesteak, Texas barbecue, varieties of seafood that may only be really well done in certain places.
If I was elderly and had limited mobility, then VR is better than nothing, but right now, I'd rather go places and see things and get the full experience and not just sight and sound, no matter how good the quality may be. And we have a need to go outside and see the world. We spend most of our lives in places that are shaped like boxes, whether houses or workplaces or stores or cars; we need to get outdoors to places that aren't shaped like a box. I've been exploring my local parks and nature preserves over the past few months, and VR would have been a poor second to the real experience of hiking the trails, seeing wildflowers and unusual plants, birds, butterflies, dragonflies, alligators, raccoons, etc.
ALP writes:
There is a category of YouTube videos I call 'walking tour videos'. You might enjoy them. The videos are made by strapping on a camera and taking long (1 hour+) walks through interesting cities such as Seoul, Venice, Mumbai, or historic towns in Japan founded hundreds of years ago. Current favorite is a channel called SeoulWalker. The only thing missing is interaction with locals, but you could forge loose associations via the comment or chat function. I love them and often watch while riding my stationary bike.
I haven't seen these but I wonder if the camera moves with the footsteps -- up and down. I would like it to work as VR with my own choices about where to look, when to stop, affecting what I see. And I want a full wrap around effect that gives the illusion of being there.
RA Crankbait writes:
"A few years ago I saw video stories about a company providing virtual "hero tours" of D-Day for vets too frail to make it to a tour or ceremony. The VR experience began with people lined up outside a jetway, applauding as the veteran walked by as if boarding a flight to France, and similarly of the welcoming committees that greeted other veterans. These also included tours of the battlefields with the capability of being able to look in all directions. These "experiences" were treasured by the disabled vets and their families."
ALP responds to my question:
"Regarding your question about movement during filming - no, it is non existent. I believe the correct equipment here is = gimble. The good YouTubers use a high-end gimble and movement is minimal. I have a bigger gripe: when I can tell the filmmaker has gone around the same block a few times ("hey didn't we see this Stone Cold Creamery before?")! So many global cities (like Seoul) has a slew of recognizable luxury or mainstream brand names (Starbucks, Dior, Subway...). It is through these videos I have learned how homogenous these cities can be."
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