{"id":18996,"date":"2023-02-17T10:15:21","date_gmt":"2023-02-17T15:15:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ecranpartage.ca\/understanding-virtual-reality-and-its-foundations\/"},"modified":"2023-02-17T15:36:22","modified_gmt":"2023-02-17T20:36:22","slug":"understanding-virtual-reality-and-its-foundations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ecranpartage.ca\/en\/understanding-virtual-reality-and-its-foundations","title":{"rendered":"Understanding virtual reality and its foundations"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The concept, the idea of virtual reality has occupied an important place in people’s minds for more than three decades. Whether it’s creating works and other immersive content, or exploring synthetic universes, virtual reality promises a total audiovisual immersion experience. This technology offers an alternate reality of ours, more precisely a virtualized representation of it, made possible thanks to the simulation of visual, auditory and haptic sensations. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n

The advent of the notion of virtual reality dates back to the 1980s, when it began to occupy a prominent place in the minds of researchers and other computer designers seeking to offer people the opportunity to explore artificial worlds, created digitally, from the comfort of their homes. With the arrival of head-mounted displays made available for sale since 2016 such as the Oculus Rift, the Meta Quest 1 and 2, the HTC Vive, the Playstation VR, as well as related accessories that promote a so-called “total” immersion, this immersive interactive simulation that was initially announced as both that of the (re)birth of virtual reality is in truth a real technological renaissance. This is why in order to fully understand this technological phenomenon, it is important to paint a precise portrait dedicated exclusively to the first individual and collective attempts at immersion, all of which share the same ambition: that of transporting the user into a virtual world. Also, the analysis of the fundamental objective of virtual reality is essential to clearly identify its technical and technological issues. Finally, the use of virtual reality being a priori<\/em> an individual experience due to the wearing of a head-mounted display by the user tends to move towards a collective multisensory experience, approaching the fairground attraction, thus causing an upheaval within immersive audiovisual practices.<\/p>\n\n

1. <\/strong>First attempts<\/h2>\n\n

It is obviously possible to go back as far as the creation of man to find this type of experience. We find in particular in daydreaming, which is:<\/p>\n\n

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“A change in an individual’s waking state in the form of a short-term, sudden and usually involuntary detachment from the environment surrounding that person, his mind being absorbed in an autonomous activity and unrelated to the reality of the moment”<\/p>\n(https:\/\/fr.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/R\u00eaverie<\/a>, para. 1)<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n

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Daydreaming, unlike dreams that usually take place during the day, happens when in the waking state at a time when we wish to escape into our thoughts, thus creating a type of mental escape from our reality. We can also think of the use of hallucinogenic drugs and alcohol that can cause a distortion effect of reality, or Immersive Art where we also try to reproduce a certain form of reality. In this regard, as Ana\u00efs Bernard points out,<\/p>\n\n

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“Immersive Arts seeks to amplify the feedback mechanisms between the work and the spectator to share with the latter an increasingly important involvement in the act of creation, redefining its positioning to the work – and to art at the same time”<\/p>\nAna\u00efs Bernard, Immersivit\u00e9 de l\u2019art<\/em>, L\u2019Harmattan, Paris, 2015, p. 16.<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n

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It would also be possible to compare virtual reality to out-of-body experiences, also called astral travel, which allow us to live an experience that dissociates us from our physical body and makes it possible to freely explore the surrounding space.<\/p>\n\n

From a technological point of view, it is interesting to turn to the first individual and collective attempts at immersion in order to fully understand the foundations of these creations which, in the end, all seem to overlap in their own way. Among these inventions is the Mar\u00e9orama<\/em> in which scrolling canvases are used to recreate a boat crossing without using films. As the catalogue of the Universal Exhibition of Paris of 1900 indicates:<\/p>\n\n

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“The Mar\u00e9orama gives the complete illusion of a maritime voyage. The spectators are placed on a steamer deck animated by rolling and pitching movements around which huge canvases unfold whose movement combined with those of the ship creates the illusion of walking. The sight of the maneuvers executed by the crew, lighting devices, ventilation impregnated with marine scents. etc., make this illusion perfect. The chosen itinerary is a trip from Marseille to Constantinople with stops in Sousse, Naples and Venice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\nMartin Barnier et Kira Kitsopanidou, Histoire, \u00e9conomie, technique, esth\u00e9tique,<\/em> Paris, Armand Colin, 2015. p. 33.<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n

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The Mareorama (Wikipedia)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

Still in the same vein of the all-encompassing experience, George C. Hale’s Hale’s Tours of the World<\/em> were also very popular in the early twentieth century. Instead of using paintings or drawings as landscapes, this attraction used the projection of films on the sides of a car to reconstruct railway journeys, in addition to using vibrations, winds and steam train noises, which accentuated the feeling of immersiveness. Nearly six decades later, these attempts to recreate reality through virtualization are developing, improving, materializing to finally get closer to the idea we have today of virtual reality. We notice that as far back as the end of thenineteenth<\/sup> century, at the time of the Cinematograph of the Lumi\u00e8re brothers, we are already looking at stereoscopic projection. The appearance in the nineteenth century of stereoscopes, devices of individual viewers of relief photographs, demonstrates that this technique of perception of relief brings an additional dimension to the experience. Although the various viewers do not use the immersive effects associated with the four elements of nature, they have influenced the development of several devices aimed at transporting the audience into three-dimensional worlds.<\/p>\n\n

Morton Heilig’s Sensorama<\/em> , created in 1957, attempts to reproduce a feeling of total immersion by combining visually and physically encompassing effects. In a seated position, the viewer is invited to watch a video with his head placed in the mouth of an arcade-like machine in which is placed a screen called “Sensorama Motion Picture Projector”. In addition to viewing a video made in three dimensions thanks to the “Sensorama 3-D Motion Picture Camera”, a camera created especially for the creation of stereoscopic content of the device, the viewer receives a range of effects allowing a rapprochement with reality such as stereo sound, wind, smells and vibrations on the seat. Following its creation, Heilig kicks off what is closest today to our conception of the virtual reality device: the head-mounted display called Telesphere Mask<\/em> which makes it possible to view 3-D content, pan view, and stereo sound (“Inventor in the field of virtual reality”).<\/p>\n\n

2. Virtual reality in action<\/strong><\/strong><\/h2>\n\n

These inventions are based on the one and the same concept: that of immersing the viewer inside a virtual environment. In order to accomplish this effect, virtual reality must fulfill specific objectives. To this applies a double concept: that of real-time interaction and that of the feeling of immersion. Real-time interaction is made possible by manipulating virtual objects and images in a single synthetic environment in which the user can perform the same actions as in the “real world”. In addition, all operations of moving or transforming objects and virtual camera movements are necessary in the accomplishment of the virtual experience. Finally, the feeling of immersion is based on the use of a type of equipment that makes the experience possible, in our current case all types of head-mounted displays.<\/p>\n\n

All past attempts at virtual reality, from the most conclusive to the most far-fetched, give us clues regarding the very foundations of the virtual experience. As such, it is possible to establish a guide in which are listed several forms of actions used to describe what is necessary to accomplish a conclusive virtual reality experience based on the one promoted today. Freedom to move, or more commonly referred to in jargon as the “six degrees of freedom” \u2013 or 6dof<\/em> \u2013 refers to the ways in which it is possible to move and interact in a virtual universe. These six degrees are composed of three degrees of translation (the ability to move forward and backward, move from left to right, and finally crouch and jump) and three degrees of rotation (the ability to tilt in front and behind, the ability to turn to one side and the other, then tilt up and down).<\/p>\n\n

The motion tracking<\/em> technique is used in most virtual reality content and is made possible by motion sensors located inside the head-mounted displays. Some technologies, such as virtual touch, are not yet available to the general public. Other factors can also influence the virtual reality experience when using certain devices. The latest technologies allow home virtual reality users to physically move around in a virtual environment. The latter must ensure that they have a sufficiently large perimeter of an area that is free of all obstacles in order to be able to circulate freely, because they of course become “blind to real life” due to the wearing of the head-mounted display.<\/p>\n\n

It is important to note that some users may suffer from “motion sickness”, or “virtual seasickness” during experiments where it is possible to move virtually, and not physically within a defined perimeter. Motion sickness results from “a conflict between visual perception, the perception of the inner ear and the various muscle sensors […] The balance centre, which is located in the brain, receives conflicting information and does not know how to react” (“Newsletter n\u00b086”, para. 2). Motion sickness is therefore reduced when sitting and during an almost instantaneous image refresh when the user turns his head. The so-called sitting experience can also alleviate this discomfort and be just as conclusive if the virtual content is appropriate to its position. Most consumer virtual experiences now offer the ability to “teleport” virtually instead of moving around using a joystick<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n

3. Between cinema and video games<\/h2>\n
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Source: Unsplash<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

It is complex to define in our time what cinema really is because of a constant definitional blurring of terms. The word “cinema” can then be considered rather as a description of cultural instances of very broad moving views. As Dominique Pa\u00efni points out in his book Le cin\u00e9ma, un art plastique<\/em>, cinema would be a monstration of extracts from fragmented works torn to pieces “lightened of their complete fictional structure”, reproducible, presented in the form of luminous images (Pa\u00efni 2013, pp. 31-32). This description is permissive, since it can maintain enormous similarities with several instances that allow the label “cinema” to be randomly affixed. As we can see, the seventh art has been experiencing an identity crisis since the advent of digital technology, leading to major changes both artistically and economically. Even if the definitions contradict and sometimes intertwine, one aspect almost always emerges when we talk about cinema: that of the importance of editing. Thus, as Lev Kuleshov notes, “the essence of cinema is editing” (1994, p. 42). Devoid of any trace of editing, virtual reality content, like video game content, is mostly made in sequence shots to reproduce an effect of realism.<\/p>\n\n

With the arrival of the most recent head-mounted displays like those mentioned earlier, a considerable amount of content further blurs the line between cinema and video games. F\u00e9lix Lajeunesse and Paul Rapha\u00ebl, two Montreal directors of virtual experience content they call cinematic virtual reality<\/em>, are already talking about cinema as an art form that,<\/p>\n\n

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[…] from (their) point of view, creates a certain distance. You are sitting in front of a work that is far from you and it goes a lot through the cognitive faculty. We were looking for a more direct form of expression to bring the viewer directly into the work.<\/p>\nTayna Lapointe, (2015, 19 janvier). \u00ab F\u00e9lix et Paul, cr\u00e9ateurs qu\u00e9b\u00e9cois d\u2019exp\u00e9riences immersives \u00bb, ICI Radio-Canada, <\/em>Rep\u00e9r\u00e9 \u00e0 http:\/\/ici.radio-canada.ca\/nouvelles\/arts_et_spectacles\/2015\/01\/19\/005-felix-paul-lunettes-oculus.shtml<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n

Recruited by several renowned filmmakers such as Jean-Marc Vall\u00e9e, the creative duo allows film lovers through their works to dive into the heart of the universe of a film. Thus, in Wild: The Experience <\/em>(2014), viewers are led to share an intimate moment with the protagonist, played by actress Reese Witherspoon, during her journey on foot, while with Jurassic World: Apatosaurus<\/em> (2014), it is possible to be near a dinosaur. These experiences, which both mix and deconstruct what we know as cinema and video games, attempt to reinvent the way of telling a story that requires an emotional and physical commitment from a spectator who has now become the director of his own virtual adventure.<\/p>\n\n

Featured image credits: Unsplash<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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