18 December 2017

Learning designer Ashleigh, road tests our unforgettable experiences

‘When you’re ready, walk across the Crevasse’ my colleague Dan prompted me as I stood on the precipice of a 200-ft. drop (a rickety wooden plank raised 3 inches off the ground).  I took a deep breath, took hold of my haptic controllers (a pair of ski blades to ‘ground’ me in the scene), and took my first tentative step onto the bridge.

The Crevasse: our Virtual Reality experience, designed to test the use of real world props and how they influence the users level of immersion, plunged me into my most dreaded nightmare.

As someone who is supremely terrified of heights, this environment made me highly uncomfortable. Palms sweating, I started to recite previous times where I had been ‘brave’ in situations at height in the hope of spurring myself on. It worked. Slowly and cautiously, I walked across the bridge.

The fans were switched to ‘on’ and I felt the cold air blowing on my face, the polar environment was complete. Legs shaking, I made progress towards the other side of the Crevasse to meet my virtual team mate who was waiting for me, breathing a sigh of triumphant relief as I pulled off the headset.

Virtual reality technology seems to have moved more quickly than our own psychological development. Our instincts haven’t quite caught up yet. Despite our rational brain shouting on one side ‘this is not real’, , the dominant side says, ‘I see it, I feel it, I hear it… so it must be real’. It convinces you, and leaves you feeling perplexed; chattering like a child at Christmas once you rip off the headset to be reborn into the ‘real-real’. True immersion places you in an alien environment that tricks your brain.

True 3-dimensional immersion is something you can’t explain to someone who hasn’t experienced it themselves. It’s terrifying, exhilarating and disorientating – particularly when you’ve been falsely lulled into a sense of calm and comprehension of what to expect by VR’s bullying little brother: ‘360 video’ who has, on many occasions, stolen VR’s shiny sexy label to falsely call itself an immersive virtual experience, commonly broadcasted on a google cardboard or mobile device.

360 video has its place- particularly when it comes to learning. It can be a lot more accessible and affordable than virtual reality and more easily distributed, especially to corporate learners who can access it via mobile. It can allow users to get a better grasp of an environment, or feel as if they’re interacting with the training in front of them (even if ‘interaction’ here is a term use loosely).

I’ve seen really great examples of 360 used well – even created for headset-use – but the hard truth is that 360 video is not a fully immersive platform. It doesn’t place you in a world that truly deceives you – where you have agency over your surroundings, and the worrying thing is, people are having these ‘underwhelming’ experiences of 360 and think that was VR… it’s getting a bad rep.

My second experience of VR was equally as terrifying (leading me to request our in-house team to create something softer and relaxing if they ever find the time!) Our virtual escape room: ‘Captive’ places you in the middle of a prison cell, (think 18th century prison grime, not 21st century modern with amenities). You have five minutes to escape by finding clues around the cell as an increasingly irate ‘prison mate’ screams at you through the bars.

As my virtual-self opened awoke in the cell a voice whispered through my headphones at the back left of my head: ‘you’re going to die’.  I recoiled, neatly colliding with a virtual ‘shelf’ and raising my arm in defence to protect my head. ‘Step further right’ my colleague advised me over the head-phones. ‘I can’t!’ I replied terrified, ‘I’ll walk straight through a shelf!’ They laughed at me ‘Just do it or you’ll be hitting the real table in here!’.

The virtual space was so imposing that I flinched at everything. I felt really confined by my surroundings and slightly repulsed…especially when I had to plunge my hand into the used toilet to retrieve my first clue – a playing card. These emotions were real and intense, and heightened the urgency of the entire scenario – I was desperate to escape.

Unfortunately, I only lasted around 1 minute in the escape room before I flung the headset off and started babbling again… I don’t do scary and there’s a high level of vulnerability that comes with the sense of magic in VR.

As a ‘horror-experience’, VR sure cuts the mustard, but it’s important to move past the obvious ‘game-use’ for virtual reality and consider its other effective applications.

Good virtual reality overcomes so many mental barriers. It places you in a world that you can reach out and touch, rather than just a spectator, you have a presence and as my colleague Dan said: ‘When you are standing in a crowd of robots and they all turn to look at you, you can’t help but feel a little bit intimidated’. (Robo Recall, Oculus). It tricks the brain, even when you’re ‘smart side’ is screaming inside for it not to.

Check out our digital and immersive work.

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