{"id":6133,"date":"2017-09-28T04:00:01","date_gmt":"2017-09-27T20:00:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/news\/ready-live-virtual-world\/"},"modified":"2022-12-07T13:08:02","modified_gmt":"2022-12-07T05:08:02","slug":"ready-live-virtual-world","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.curtin.edu.au\/news\/ready-live-virtual-world\/","title":{"rendered":"Are you ready to live in a virtual world?"},"content":{"rendered":"

The trailer for Steven Spielberg\u2019s Ready Player One<\/em><\/a> has thrown the possibilities of virtual reality technologies into the limelight. But like the eerie conjectures of The Matrix<\/em> before it, the narrative also serves as a reminder of how virtual reality is becoming increasingly indistinguishable from the real, with virtual reality and augmented reality technologies being more sophisticated and popular than ever before. How concerned should we be?<\/p>\n

\u201cI am worried about addiction and I do believe there is the possibility that we could forget our social conventions,\u201d states Professor Erik Champion from Curtin University\u2019s School of Media, Culture and Creative Arts.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor example, ten years ago at a video game conference, I put up my hand and asked: \u2018Should we ever worry if games become too engaging?\u2019 Nobody wanted to answer me because they were all game developers.\u201d<\/p>\n

Champion, a researcher who has spent the past two decades working in the varied areas of architecture, gaming and virtual reality, believes the way forward is to provide virtual reality experiences that promote interaction and education over social withdrawal.<\/p>\n

As the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation Professional Chair in Cultural Heritage & Visualisation, he is developing a repository of virtual reality models of heritage sites in Australia and overseas and importing these models into a virtual reality game that a museum, gallery or library can use as an interactive educational experience.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy personal interest is to apply the constraints of virtual reality to help people understand how other cultures think or act differently to their own,\u201d says Champion, who is supervising PhD students in areas such as heritage trails, virtual recreations of contested political spaces and panoramic documentaries of live action role-playing.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe would like to have something similar to, say, the 3D online models and editor provided by the Smithsonian Institution<\/a> or repositories like 3D-Icons Ireland<\/a>. Not only have they digitised most of their models \u2013 you can download and edit many of them. We also intend to organise workshops to \u2018teach the teachers\u2019 how to use them.<\/p>\n

\u201cI want to encourage people to meet and talk because for me putting people alone into these little head-mounted displays isn\u2019t fully leveraging the potential of this technology.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Students<\/p>\n

Students taking part in a virtual heritage simulation at the <\/em>Curtin HIVE<\/em><\/a> (Hub for Immersive Visualisation and eResearch).<\/em><\/p>\n

Meanwhile, Dr Artur Lugmayr believes any reluctance to embrace new technology is simply human nature.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen the first films were shown and a train rushed towards the camera, everyone ran out of the cinema,\u201d he explains, referring to the urban legend surrounding the 1885 French film, Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat<\/em>, before adding rhetorically, \u201cI think in the future, there will be a lot of discussion about ethics, but for now the question is: \u2018Can we stop it or not?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Lugmayr even implies that the potential advantages of virtual reality technologies far exceed the disadvantages. Paraphrasing from American philosopher Marshall McLuhan\u2019s 1964 pioneering book on media, Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man<\/em>, Lugmayr strongly believes in the saying that \u2018each new technology is an extension of your body\u2019.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf I have a lamp, I can read in the night. If I have a bicycle, I can get around faster. And if I have a virtual environment, I will have even more capabilities,\u201d he reasons.<\/p>\n

\u201cDepersonalisation may even be an advantage for people who are physically disabled because they can navigate through a virtual environment without limitation. But maybe I have too much of a technology-driven viewpoint. I think it\u2019s just a natural trend.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lugmayr believes that sometimes it\u2019s essential to have simulations within a virtually created world. As a tutor, he has encouraged students to develop virtual reality applications<\/a> across business, health, humanities and science, while he has researched how these technologies could be used to help interpret big data<\/a> (large data sets relating to human behaviour).<\/p>\n

\u201cMany think that big data is simply about processing huge amounts of data. But we only need \u2018spotlight data\u2019 to help us solve our problems and the appropriate visualisation to help us understand the knowledge and information contained within the data,\u201d he explains.<\/p>\n