The other day, I finally received my Oculus DK2 in the mail. As someone who’s been playing video games since Super Mario 64 hit store shelves here in the U.S., it was a very exciting moment for me. I had witnessed the computer progress from dial-up & floppy disks to LTE & MicroSD cards, and video games had made equally impressive leaps in that nearly 20 year run as well. The Oculus DK2 was the bleeding edge; the culmination of decades of advancements in not only raw computing power, but also miniaturization and cost efficiencies due largely to the smartphone boom. DK2 isn't perfect, but it’s the latest and greatest.

Another cause for excitement was that, in my mind, childhood sci-fi fantasies were finally becoming a reality. One of my favorite movies growing up was The Matrix, a sci-fi classic that has become ingrained into modern American pop culture almost more so than Star Wars at this point. Essentially, the basic premise involves a virtual reality world called the Matrix, which represents life as it was at the end of the 20th century. Most of the human population is plugged in to this computer program 24/7, unaware of the existence of a real, physical world. The few humans who have escaped from the Matrix can plug themselves back in at will, or plug themselves into other computer programs they've created, such as the “Construct”:

In this scene, Morpheus explains what the Construct is. It is essentially a blank slate; a computer program that they can walk around and temporarily exist inside of, in which anything can be created. It’s like a staging area they meet in before they connect themselves into the actual Matrix. In my mind, the Construct has now become a reality. The Oculus headset & SDK, as well as the powerful graphical tools out there such as Unity and Unreal, mean that even small teams of developers can create immersive, alternate realities for us. In the movie, Neo is incredulous, asking Morpheus, “right now, we're inside a computer program?” and later on, “this isn't real?” Morpheus responds with one of the most famous one-liners from the movie, simply asking, “What is real?”

It’s an interesting philosophical question to consider, and also a scientific one, as it relates to the brain and virtual reality. When I went down the first drop on the UE4 Rollercoaster Demo, I felt the distinct bodily sensation of falling and my stomach lurched violently, so much so that I took the headset off right away. I was able to get through the entire ride on subsequent attempts, but it still felt quite real to my body. When I tried out the well-reviewed Titans of Space demo, I looked in every direction and saw the beautifully rendered Solar System, and I felt like I was sitting in a very realistic planetarium show.

VR buffs call this feeling presence, and it is what developers are gunning for when they make a game for Oculus. The best VR game I've seen so far, which not only nailed the feeling of presence but also has a lot else going for it, is called Riftmax Theater.

Visiting the VR Cinema

The premise for Riftmax is simple enough: it’s a game which lets you create virtual movie theaters. You can walk around the theater hallways, go into a theater, sit in any seat you want, and of course, watch a movie on the screen. The movies can be streamed from the Internet, or played from your local computer. The kicker is that each theater is created as an online game server that other people can join. The movie or stream is synced up so that everyone in the theater is watching the exact same thing at the same time. Users can chat with text or voice, but also communicate in more subtle ways.

Here’s a screenshot of me walking around my theater while The Matrix plays. Not a very good quality capture on my part, but you get the point

On the first server I joined, I walked out into the theater hallway and saw someone standing about 20 feet away, looking at me. I nodded my head at them, which the Oculus picked up, causing my in-game avatar to do the same. Their avatar responded by nodding back. It felt strangely real and humanlike. Then the avatar walked toward me, leaned his body in my direction, and craned his neck so that their head was right in my face. Having that emotionless CGI face so close to me in realistic 3D made me immediately uncomfortable, but it was also hilarious, knowing that some person wearing an Oculus was doing that motion in real life, just to mess with me.

Riftmax had some other interesting features that only added to the experience. When you walk into the theater concourse, you see posters on the wall advertising other Oculus games. There are other theaters you can walk into, and each theater represents a different server that some other player has created, which you can then immediately connect to. The resulting experience feels like a metaverse of sorts, an expansive online world that exists in MMO games like World of Warcraft, but nothing that I'd yet seen in VR.

Overall, the Riftmax experience was amazing and unlike anything I'd yet seen in video games. After watching a movie for about 20 minutes, I sort of forgot that I was actually just sitting in my apartment. Being able to look around at the seats, ceiling, green “EXIT” signs, etc, makes for a very immersive experience. Wandering around the theater to find a good seat or step into the hallway really hammers down the feeling of VR presence, but having other people in the theater shining laser pointers at the screen, making fun of the movie, and seeing their avatars walk around also gives me a glimpse at the future of social presence.

Social Presence

Virtual reality buffs use the word presence to describe a strong feeling of being and existing in a virtual world. But I think that there’s also a feeling you get in certain Internet applications that I'd like to call social presence. Social presence might refer to that distinct feeling of being socially connected with people, even when they're not physically there. An early example of this would be the AOL chat rooms of the 1990's. They weren't much; just a text-based chat where people around the world communicated under the anonymity of screen names. But you did understand that you were communicating and interacting with other people in real time, even if it was primitive.

Later on, video games such as Counter-Strike and Neverwinter Nights brought forward an improved sense of social presence. Gamers not only communicated with people using text chat, but also accomplished tasks together, forming bonds with strangers, and eventually utilized voice chat servers to communicate with several people in real time using audio. In most cases, the audio was of a much higher quality than modern phone calls, adding to the feeling of presence, as if your teammates were in the same room as you. These advancements are now commonplace in any modern video game, and are especially prevalent in MMO games such as World of Warcraft.

I think that social presence as it relates to Oculus can go a long way in explaining why Facebook (a social media company) shelled out $2 billion to acquire Oculus VR (a gaming company). If you look at Facebook as a service right now, it works very well for certain things. It’s easy to keep tabs on your friends, drop notes to people, and post videos or thoughts on what you've been up to. But compared to other experiences to be had online, such as MMO games or VR, it feels distinctly anti-social. A head nod from someone’s online avatar or a real, human thumbs up gesture seems like it could be a lot more social than getting a “Like” — a strange abstraction for a whole allotment of positive human emotions. Seeing a post from a friend, followed by a few comments from other friends, is no more social than chain e-mails from the early 90's.

What is the Matrix?

In the Hollywood movie, the Matrix was all about control. It was designed to keep humans occupied with a computer generated dream world and ignorant of how terrible the real world is. In the Facebook attempt at it, the Matrix is going to be about entertainment and social engagement. As you can tell, I really love referencing that movie, but in all seriousness, I believe that Facebook is planning a social MMO of sorts. Playing Riftmax made me realize the immense potential of the medium of VR, not only in letting people temporarily exist in a fantasy, but also in providing a much more immersive way of interacting socially with others.

Comparing an ambitious VR project to the sci-fi fantasy of The Matrix may sound crazy, but don't take it from me. Here’s a quote from Mark Zuckerberg’s Oculus acquisition announcement:

After games, we’re going to make Oculus a platform for many other experiences. Imagine enjoying a court side seat at a game, studying in a classroom of students and teachers all over the world or consulting with a doctor face-to-face — just by putting on goggles in your home.

He’s essentially implying that any task or activity you do in real life could be done in VR, whether it’s entertainment, education, or even consulting with a professional such as a doctor. We've made some small strides recently in social presence, whether it be voice chat with your friends while gaming on Xbox Live, or having a fantasy football draft on Google Hangouts with your friends, using full video chat. But nothing is quite as immersive as real life, and that’s what Facebook is eventually going to attempt to replicate with Oculus’ technology.

The idea has already been attempted with mild success in games like Second Life, but it will be much more popular and accessible when it’s built from real-life social networks and playable in realistic VR. Most of the activities of the real world you'd normally go out and enjoy with your friends will soon be available by booting up your Facebook VR and logging in. I'm definitely looking forward to where this technology is going, but I hope that people will still enjoy hanging out in the real world occasionally when all is said and done.