The 3D goggles that'll have you believe you're living in The Matrix



Could this pair of virtual reality goggles change the way we play video games for ever?

When virtual reality (VR) helmets first appeared, excitable techy types hoped it would only be months before we all left notes reminding the family to feed the cat, and departed for our own private cyber wonderlands.

Two decades on, there’s still no sign of VR helmets on the high street, but excitable techy types haven’t given up.



The new Oculus Rift headset, demonstrated last week at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, is currently a prototype, living inside a pair of ski goggles.



The Oculus Rift headset was funded via Kickstarter - a 'crowd funding' website where project creators seek backers; it raised $2.4 million...

...There are clearly a LOT of people on the internet who want virtual reality to be real

But according to one American future-gazer it’s like ‘plugging in to The Matrix’.

It requires a bit of wiggling to fix onto your head and then the 3D screens completely cover your field of vision, with tall, iMAXstyle displays, rather than the usual rectangles.



There is no escape – and no looking down to remind yourself where the ground is.



Switch on, and you quickly feel like you have to sit down, with your brain sending you signals that are the equivalent of a computer saying, ‘Error, please restart’.



For some reason, you also feel hot all over – not a problem Keanu Reeves ever mentioned in The Matrix.



Don't expect to 'leap' into a virtual universe quite yet - so far, you can explore video games such as Doom 3 and Unreal Tournament, where lunging forwards makes you move in the game

Rift's creators hope to use the headset to let players 'look around' in driving games - or fly

Once seated, though, the goggles are stunning – better, bolder and bigger than any 3D cinema screen or TV, without an ‘edge’ to bring you back to reality.



You’re inside the video game – lunging forward with your head to move forward, with phone-style accelerometers telling the system what you’re doing.



It doesn’t look dignified, but you’re the one with the techno-goggles on, so you don’t care.

Crucially, Rift also looks likely to be cheap.



Head-mounted accelerometers and screens were pretty out-there kit when people first started banging on about virtual reality; now, they’re in every mobile phone.



But whether buses to work will soon be full of people lunging forward like pecking chickens remains to be seen.



oculusvr.com





For a less painful meeting of minds

When a manager mentions the word ‘brainstorm’, it sends a chill through the whole office – probably similar to the drop in temperature when Stalin mentioned the word ‘purge’.

PhatPad may just save us from the horrors that typically ensue: it’s designed to enable people to work together without the awful silences, the noise of markers on squeaky whiteboards and the moments of desperation when someone yells, ‘I don’t know! Cabbages! Staples! Sledges!’ just to break the monotony.



In use, PhatPad is rather like Microsoft Office with a couple of buttons undone and a jazzy tie on

Available for iPad and Android devices, the app features recently spruced-up handwriting-recognition software and enables you to share documents tablet to tablet via Wi-Fi.

Alternatively, you can email them or share them via online services such as Dropbox and Google Docs.



In use, it’s rather like Microsoft Office with a couple of buttons undone and a jazzy tie on: you draw scribbly lines on screen, the app turns them into neat arrows, and you can add text, edit, add scribbly annotations and drop in pictures.



For working together, it’s a little smoother than rival Evernote – and its ability to convert documents to PDFs for emailing means that people can brainstorm, get a response from bosses, then brainstorm again.



Or, to put it in the parlance favoured by those who love the word ‘brainstorm’, they can ‘run it up the flagpole and see who salutes’.

