034 - On Virtual Reality - Part 1 - A Weekend with an HTC Vive

In this episode, we discuss “alternate” realities, aka virtual realities. To do so, I travelled to Los Angeles to visit Adam (this is Brian, btw). Why you may ask would I slug my 215 pound, 6 foot 8 inch body all the way there? Well, I needed to be physically in Adam’s living room so that my mind could enter into the virtual reality of an HTC Vive VR system that Adam has recently setup. It was mind blowing. The current generation of Virtual Reality Technology is “The jetpack we’ve been promised.” It’s flying cars. It’s travel to other planets. It’s fully immersive collaborative working environments. It is truly the Matrix. On Saturday night, May 21st, 2017, I caught a bullet out of the air with my bare hands, and I’ll never forget it. Because of a lifetime of VR technologies proving mostly comical, and rarely functional, I did not expect to even be particularly entertained by this system. But, after a weekend of exploring Virtual Reality of the early 21st century I can say with utmost confidence that the world is about to change … forever. I hope we captured some of this excitement / magic / shock / fear in this episode discussing my initial impressions of the modern VR experience. Look out for at least two more episodes in this series. One where we will discuss VR technology and how it plays with the technology we were born with, and another where we jump of the real and virtual cliff of implications for VR. Cheers! T. Brian Jones