Klaus
I'll admit I've thought about the possibilities of virtual reality, and when I do, I'm all giddy like a little school girl on her way to the dance.
I've thought of certain situations where virtual reality would be.. too much, though.
For instance, say some kid is playing Call of Duty 9 and this war game is as realistic as you can get, everything is totally believable. What are the chances that the enviornment is so believable, the child experiences some sort of trauma or cardiac arrest from getting killed in combat? There's been a number of cases where dying in your dreams (as close of a comparison to Virtual Reality as you can get) can send the subconcious into a state of panic, inducing things like cardiac arrest.
Things like that make me seriously think of the reprocussions of virtual reality.
I totally concur. As tempting as the thought of VR is I find that there are situations where it can go too far. games like 'Hitman' might become much too close to killing simulators than would be comfortable. I think that if someone to become too immersed in the virtual world it's entirely possible that it can have serious mental repercussions. After all there are people that are trying to say gaming as it stands now has serious influence on the gamer depending on the level of violence that the person experiences in the game. It's hard to imagine how those studies might go if the person was literally inside the gaming world during the playing time.
Once again, if this type of application. Were to spread to other things like online communitcation we'd seriously have to think about the possible consequences of such technology. And we'd have to think how far until we draw the line between the virtual world we create and the real world.
You a real thought would be what if this becomes a way for military to train new troops or some person gets convinced they are still in the game after the game ends?
It's a slightly sobering thought. Everything has it's drawbacks.
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