In 1992, I visited the UK and spent a day at the London Trocadero, the entertainment sprawl that features shopping stores and cutting edge technological venues. At the time, a clean room manufacturing compact disks was all the rage; the operators were dressed in bunny suits replicating the shiny disks. There was also team laser tag to be enjoyed, if one didn’t mind looking like Tron.
That’s when I also took my first taste of virtual reality and after putting on what resembled a welder’s mask, I took my game seat and battled three others in a game of gigantic robots.
I think I invented spawn-killing, as that’s how I somehow managed to win that game of blocky graphics that allowed one to be immersed in a 270 degree field of view. The experience was well worth the hefty 3 GBP, when other video games cost 50 pence.
Fast forward to the present, more than 20 years later.
With the acquisition of Oculus – makers of virtual reality headsets and software – by Facebook, we’re finally living the anticipated technological changes of the 21st century.
For $2 billion, Facebook is buying a good portion of a market yet untapped but slated to explode, as virtual environments become less of a spectacle and more of the daily norm in human interpersonal interaction.
Not too long from now, we will be able to immerse into a 3D virtual environment of high graphical realism, performing tasks with precision and accuracy as if we were physically there.
The prelude to this era is the projection of avatars in a similar environment, without the complete audiovisual immersion; the virtual tools available can still assist with the completion of tasks in an interactive manner.
It’s about to happen in the domain world as well: Virtual Web Fair, an interactive conference that strives to bring together as many as 5,000 professionals from the domain, hosting and SEO industries, is slated for July 24th this year. It’s the type of extended domain conference that requires no hotel booking and no traveling; you can attend from the comfort of your own home.
For a detailed report of this first immersion into the next generation of domain conferences, click here.
Twenty years from now, we will hopefully have the chance to review the exact advancements in technology and society, and to dream of a better, brighter future as well.
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