Week 5 VR/AR Assignment by Jonghyun Jee

It has been three years since the Oculus Rift made its first foray into the market. VR has received both huge attention and criticism—some say it’s revolutionary; some say it’s overrated. And recently, the latest advances in the VR/AR field were showcased in Oculus Connect 6. During the two-hour long conference, three keynotes were particularly interesting for me.

Mark Zuckerberg himself took the first keynote. He stressed that virtual reality will be the next generation of computing platforms, noting that profits from the Oculus Store so far have exceeded $100 million. I agree with what he said because I’m also convinced that VR/AR has potentials to entirely reshape our lifestyle just as smartphone did. And definitely Facebook seems ahead of the curve at this point.

Mark Zuckerberg then introduced the Oculus Link. Earlier this year, Oculus announced PC-based VR headset “Oculus Rift S” and all-in-one VR headset “Oculus Quest,” which caused inconveniences for those who owned both devices because their libraries are incompatible; the Oculus Quest, which cannot be connected with PC, seems to remain in a transitional stage. New Oculus Link directly connects the Oculus Quest to your PC with a simple USB cable and also makes it compatible with your existing Rift library. This is pretty interesting because it sounds like Facebook basically marked the end of Rift. If Quest shows graphic quality as great as Rift does, there seems no other reason to choose Rift.

Another major announcement was the introduction of hand tracking. Until now, the Oculus headset could only be operated by controllers, which are limited in many ways. The Oculus Quest’s front sensors, according to Mark, will be updated to track the user’s hand motion directly. He added that until just six months ago, PCs, external sensors, headsets and controllers were required for full VR experience, but soon everything becomes possible with just a single Oculus Quest. This is definitely an amazing technology since it will allow users to perform more delicate and subtle interactions. I’m excited to see how this technology will bring new possibilities that we could hardly imagine before.

He also gave a shout out for CTRL-Labs, which was acquired by Facebook recently. Their research interest lies on converting signals from the brain into digital through a simple hardware such as wristbands, so a user can operate a device by thinking—without any traditional human-computer interaction. I’m particularly interested in this announcement, as this brain-computer interaction—if it functions properly—will dramatically reshape the whole digital environment. Many people will be concerned of its use though, because it’s literally invading your brain, your inner thoughts and going to do what you want your computer to do. Still a quite distant future but I’m wondering whether a computer will become able to send signals directly into a human’s brain. If it happens, we are literally building a Matrix by ourselves.

Andrew Bosworth, Facebook’s augmented and virtual-reality vice president, delivered the second keynote. He introduced an anecdote about a father who used VR headsets to watch basketball games with his son, and talked about how virtual reality actually makes its place in our everyday lives. Facebook Reality Labs announced that it’s currently developing an AR device that would create real-time images of characters, which I found similar to the ongoing Telepresence research in NYU Shanghai. Spatial constraints might become a nostalgic idea sooner or later.

Michael Abraham of Facebook Reality Labs, the last keynote speaker, emphasized the future of VR/AR from more a realistic point of view. Referring to Hofstadter’s Law—“it always takes longer than you expect, even when you take into account Hofstadter’s Law”—he expressed the prospect that virtual reality will be the most common and attractive technology in the next 50 years, but more time is needed at this point. We might be viewing the world through rose-colored spectacles; and yet, pondering about those spectacles are always tantalizing.

Below are the images I found/took in search of finding a spot in Shanghai where does not have any human influence.

A 17th-century painting showing the city wall of the Old City of Shanghai and the river port outside the wall; hundreds of years ago but still we can see how humans already altered the city.

A picture I took ago in West (or East) Nanjing Road. It’s funny how all of the objects shown in this picture are completely anthropogenic. Nothing here seems natural.

Nearby our school, things hardly seem natural. I tried to roughly photoshop this image with another picture I took in Inner Mongolia:

If all signs of humans or any human-made artifacts are removed, it may look as such. A number of trees on a plain, with much bluer sky as a background.

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