Time for another blog post; it’s only been about 4 years, LOL. Life got busy and I switched to Instagram because it was easier to do short posts; mostly photos.
But today,
as we approach the Christmas season, life has slowed a bit (no really, only a
bit!) and I’ve had an experience that demands longer prose than a photo
caption.
Yesterday I
participated in a work team event at a Virtual Reality facility in Richmond. I
didn’t know what to expect but I’d heard these computer-generated environments have
become quite realistic. As a first impression let me say that the “elevator” floor
we were standing on was realistic enough to fool me for a micro-second into
thinking I needed to stand well back from the edge of the platform. But of
course, in reality, we were standing on a solid floor in a commercial retail
unit!
Also, I must
admit to feeling a momentary burst of claustrophobia upon donning all the gear which
included wrist and ankle monitors, padded vest (for “feeling” the impacts of
enemy fire), a backpack (probably containing batteries), visor (computer
display), and headphones. I was cut off from any real world inputs. Interestingly,
when viewing each other through the VR googles we digitally resembled Tesla Optimus
robots!
Fortunately
the new “world” quickly emerged starting with a briefing from our commander. Our
mission was to prevent an imminent enemy alien invasion by killing them all
(and the horse they rode in on! (i.e., the mothership)). Pretty basic.
I think the
elevator was the coolest part. As in any computer game, each successful battle progresses
to the next level. In the VR case, each level literally went vertically higher
and higher. At first I was comparing it to the elevator within the Shangri-La
tower in dwtn Vancouver (to date the fastest and smoothest elevator I’ve ever ridden
in). But pretty quickly it cleared the tops of all the adjacent city skyscrapers.
It just kept going and going. Eventually we cleared Earth’s atmosphere! We were
gazing down upon the planet as if from the ISS.
