Where is VR heading?

“Where is Virtual Reality heading?” transcript

TEXT ON SCREEN: Where is VR heading?

AUDIO: Ambient music plays throughout.

VISUAL:  Stefan Greuter, Director, Centre for Game Design Research RMIT University speaks to camera.

STEFAN GREUTER SPEAKS: I think there will be a tremendous amount of development in the next five years in VR. I think we'll see wires disappear, people can use headsets freely, without being tethered to a computer. I think we will see tracking improving, I think the whole body will be tracked and be able to be transferred into a virtual environment.

VISUAL: Emily Harridge, Founder, Visual Playground speaks to camera.

EMILY HARRIDGE SPEAKS:  The social impact will enable people to connect more, and it may mean that you can travel less. Whereas with people now, it's all about face-to-face, and meetings are a lot more successful with that face-to-face interaction. I think virtual reality will allow you to have both meetings and those interactions with people without having to travel.

We should be investing in technology that allows us to meet virtually so that we can ... A new way of interacting.

VISUAL: Chris Mackenzie, CEO, Opaque Holographic speaks to camera.

CHRIS MACKENZIE SPEAKS:  I think it's interesting when we consider VR and AR as maybe replacements for the tools we already use. If you look at things like smartphones and computers, how we interact with technology now, technology can mediate our lives right now, I think that this is kind of like throwing more into the mix, right?

CHRIS MACKENZIE SPEAKS:  We have a glut of amazing technology, which can be utilised in just many, many different ways. I'm very interested and invested in seeing where this kind of augmented reality technology can go. I'd love to see what the next ways we interact with computers are. Not only what do they show us, but what do we show them? How do we show them our problems, and how do we get computers to understand us, and the world, as we humans perceive it.

VISUAL: Jonathan Duckworth, Director, Creative Interventions, Art and Rehabilitative Technology laboratory speaks to camera.

JONATHAN DUCKWORTH: I think virtual reality will play a major role in the Allied Health space, particularly around mental health, the treatment of mental health, and other phobias and conditions

…

Virtual reality has been shown to sort of distract patients from the pain of some of those procedures. I think we'll see that Allied Health will have a lot to benefit from this sort of technology.

VISUAL: Stefan Greuter speaks to camera.

STEFAN GREUTER SPEAKS: It's basically the closest thing you get to putting yourself into someone else's shoes. You can really experience it with your own eyes, from a first person perspective.

VISUAL: Chris McKenzie speaks to camera.

CHRIS MACKENZIE SPEAKS:  I think we've seen the possibility that we can use VR, and games in general, to train and educate people in a way that is more powerful than we've been able to do before. Whether that's in classroom teaching or whether that's video and audio use. There's definitely more power here, in this medium.

CHRIS MACKENZIE SPEAKS:  We're on the cusp of a range of very interesting potential components that we can use to design new ways that we solve our problems using computers. I'm excited to explore that, I want to plumb the depths of what we can do with this tech. I want to push it in ways it's not been pushed.

VISUAL: Fades to RMIT logo, with white text on a black screen.

AUDIO: Ambient music fades out.

[End of transcript]