![]() ![]() VR is perhaps the ultimate example of technological isolation, where our link with the physical environment is almost totally severed. When a person looks down at their smartphone, they are immediately disconnected from their social context – a phenomenon widely complained about by parents, friends and romantic partners around the world. However, our relationship with technology is still largely based around an interaction between a human and a computer. Social Contextįrom command-lines to mobile interfaces, tech companies have made huge advances in making complex technology accessible to the masses. They change its meaning and purpose, integrating with our daily lives while radically increasing the possibilities for a space. ![]() Mirrorworlds re-contextualise your space. But you can also shoot fireballs, summon complex 3D models, or tear down your walls to look out on a Martian sunrise. You will be able to see and engage with other people in your environment, walk around, sit down on a chair. You are still present, but on a different plane of reality. Mirrorworlds immerse you without removing you from the space. Mirrorworlds transform aspects of the physical world into a new experience, rather than augmenting or replacing it. Physical obstacles like cabinets and chairs become mountains that can be moved to affect a weather system. These realities are linked to our own, and have strange new properties. Think Frodo when he puts on the One Ring, or the Upside Down in Stranger Things. Mirrorworlds are alternative dimensions of reality, layered over the physical world.* Rather than completely removing you from your environment, they are parallel to reality, transforming your surroundings into refracted versions of themselves. It’s a space we’ve been exploring, that we call… M I R R O R W O R L D S We’re on a course toward a new set of possibilities that are tantalisingly close, and will open up huge new areas of VR for exploration – a whole new category of experience. But VR isn’t about features, it’s about the kinds of experiences those features enable. These make VR more accessible and portable, which will undoubtedly help reach larger audiences. Headsets are getting more comfortable, costs are coming down. The latest VR devices to be announced have a host of new features: high resolution screens, untethered capabilities, inside-out tracking. Some put you in a blank canvas and encourage you to create. Some let you exist in other times and places. Click To TweetThe current generation of VR is great for transporting you to far-off lands, trading up your physical environment for separate virtual worlds. VR isn't about features, it's about the kinds of experiences those features enable. All of this will be normal and obvious to us. We will warp time and space, bending or breaking the rules of physical reality to suit our needs. Where it used to take years of hard labour and valuable resources to build a cathedral, we will be able to build and share environments in moments, giving birth to impossible new forms of architecture. Creation will be fast, collaborative and inexpensive. ![]() We will spend our days effortlessly slipping between realities, connecting with others who may be physically or virtually present, dialling up and down our level of immersion. These technologies will have a more profound impact on the way we interact with our environments and each other. Our actual future will be much stranger, subtler and more complex. We can have relationships with virtual beings, or might give ourselves over completely to virtuality and upload our souls to the network. Click To TweetThe cultural expectations for the technology, popularised by Hollywood, present our future as cities filled with holographic signage and characters, escapist VR sex-pods, or specially equipped ‘holodeck’ rooms that are used for entertainment or simulation. These are just entry points into a vast world of possibilities where we navigate between our physical world and limitless virtual spaces. Virtual, augmented, mixed, hyper, modulated, mediated, diminished reality. But in terms of what they enable, we’ve only seen a sliver of what’s possible. These technologies contain immense raw potential, and have advanced to the stage where they are pretty good, and pretty accessible. All of these flavours are really just entry points into a vast world of possibilities where we can navigate between our physical world and limitless virtual spaces. ![]() Mixed, hyper, modulated, mediated, diminished reality. ![]()
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