What happens when you let a philosopher to experience your concept of Virtual Reality? Honza invited his friend Jan Fikacek – philosopher and university lector to try VR and play with objects in our workspace.
What does Jan say about VR and our concept?
Hardware finally enables almost photo-realistic VR experience. It is fast enough to keep the sense of stability and solidity of the virtual world.
There is one psychological effect of being in VR – you have kind of a “double perception”. You perceive Virtual Reality but also the Real Reality, although visually hidden from you at the moment. You still feel the room around you, estimate the position of furniture and walls so you don’t bump into it. And after you take off your headset, you almost feel that behind the real room around you there is another room – more real than the one you see. Super-real. And you are afraid to move so you don’t bump into some kind of super-furniture which is located in the super-reality.
Jan, deep in virtual reality
Another interesting observation – there is a contact between VR and Real Reality, in my case it were controllers – you hold the physical controllers and you see them in VR as well, if you clap them together, they clap together in both realities at the same time.
I got an idea to make VR demonstration of my philosophical concept. Even my university class is called Philosophy of Virtual Reality!
Virtual objects with no gravity
Conclusion – VR is much more than games and simulations. It offers new points of view, interesting intellectual stimuli and lets us ask more philosophical questions about our reality and perception.
We will definitely expand on these subject in the future, with Jan’s input.
VR is beautiful demonstration of phenomenology. – Jan Fikacek
