posted on Nov, 17 2011 @ 01:20 AM
reply to post by blocula
The technology for us to immerse a human into an environment where they forget about "the real world" literally isn't as far away as most people
think. I would say less than a decade. We have the ability to convert simple brain EM waves into input... this removes a barrier between what the
player sees happening on the screen and their thoughts. They become in sync... one... you think it and it happens. With a controller this requires
such significant practice and always comes with delay due to physical limits.
Include along with this some method of altering the magnetic field around the head of the person to give them a detached state of being (or some other
method I haven't heard of yet), where they are in a more suggestible state. We don't have to get it so it looks like real life, we only need it to
respond well. For all we know the "graphics" of our real world are like GameBoy graphics relative to the universal potential of visuals.
However we
still buy it as "real" and "good enough" despite there being many documented flaws in our visual, audio, and other sensory systems resulting in
illusions, sometimes quite severe. So clearly graphical glitches are acceptable to be accepted as "real" by consciousness.
So our low tech version here probably doesn't have to look any better than our current PC games. Given a deep enough state of suggestibility, I'll bet
we could actually immerse ourselves in *any* visual landscape and learn to navigate it while thinking it's the "first time we've ever lived" while
inside it.
For those who can think far enough ahead creatively... audio landscapes too... or really landscapes we can't even fathom right now. Imagine an MMO
generated by the Mandelbrot set, where patterns in the set create the data sets for creatures. Since each pattern is unique... no two creatures will
be the same AND you will get an evolutionary "tree of life" as one pattern slowly morphs into another just based on random chance. So you'll be
exploring a "cave" in the Mandelbrot Set, see some creatures you are familiar with, but then there comes one which has some twist you've never seen
and you've got a new fight on your hands. Or non-combat games. The boundaries are as endless as the ones we're hitting now seemed to us in the mid
1990's.
And yes, I say this with some minor degree of insight from the inside.
Namaste!
edit on 17-11-2011 by ErgoTheConfusion because: (no reason given)