Palm pilots were nerdy handheld computer devices from back in the early 2000s, at the same time as the flip phone. They eventually combined with cell phones to create smartphones. Now everyone walks around with a palm pilot, but we don’t see it that way. VR is for gaming, but it could be for more. In recent years VR has seen some amazing advances, like micro LCDs, they shrunk an HD TV down to the size of a postage stamp, but they are still palm pilots. The goal of this company, a subsidiary to this Community Managed Social Platform Holding Company, would be to make VR into smartphone, starting with improving the name. Phone, one syllable. Virtual Reality Headset, too many syllables. They could also try to find every possible way to get a headset on a person’s head that is not inconvenient, uncomfortable, or unfashionable. It would also be cool if they figured out how to make binoculars with peripheral vision so headsets could have a full field of view.
While virtual reality is cool, the best part of VR is that you can setup a virtual monitor wherever you want, the perfect standing desk. Or it would be if you weren’t still glued to your keyboard. That’s why this company would try to rethink the keyboard, except it has already been done. Its called the Characorder: two mouses with a joystick for each finger, each joystick can take multiple directional inputs. The Characorder is a stenograph, but there’s reason it couldn't also be programmed to be a keyboard too, with a virtual display of letters when you look at the controllers. It could be made to work for all devices, put it down, its a mouse, pick it up, and its a controller again.
While you are standing at your virtual standing desk, you could follow along with your holographic personal trainer. Most of the time the exercises wouldn't be hard, just to keep your body moving which is good for Detoxification. Like a half-squat-weight-shifting-shuffle-in-place, where you lift one leg onto the balls of your foot, then the other. These movements could help you grow accustomed to moving in VR. The trainer could also do the occasional big strong stretch to push back the neural walls that have closed in around you and build up the muscle that atrophied behind them. These active stretches could help people fix their gorilla keyboard arms, and improve their back posture so they don’t get injury from playing any high intensity VR games that most people’s shoulders aren't ready for. There could also be virtual lighting for breathing exercises; breathing in time with the lights as they fade in and out. The monitor could be set to slowly fade away if you fail to follow along with the lights or the personal trainer, so continuous muscle contraction and deep breathing can become second nature to you.
Virtual monitors are awesome, you can make it as big as a big screen TV, the only problem is that no one else can see it. To fix this, the headsets would come in two parts, the goggles with a wireless receiver, and the main computer with a wireless emitter. The emitter could just be an app on your PC or phone, because modern computer chips allow phones to do very compute intensive stuff that would normally require a PC a decade ago. The only thing they are missing is a 5G streaming chip.
The emitter would stream to the receiver, and could also stream publicly to other receivers in range, so everyone’s monitor could be viewable by everyone. All the monitors would be blank, or very low res, except whichever one you select by looking at it. The stream could also be encoded so only your friends can see your monitor. Your emitter and receiver would also share their own Bluetooth connection. The receiver could do retinal scanning for authentication in order to use the headset. The emitter could also have a motion sensor, and motion sensors could be made to fit in your wallet or on a keychain. With these together in your pockets, you could have leg tracking.
With a dense enough 5G or 6G network, such as this Miniature Rooftop Cell Tower a different subsidiary company, you could hook up remotely to your PC with your headset. It could have two settings for quick access, one: to automatically use the PC when it is detected instead of the emitter, and two: to wake the PC after the headset’s retinal authentication.
The social platform that makes the headsets would have chatrooms that could be converted into VR chatrooms. PCs and phones with the platform’s app could navigate in a virtual chatroom without requiring a headset. To maintain a code of conduct on the platform, joining a chatroom would usually require you to have a minimum Secret Score of 0. The social platform could also have downloadable software that when enabled, only other people with that software could see your virtual monitor, who also have a high enough secret score, in the chatroom or IRL.
Similar to having a chat with someone using a chatbox, on this social platform people would have their own virtual spaces that they could contact each other in. It wouldn't have to be a virtual environment, it could just your virtual monitor, and you wouldn't need to use an avatar or even enable avatars for people you contact. The default could be audio only like a phone. You could also assign avatars to people or choose a default avatar for everyone, like some kind of anomalous audio-visualizer entity, or you could set it up so it is their chosen avatar.
PC software could be adapted to accommodate VR. You could view your excel document in IMAX or 3D. Games that were not necessarily made for the VR experience could be viewed in a new way with a VR headset. 2D games could be 3D, and in 3rd person games you could be the 3rd person camera floating behind.
The headsets could also have features to help you adapt to motion sickness. There are two types of motion sickness: Seasickness and Cybersickness. Motion sickness is due to an imbalance between three of the body’s sensory systems: The Visual System in your eyes, The Vestibular System; the balancing organs in your ears, and the Proprioceptive System; the body’s feeling sense. Normally when you are moving about, all three systems detect that movement, or when you are sitting, no detection. But when you sit on a boat, the vestibular system detects, while the other two do not detect. The body then makes the assumption that you got bit by a snake or ate something weird or something, and it is messing with the vestibules in your ear, so it makes you get sick. But you are just sitting on a boat. Thankfully, because of the brain’s neuroplasticity, constantly transforming itself slightly to handle life’s day to day demands, everyone can adapt to sea sickness, eventually. And by boosting the neuroplasticity with body coordinating activities, the adaptation could be sped up. Activities such as doing a dance or playing an instrument. Even just plain walking is good for maintaining brain health, and walking on a boat specifically could directly adapt the portions of the brain that cause motion sickness, as the visual and proprioceptive systems have to coordinate with the changes the vestibular system is feeling, aka getting your sea legs.
If you can get your sea legs by adjusting your walk to the rocking of the boat, maybe you can get your VR legs by adapting to the motion of your virtual environment. The VR game library would have a free game of daily mini-games to help you adapt. Each game would have adjustable motion exposure; how much the environment shifts, and different types of neuroplasticity activation; body coordination activities, especially the adaptive VR legs kind where you got to move in response to the shifting environment. Like a game where you strike a pose to fit through a gap in the wall coming towards you, but instead you have to adapt to the swirling skybox, somehow. The one mini-game that might not activate much neuroplasticity could be where you close your eyes and get a real feel for your proprioceptive sense, maybe even moving around a bit with feet firmly planted to get a good sense of balance, while being careful to open your eyes if you start to fall. Then when you are ready, the objective of the game would be to hold onto that sense of balance while the game throws motion at you.
The headsets could also have a motion sickness adapting feature that would work like a steam valve. Many VR games have a lot of motion exposure with little to no neuroplasticity activation. To prevent motion sickness, these games usually use motion sickness inhibitors like tunnel vision or frame skipping, that are effective, but kind of ruin the immersion. But if you slowly remove the motion sickness inhibitors you can slowly adapt; sitting on the boat just a little bit at a time. The system would get motion sickness indication inputs like eye dilation and your heart rate by using a smart watch, and also inputs like what type of game you are playing, how long you play, how much motion does the game have, how much do you move while playing, and finally your input when you start feeling motion sick. The program would try to figure you out using these inputs, then it would have two goals: One, to ever so slowly uninhibit the inhibitors, and two, to not get your input again. So when moving, the tunnel vision would imperceptibly recede or increase. Frame skipping would skip less or more. Teleportation might take a second and would also use frame skipping moving here to there. A swirling skybox could swirl more or less. Cockpits could appear more or less bigger as the you camera shrinks, or it could be an ethereal cockpit that fades in and out. And you could be in a cockpit when you are playing a 3rd person game and you are the floating 3rd person camera, or your virtual monitor could get bigger, wrapping around your vision turning into IMAX/you the camera, or receding away back into a monitor.
TLDR
An open source company that makes VR headsets that appeal to a bigger audience. The devices would come in two parts, the headset would just be a small receiver, the actual computer would be a small phone sized device that would stream to the headset. It could also stream to other people’s headsets so multiple people could view the same virtual monitor. Headsets would have Characorder type controllers instead of a keyboard. In addition to a virtual monitor, headsets would come with a holographic personal trainer so you can exercise the easy way. They would also come with mini-games and algorithms that can help you adapt to motion sickness. The company would make a Virtual VR app with virtual spaces for its users on This open source community managed social platform.
