To have a perfect virtual reality experience, I feel you’d have to actually manipulate the brain, and while it’s much harder to do than it sounds (and sounds freaking hard even so) the brain is basically a computer, which sends electrical impulses for every little thing.

Everything you see, smell, touch, taste, feel, and hear in the world has it’s own set of specific impulses to tell you what that is, and to what degree you’re sensing it. Thus if one could create, even manipulate the impulses, and send it back and forth between the brain and a machine, one could in essence, create virtual reality.

Say the machine has a record of your impulses, these impulses are stored as a set number, as data. Whenever the data is needed, the recorded number is triggered, creating the strong enough impulse to and from your brain. For instance say in the game you’re mind is needing to register all of the colors, shapes, and sizes.

Each color, shade, shape, size will then be recorded as a specific digit, name, whatever. Thus you may not physically be seeing what your mind is showing, you’re still seeing it because the impulses used for your eyes and mind are working together with the server.

To make a long story short, while hard as fuck, it’s still possible, and within our own lifespans given each few years our technological leap grows 50 years in advance than it really should be growing.

Now while my text implies confidence, it’s purely speculation based upon my understanding of a small portion of the workings of the brain.

What do you think, could it be possible using my idea, or am I way off base?

Hail Fulldive technology (Sword Art Online reference^^)?
Well, we first need some way to work with the brain to this degree. The question is: how do you plant things like smells in the brain?
Next things is: your body would still move in the real world. You don't want that. To be fuly immersed, you have to do any movement without having problems in the real world. So you would have to stop impulses going to the body.
Basically rewire the neck to the computer (careful with important nerves like those which keep your heart beating or make sure you breath).
If you can do that, it should not be a great problem any more to rewire nerves going to the nose/eyes.
I think, the power of the computer is also a problem, since such a technology would mean you need a huge resolution for visuals with a high frequency (same for other nerves).
Imho, as soon as we have a good basis for this stuff with the brain, it's only a matter of a few years until someone uses a super computer an sends himself into Cyberspace^^

One very big problem - the computational power of the brain.

In short, it is so incredibly massive I don't see any computer getting anywhere near as powerful in the next 50 years. We have just now made a computer with the same power as a cat's brain, which is significantly less powerful than a humans. It took many years to do that, and it will take many more to match a human's.

Also consider storage. Our eyes see in at least near 4 000p resolution (although it differs in each person). Our ears hear in well over 320kbps quality, and we haven't even largely defined quality for smell, touch, and taste, not to mention the myriad of other senses we posses. Just considering sight and hearing, the data required to create a world in the same auditory and visual quality that humans perceive in real life would be so ridiculously immense it would rival the total data stored on the Internet. Humans themselves don't remember everything they see, and the things they do remember are in extremely low quality, simply because there is too much data.

You could get over the computing power problem by using the actual human's brain to power the game, like having a controlled dream, although I have no knowledge as to whether that is possible or not. But, you still can't get over the storage problem, because even the human brain can't store it all.

It will be many years before we get a perfect VR. We can always do a pretty good one, but the perfection you are talking about is far in the future. At least, I think so.

Humans may see near 4,000, but only a small portion is actually recognized by the brain. I'm not really talking about a world that uses the brain to make it exactly like the real world. That alone would be too much.

A person's eyes can pick up the lowest resolution, to the highest their eyes and mind can go, thus really the best bet is to focus on a general resolution, perhaps the best one used by most MMO.

Also there's no real reason to do smell, or taste, and with feeling you shouldn't do too much or else inflected pain would harm their real bodies.

>>4

Our eyes can distinguish about 1 arc minute, which means the resolution we can see changes based on distance and size. Basically, the closer it is the better we can see it (no surprise there). Also, you think the eye can perceive a lot more than the brain can process, when it is ironically the exact opposite. The eye itself only has about 6 million cones, which you could say equals about 6 million pixels. However, the brain combines a lot of data from many different pictures in the eye. This in turn makes a picture with such high quality it would take dozens of cameras with hundreds of megapixels each, taking many pictures a second (about 300), and also compiling it into one picture, 300 times a second. The eye itself is not really that high quality, but the picture created by the brain is.

However, with time the technology will get better, and eventually we will be able to replicate the power of the human brain.

Personally, I wouldn't want it to be perfect. It's nice to be able to separate virtual from reality, and to know when I am playing a game. Therefore, leaving other senses out and reducing the quality of visual and audio would be a good thing for me.

I also don't know how plausible it is to 'intercept' nerves without drilling into the skull and directly accessing the brain. That also requires many years of research, considering you have to do it without physically touching the brain in any way, and leaving the player conscious enough to play a game.

I'd say you'd have to be unconscious. I feel it's either having to be directly connected, or at least using the concept used in things such as electroshock therapy where they connect it to your head and it then sends the electrical shocks out into the brain, and somehow able to sense and retrieve shocks back.

>>7 If you were unconscious, how would you be able to play the game? I don't think it's possible to create the framework of a dream for a person and then let them roam in it. Besides, not everyone can control their dreams while they are in them anyway.

We would need more research in that field, of course. I am not familiar with electroshock therapy or how exactly it works, but I don't think it is specific enough to trap signals going to the limbs and re-appropriate them.

>>3 there are humans that _do_ remember everything. They are missing a connection in the brain which filters the data (Savant Syndrome)

>>9

That is impossible.

As I said, there is too much data. The brain doesn't have enough storage space to store it. Savants remember an incredible amount of data, but not everything. It's just impossible.

Savants do not store every piece of data their eyes and ears record, they can recollect all (or nearly all) of the data the brain stores. They haven't spontaneously evolved more synapses, they can just remember everything the brain has to remember. The brain discards data, because it has to. There is a limited amount it can store and it gets way too much in every day to keep it all.

>>10 lol, you may know a lot, but you will never know everything. Why do you insist on the brain being not capable of something like that? Have you researched the brain that much to be able to actually proof your hypothesis? If no, please accept other theories as well. As long as you cannot proof my idea wrong it is valid...

>>11

I am a physicist. Physics has definitively proven there is a smallest length of space anything can exist in, as in there is a smallest object (strings, perhaps) that nothing can be smaller than. In this sense, it proves there is a limit on how much the brain can store, period. There is no arguing this point. You cannot prove Planck wrong, if you believe there is no smallest unit, you must also believe stars emit light at an infinite rate. Impossible.

The brain could reduce the quality of images and sounds you experience, but this in itself would make them unable to remember everything. They would forget certain details to retain larger amounts of data.

In order for your idea to be a theory, it has to satisfy two criteria: it must explain experimental observations, and it must be easy to test in a repeatable experiment. You haven't explained why you think your idea is true, and as such it satisfies neither of these criteria.

Your theory is that a missing filter suddenly makes the brain able to store more. This doesn't make any sense and needs to be explained. I am happy to accept your theory, if you explain it.

Back on the set topic of this post, one wouldn't necessarily have to have their brains tapped into to create a reality that can be lived threw, (but of course that would be the best way to do it) rather if they could just be given an input for each of the seances and given a way to move both in and out of the VR(Virtual reality) this could be achieved by suspending the person in some sort of liquid or magnetic field with supports strapped to the body and would require a powerful computer to make all the calculations as the person in RL moves and looks around interaction with AI's and other such gaming components it the VR. the visual's may be accomplished by having a helmet that can act and display in real time even as the person moves about and uses the VR components, and with the helmet comes the possibly of giving all the auditory input via left and right hearing pieces (seeing as how with our ears we cant really determine forward or back, just left and right). this way of putting a person in VR may be less than people would wish for, but a very possible one for the time being.

That's my two cents.

>>12 ok, but have you ever thought about the possibility of the brain not being the part storing memories? There is a theory out there, that the brain is just some kind of antenna - and our souls are something like an EM wave (would mean wee live on after our bodies die)
If our memories are not stored in the brain, we have at the current time no means of measuring how much information we can actually store. It's not more information than before - but unfiltered (filtering is btw. not only because of memory limitations - but also a self-protection. The brain might not be able to handle that much information. Also there are things better forgotten (some dear to you died... you will remember them a lot in the beginning - but wait a bit and memories will start to fade making you feel a little better. Not a nice thing, but that's how it works))

>>13 in a liquid or something like that? Sure - let me put a water tank in my hobby room so I can play my games in VR. There has to be something better than that ;) If we speak about not interrupting nerves, the only other hint I can see is lucid dreaming. If we could make a person fall into a lucid dream and then feed visual and audio information to the brain, we would have a "real" VR experience.

Your "possible" way already exists. First of all, there is the Oculus Rift. Next, everyone has a headset. Newer ones are able to simulate 7.1 surround. As for movements, there is Sixense sensors (Razor Hydra compatible) and Virtuix Omni. Using those, you can play some of today's games in a simple VR. At least this summer, since the Omni has not been shipped yet.

>>14 What evidence do you have to support this theory?

It seems to me an EM wave would be able to store even less information than the brain.

Also, how would your brain be able to access it anywhere in space?

>>15 not my theory, don't have any evidence from my side. Please use google to research this matter further, if you are interested.
I just mentioned this, because you try to think too much in a "my theory is a fact" way. But since we still do not know, what the soul is - and where we find it (because just plugging some brain cells together won't make anything come alive at all), it's hard to say, that today's theories concerning the brain as our center of personality and the so important brain for our lives are true.
I am but an engineer and computer scientist so I really cannot tell you arguments about a world which is unknown even to specialists. I can only tell you what ideas I have heard and what I think could be interesting to consider when talking about how the brain... no, how life itself works.

When did I say that it's an EM wave?
Why should you be able to store less on a maybe nearly infinite long entity?

Like your smartphone does (maybe)... Man has never been far away from Earth after all.

>>16 I admit that I don't fully understand the brain. Nobody really does, after all. However, you are arguing a theory you don't understand, which is pointless by any definition. It is fact that information is stored inside the brain. Unless someone comes up with strong experimental evidence showing otherwise (which has not happened yet), it will remain fact.

Think of it like this: it was fact that the Earth was flat, the Sun revolved around the Earth, etc. That was because there was no evidence otherwise. That's all science is: generally accepted theories. All the theories I presented (information is stored in the brain, Planck length, etc.) are generally accepted in the science community, since there is no strong repeatable experimental evidence suggesting otherwise.

Besides, you were wrong about Savant Syndrome; that particular condition is just being able to recollect everything that is stored, rather than an ability to store more. Maybe the storage capacity of the brain is limitless, but that isn't what is happening with Savants.

I would be intrigued to debate about the antenna theory, though, if you would care to research it?

>>17 That's what I mean. You say "it's a fact" and indeed, it is! But for a question like "how will we in the _future_ be able to work with the brain?", todays facts might not be good enough imho (we cannot do it with today's facts after all). That's why I like to think ahead of what other possibilities there are. Even if they sound ridiculous. There was a time when people thought the Earth was flat (to take your example). It was a fact! Just look at the ground below you - is it round? No. See?
But then people began to see it was round - and a lot of things which were not possible with the fact "the Earth is flat" became possible - just by denying an old fact.
I hope you understand that for progress, we need to think about theories and ideas which might be facts in the future and affect the current problem (resulting in abandoning today's facts - at least partly).
Not that the location of memories matters when it comes to "how do I input data into the brain and stop it from moving the body?"^^

About the antenna theory, I will try to dig up the material I had about it and post it later on in a new thread (might develop into something interesting). It's a bit late on my side of the blue planet ;)

>>18 Of course, I totally agree. That is what science is all about, after all. Questioning everything, even what you already 'know'.

I have no problem with discarding old knowledge, but initially I didn't think you had a lot of evidence to support the theory you presented, or frankly knew what you were talking about (which was wrong, I apologize). I know too many people that don't know anything about physics, and it's nice to meet someone that disagrees with me and still has a good base of knowledge.

We should probably take this discussion to another thread, though, seeing as this one has been off the rails for a while.

I think even reducing the quality of the game to deal with the amount of data you'd need to store, you still run into the problem of knowledge of the brain. We don't have a whole lot of experience with tweaking specific nerves to move specific parts of the body, much less wirelessly and safely. I feel like we aren't there yet in terms of knowledge about the brain. I don't know if we'd get there in the next 50 years, but then again, 50 years ago we didn't even have computers, so we could very well.

>>19
Actually our technology, such as computers, cars, games, whatever, is much more advanced than it should actually be. We'd probably actually still be at brick sized cell phones right now, if the technological leap wasn't as large or as fast.

Ahh! One of my favorite things to talk about! Hoping some of you guys can answer some of my questions.

>>8 I assume it would be much harder to make a virtual world asleep as dreams are random and sporadic, unpridictable. I don't know enough about the mind to know but I do have very good control over my dreams to know how crazy they can get.

>>14
Once you start lucid dreaming you don't need to be hooked up to a machine to be able to live the world you want. What would be the point? You can already control and do a lot of things at that point. Kinda.

We don't have the technology for maintaining a virtual world.. What about using peoples brains to hold or structure the world. Not sure how to explain it. What about a machine that connects peoples minds together to make the world? The more people conncted to each other the more detailed the world. More data capacity? Nevermind. I just lost myself.. Sounds kinda HIVE-ish anyways.

>>21 You wouldn't be able to connect with other players, and there is a difference between a lucid dream and being able to completely create an entire world and sustain it. Plus, you'd have to dream up the exact same world every time, which is highly unlikely.

>>22
Oh right, other people. Forgot about that. The stability it would give the dream would be nice though. I'd be able to do more things. Also, what do you mean it's unlikely? Making the same dream in a lucid state isn't that hard. Unless you mean that 'entire world', then yes, that does sound hard.

>>23 Even in a lucid dream state, you are not as in control as you would be when you are conscious. It would take a long time in the real world to think up all the items, players, terrain, enemies, etc. In a dream state (even a lucid dream state), it would be very difficult to recall all the specific details you thought of previously, and to remember exactly what happened in the last dream. A computer handling that would solve those problems.

>>21 First of all, just as Inuhakka said, you don't have other players in a lucid dream. Secondly, why do you even play games? Sure, if you are one of those people who only play FPSs, you will be fine with your regular lucid dream. But let's talk about games which do make a lot of sense to play instead of lucid dreaming - namely RPGs. You play the gamne because you are interested in the story someone else tells you. You broaden your horizons by doing that - allowing you to later on implement new ideas into your lucid dreams and having more fun all in all.
"We don't have the technology for maintaining a virtual world". Yes, we do. Look at all the games. Are those not virtual worlds? They may be kinda small compared to the real world, but I would call them worlds nevertheless.

Connecting brains to make a kind of Second Life (also "Welcome to the Borg"^^) does sound interesting and may be an approach. But you will still want to administrate, who is allowed to occupy which space. Also what happens to people being in someone's space and then the person wakes up (which would crush that person's space/part of the world)? You will have to put a computer in between which is able to manage such things.

Seriously do not think that virtual reality is a good idea.

The destructive influence it would have on a Capitalist-styled society would be terrible. You know drug addicts? Imagine that problem on crack (mind the pun).

You see the problem with drugs like heroin. When people have access to a better reality, why waste time in this one? Because let's face it, reality sucks and we'd much rather be fighting dragons right now.

Video games are already tapping into a small section of that problem. Virtual reality would blow it open, then blow it open some more.

We need a tether to keep us working for things in real life. You could be living it up in Virtual Reality, but you still need food, drink, shelter, income, and to be a productive influence on society.

There are already enough lazy blotches in modern day culture, why give life an opportunity to make just that many more?

Virtual reality that is purely visual and audible is completely fine. It's when you start broaching the limits of the whole 'what is true reality' that you get a problem.

>>26 I agree that we should keep it to video games. It would become addictive very quickly, and you would not be able to tell the difference between the game and the world anymore.

We'd have to limit it more than just visual/audible, though. It would also have to be in lesser quality than real life.

>>26 >>27
I see your problem there. But first of all, to get into such a VR, you need money. No money, no games. I am quite sure that in the beginning such a VR will be really expensive. People who buy it will know what kind of thing they bought.
You need electricity. You need internet. You need some place to put everything. And you need to sustain your life.
Meaning if you stop working, at least one of those factors will not be given any more and as a result you won't be able to get into VR any more.
Also there are people working really hard every day and who would love to enjoy killing a dragon in VR after work. Why deny it to them? Why give them poor quality?
The US and many other countries have a capitalistic society. As soon as there is such a VR, companies will try to improve the quality and maximize it. You will not be able to just say "leave it at bad quality" to stop them. Even if there was a law, hobby developers would just play around a little and improve quality themselves (see TexMod as an example for people who want better graphics in unmodable games).

BTW., there will always be people who cannot see the difference between a fantasy world and RL. They exist today. There might be more of them when VR comes up. But in the end it's something everyone has to decide for themselves. "Do I want to play that game in VR? Am I able to tell VR and RL apart? Is it worth for me in terms of what I want to accomplish in my one and only life? Can I really afford it and in a few years life with the consequences of my life style?".
People who do drugs for the first time often don't think about these things and as a result end up in an undesirable state. Imho we should not try to stop this development but try to think of a way to make people ask themselves those questions - make them aware, that what they do might be dangerous if they don't act cautious. Like a message appearing as soon as they enter VR and maybe popping up every hour - reminding the person to take a break and enjoy RL (as some games already do today - for example Anno tells you to take a break every hour). People will have to read it and actively have to decide for themselves. Later on, they can only blame themselves for being stupid.

That's what I think we could and should do. Nor more and not less.

>>24
Ohh I like that, a computer handling all the boring stuff. I know making a lot is hard under normal conditions. I wanted to see how much I could make and keep stable and I got about 5-6-ish block area before I woke up, though it wasn't perfect. I'm telling you it's not that hard to remember your last dream, it does get harder the farther back you try to remember obviously. I've remembered what person was where, what they were wearing, saying, doing, etc. Things that are hard to remember would be the direction the wind was blowing if any, where non-important objects were last, how complex areas were structured and where you were last in them.

>>25
First of all, FPS games are shit. I buy them, play the story for its plot/story and any little bits of interest, then toss it into a shelf to dust. That sir, is exactly why I play RPGs. The story, the characters, their problems, their adventures/lives. I don't really get new ideas from them, my imagination and creativity was already at an unhealthy high.
"We don't have the technology for maintaining a virtual [reality] world". I assumed you knew I was refering to VR, guess I thought wrong. As for the second part of your post..

This was really just a random idea for a possible vr experience but if I had to answer some of your questions.. I guess.. At first it might have to be something smaller with fewer people. Maybe a 4-5 person minimum for a world. They all have to be hooked up at the same time to avoid possible damage to an individials brain. After that is set up, more people can join them and as more people join, the world becomes more detailed, as they leave, less detailed; and if the amount of people falls below the minimum, then everyone else gets ejected to avoid injury. But like I said, these are just random ideas.

>>26>>27
Of course, this kind of thing is always a risk but I agree with >>28. Heck, if you wanted to be more assertive them you could make it so that you could only access VR at certain facilities at the start of VR. You pay a certain amount of money for a certain amount of hours a day, after which you would be unable to play more. Plus, being able to put VR in homes sounds like a terrible idea.

>>29 What is the difference between a virtual world and a VR world? I do not think there is any. In both cases it's a database storing locations of objects, their textures/shaders, direction, physical forces,... partly this is even stored by the client.
A VR world is the same as a normal game world - except that you can move around more freely and might be more immersed.

Bump!

>>30 -facepalm-
Alright look, what I was trying to say is that your definition of a what is a virtual world is uninteresting. I know what a virtual world is and what makes it and how it works. When I said "We don't have the technology for maintaining a virtual world.." I only meant "If we don't have the technology to structure and maintain a virtual world where people could upload their consciousness, then what about.." blah blah and so on. I play video games for fuck sakes, and I think I have the mental capacity to understand when I'm looking at a virtual world.

I must apologize Thiamor, I didn't mean to derail this discussion even more.

>>32 wtf? Why you no say so from the beginning? Reread what you wrote!
Also I don't think it's derailed - as clarifying, what a virtual world is, is important for this idea.

>>33
I don't need to re-read anything, I didn't just want to be an asshole and say "Maruru please, shut the fuck up."

Oh, for a minute there I thought we were discussing the possible methods of achieving virtual reality, but never mind then.

This conversation breaker, though.

loooool
/thread