What Do You Think Is In Store?

[Weyoun Ten]

@FPAlpha: Lmao! I must agree!

 

[Asbo Zaprudder]

I expect to see Augmented Reality technology develop so that it is implemented in wearable devices such as contact lenses as described in Vernor Vinge's Rainbows End. I think that level of AR is probably at least 20 years away but I might well be surprised.

 

[KJbushway]

I think a little more than 20. You could see something like avatar technology when it comes to Augmented Reality. Just slip into a machine and boom your playing Bad company or WoW.

 

[Asbo Zaprudder]

I think a little more than 20. You could see something like avatar technology when it comes to Augmented Reality. Just slip into a machine and boom your playing Bad company or WoW.

That last one is Virtual Reality (VR), and the technology in Avatar I would guess is further off -- especially with regard to the genetic manipulation required. Augmented Reality (AR) is when you overlay the real world with layers of other stuff. As you are no doubt aware, a form of AR is already available for the latest mobile devices.

In Rainbows End, people were using AR to make the real world look like Middle Earth or Terry Pratchett's Discworld. Robotic, haptic feedback devices were used to provide sensory interaction when required. My guess is that the degree of technological sophistication (computing power, communications bandwidth, and cybernetics) required increases by a factor of 10 to progress from VR to AR, and again by a factor of 10 from AR to an avatar technology that uses robotics instead of genetics to create the avatars.

 

[KJbushway]

I meant like Avatar, not actaully building suits for people. I meant just someone putting a cap on their head, and then they play a game as the main character, they control the moves as if they were walking in their own bodies.

 

[Mooch]

(If it's bigger than the base-unit you capitalize it: Peta-byte -- if it's smaller than the base-unit you don't mA = milliampere )

Um, what?
You need to go back to metric-school.

 

[Asbo Zaprudder]

I meant like Avatar, not actaully building suits for people. I meant just someone putting a cap on their head, and then they play a game as the main character, they control the moves as if they were walking in their own bodies.

Yeah, that would be above level 1 tech in the scheme I outlined - advanced VR with a direct man-machine interface. Level 3 tech would be like in the film Surrogates where you interact via robotic homunculi. Thinking about it, I don't believe that the advanced states of each level are that different in the technologies required except if you add genetic manipulation to create living avatars.

 

[KJbushway]

OK. Sorry for the repeating then.