Roger Cochetti

While the world’s hi-tech policy attention (including mine) has been focused on generative artificial intelligence (AI), the closely related technology of advanced virtual reality — I’ll call it Total Electronic Immersion, or TEI — has continued to move forward, raising both promises and perils. We ignore the policy implications of TEI at our own risk.

The topic is difficult to address because there have been so many variations of virtual reality (VR), using different terminology and many different American, Chinese, Korean, Japanese and other platforms, ranging from the experience of just viewing a smartphone screen to wearing earphones while watching a computer screen to wearing face-covering goggles, earphones, gloves, boots and more so that the user’s entire sensory field is exposed to the electronic environment, or TEI.

Immersive technology, in the broadest sense, is as old as the human experience. Undoubtedly, early humans found themselves drawn to (or immersed in) campfires, fully absorbed by the sight, sound, heat and smell of the experience. The universal human desire to sometimes escape their moment and place has driven immersive innovations from stage performances to movies to television. For about the past 50 years, however, computer technology has permitted an increasingly interactive and comprehensive electronic experience, quite different from just watching a fixed program on a two-dimensional movie or TV screen. As with many technologies, this began with the military’s experimentation with interactive video for low-level training for flight, ground transportation, weapons systems, etc.

Interactive computer technology easily led to early generations of interactive computer games for entertainment (like Atari consoles or Pacman games) that added sound to the interactive experience; all making the electronic experience more immersive. Increasingly powerful computer capabilities combined with rapidly declining production costs inevitably led to the modern interactive video game industry. Today, it generates around $200 billion in sales annually — far larger than the movie industry.

Modern video games — shown on a hi-def video screen with stereo sound, the ability to view 180-360 degrees and user activities controlled by a small controller/joystick — have been the standard technology for video gaming, a light form of immersive technology. Putting video games on the Internet allowed hundreds of millions of users from every nation to simultaneously engage one another with live messaging, adding both community and excitement to the experience, thus making it more immersive. While the videogame industry grew, military and related electronic training technologies became more advanced, by substituting video goggles/headphones for screens/speakers, thus making the training and operational experience in their own way more immersive.

Since the 2010s, commercial and military efforts have led to the creation of a totally immersive, computer-driven experience by adding more detail to the video and audio experience; more realistic motion control through user body attachments (that replace joysticks); full 360-degree motion; user control and touch sensations through gloves and strap-ons; and even odor and temperature. These have all been enormously enhanced by the use of interactive AI, which permits the dynamic creation of quite realistic visual, audio and sensory experiences responding to any/every user activity. The goal is to create an immersive electronic experience that is indistinguishable from a real-world experience, or a fictitious electronic experience that feels as if it were real.

Except, very importantly, in an electronic immersive experience, virtually everything can be controlled while keeping the experience realistic. The user can be someone other than themselves, the other participants can be whoever is selected, the place and time can be selected and all relationships and attitudes can be selected. While sometimes the user will make all of these selections, often some or all selections will be made by an external controlling entity.

All of this gives rise to some enormous promises of TEI, the most prominent that it enables training beyond anything possible through personal, video or even conventional VR training: The fully immersed trainee can use their voice, body and tools to actually experience every stressful aspect of the real event (including harmlessly making what would otherwise have been disastrous mistakes.) TEI permits trainees to repeatedly make mistakes until they are sufficiently experienced so they can complete the genuine task, all while inside a training facility. And the use of AI allows the trainee to experience an unlimited number of variables, reflecting the unpredictable real world.