"Ready Player One," the latest film from director Steven Spielberg, is the story of Wade Watts, a kid from Columbus, Ohio. He lives in a futuristic world where everyone — the young, old, poor, and rich — spends the vast majority of their time in virtual reality (VR), to avoid the dystopian real world where poverty and despair run rampant as a result of global warming and overpopulation.
Based on the 2011 novel by Ernest Cline, "Ready Player One" paints a rather pessimistic view of society's growing dependence on technology, but also depicts the fantastical possibilities presented by VR and other futuristic technologies.
Given the many realistic-looking and fantastical gadgets and technologies featured in "Ready Player One," we took a closer look at some of the most exciting technologies featured in the film to see how they compare with innovation happening in the real world.
Take a look:
"Ready Player One": Fully immersive virtual reality
"Ready Player One" depicts a VR experience that is so seamlessly immersive, there are no physical barriers between the user and the virtual objects and environment.
In the movie, players are able to touch, pick up, and hold onto things — and even people — in VR that are not really there in real life. They can sit in virtual chairs and lean on virtual surfaces without falling down in the real world.
While this is the ideal future of VR technology and it looks great on screen, complete immersion is really difficult to achieve in real life, mostly because it's just really impractical.
For example, many players are seen running through real 3D space, out in public, which is obviously a massive safety hazard.
Real Life: The Void
Current VR systems can be incredibly immersive if a physical play area is custom-made to match the virtual one.
All over the world, virtual reality theme parks like The Void are starting to open to the public.
The Void lets small groups of people to enter the same physical space for a virtual adventure. People are let loose in a physical maze created to perfectly align with the world they see in their headsets. So, when a player sees a wall in VR, they can reach out and touch it because there is also a real wall there in real life.
These VR-enhanced obstacle courses are heavily padded and specially equipped to be safe for the players, who can be ducking for cover or shooting invisible monsters at any given point. These experiences are very immersive, intense and — at least, so far — are really difficult to replicate with commercially available VR equipment in one's home, as "Ready Player One" depicts.
"Ready Player One": The Oasis
Much of the film takes place in The Oasis, a massive multiplayer online game and virtual society in which everyone has chosen to escape their real-world problems.
Wade Watts describes The Oasis as a place where anything is possible, and is only limited by the user's imagination.
Since each player's avatar (a.k.a virtual body) is customizable, The Oasis is riddled with pop culture references, including lots of video game heroes like Tracer from "Overwatch" and Chun-Li from "Street Fighter," as well as beloved cartoon characters like The Iron Giant, and nostalgic movie references like the DeLorean from "Back to the Future."
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