I tried the Microsoft "Windows Mixed Reality" headsets

[Ellipse]

The Microsoft "Windows Mixed Reality" system is a headset build by Samsung or Acer, I forgot, and with two controllers. The system was proposed for 400€ alone and 1000€ with a gamer PC laptop and run exclusively under Windows 10.

What impressed me was the precision of the tracking. You move your head or you move in space your body and the picture follow. The second very immersive point is that when you look at your hands, you see the controllers as if you looked at the real ones. And they move according to yours hands movements. Impressive.

The quality of the image if quite good too and th headsets is autonomous in the sense that no detectors are need in the room. So on a technical plan it a good product.

The problems I see with the concept is:
1/ You see the virtual ground so it easy to lose equilibrium I think. The vendor was here, ready to catch me if necessary. Dangerous for a child alone at home.
2/ You are attached by a cable to the PC so you're not totally free to walk as necessary but perhaps you can have a long cable?

But here is the reason why I created this thread: I see this as a big tool to reprogram the mind and not with the same goal as the NO The flashes you got in the eyes are phenomenal! Sure that you do not have to be epileptic! I would be curious to know what the C's have to say about it but I'm quite sure you can open doors in the brains and program people, especially children, with this. Frightening.

 

[Ca.]

But here is the reason why I created this thread: I see this as a big tool to reprogram the mind and not with the same goal as the NO The flashes you got in the eyes are phenomenal! Sure that you do not have to be epileptic! I would be curious to know what the C's have to say about it but I'm quite sure you can open doors in the brains and program people, especially children, with this. Frightening.

I think your on the right track Ellipse.

Virtual Reality as a Mirror of Depersonalization
Posted Apr 23, 2017
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-search-self/201704/virtual-reality-mirror-depersonalization
Bold Article's Emphasis / Related Links within:
The complementarity of VR and DP challenges our view on consciousness and self.

Virtual reality - the experience of digitally created cyberspace – is arguably a unique nowadays novelty, even considered by some enthusiasts to be a new form of consciousness. However, people with depersonalization have been long familiar with the experiences which are strikingly similar to this cyber-phenomenon.

Virtual reality is a digitally generated imagery (acoustic, visual, tactile, etc) which is nearly indistinguishable from the real reality of the objective world. Digitally built environments not only imitate reality, but are open for almost complete immersion by and active interaction with a user.

Having put on his virtual reality headset, Jack sits on a chair in his room. But his actual psychic situation is very different from this room. Jack is overwhelmed with the full-blown excitement of an interspace voyage: the horror of being attacked by aliens, the ecstasy of supernatural ability and transformation into a higher being. Jack knows that all these perturbations are merely digital constructions, imitating reality but not reality itself. However, this digital illusion of cosmic adventure produces strong feelings and sensations which make the effect of virtual reality powerful enough to overrun the feelings and sensations of the actual reality of sitting in his old chair in his familiar room. This prepotency of digitally generated experiences over objectively grounded experiences constitutes one of the central characteristics of virtual reality – being experienced in effect, but not in fact.

A very similar characteristic shapes the core of the syndrome of depersonalization, only it is known under another name. Virtual reality is characterized by the quality of being experienced in effect, but not in fact. Depersonalization is characterized by the quality of as if experience. When Jill suffers from depersonalization, she feels strange changes in herself and things around her. Sitting in her room she anxiously notices that everything has lost its sense of familiarity and reality. Jill feels a stranger to herself. Her body feels estranged. Her room appears foreign, “as if in a fog.” At the same time, while being overwhelmed with these experiences of unreality, Jill knows that these experiences are merely generated in her head and that objectively she remains herself and her room is as it always has been. However, the power of Jill’s not tangibly grounded feelings and sensations of unreality overrun the formal knowledge of the objective state of affairs. This defines the central quality of depersonalization – its as if quality. Accordingly, depersonalization is not the experience of unreality as it is, but the experience of as if unreality with clear realization that this unreality does not exist, but merely feels as if it does exist.

However, being based on the similar as if / in effect quality, virtual reality and depersonalization diverge in the directions of this quality. In virtual reality, the virtual feels as if the real. Jack feels his virtual cosmic adventure as if real-in-effect. To the contrary, in depersonalization the real feels as if unreal or virtual. Jill feels as if she were alien and her room unreal. Virtual reality is an as if reality, whereas depersonalization is an as if unreality or virtuality. In other words, virtual reality and depersonalization are negatively mirroring each other. Accordingly, depersonalization could be named virtual unreality. Another difference is that virtual reality is generated by a computer and virtual unreality (depersonalization) is generated by the psyche.

The relatedness of depersonalization and virtual reality leads to challenging questions. One touches controversies of double or even triple levels of consciousness. The first level is what one knows as an objective world. This level is intact in both depersonalization and virtual reality. Both Jack and Jill know that each of them is sitting in the room. The second level is the level of one’s subjective experiences, not fully defined by that objective world. In virtual reality this level is based on one’s perception of computer-generated imagery: Jack is immersed in his cosmic adventure. In depersonalization this level is based on internal mind-generated imagery: Jill feels as if she and things around were estranged and not real. The third level is the reflection on the first and second levels with the remarkable ability to hold the interplay of these contrast levels in the same continuity of consciousness.
Could the provocative dialectics of virtual reality and the virtual unreality of depersonalization help to move us closer to an understanding of even consciousness and mindfulness?

 

[Ellipse]

I was no thinking of this aspect. But it's interesting. Perhaps, yes, it can operate at a level where you begin to loss your everyday personality because the virtual world is more appealing and you want to be with it as often as you can.

What stroke me was the amount and intensity of flashs of light I received in the eyes. I mean, I tried one year ago headsets working with my smartphone as the screen and I did not had the same sensations. It was soft. And I enjoyed it.

With headsets connected to a computer it's another level for sure. I think that:

1/ The intensity of the luminosity
2/ The framerate
3/ The level of details

make all the difference so you received an incredible amount of flashing light from a source witch is very close from the eyes. It make me think of the movie "A Clockwork Orange" (fr title: Orange mécanique), when the guy is forced to have is eyes opened to watch a movie and so to MK Ultra by extension.

If the technology really become common, I wonder if we will not witness a new kind of virus. I mean applications that will hack the brain of users without their consent through the flashing light.

I will make another prediction: Headsets coupled with smartwatch so applications can monitor your heart beat and so adjust what they show you to bring you exactly where it want. And if a wifi headset exist in the futur, perhaps it will be another way to manipulate the brain.

 

[Maat]

Very creepy in all its ramifications !

It kinds of remind me some aspects of this "old" sci-fi movie Strange Days

Added : remember me also the warning of the C's that one day, our computer will overpower us !

 

[Jacques]

Added : remember me also the warning of the C's that one day, our computer will overpower us !

Almost done for me.