paramods | Setting - VR (Detailed)

Paracosm Virtual Reality

The Short Version

Augmented Reality is a virtual interface overlaid on top of a real-world space. It’s typically accessed on-the-go or while you’re doing other things.

Virtual Reality is a completely synthetic/virtual space; none of it is real. It’s typically accessed when you’re stationary and can fully immerse yourself in the VR world.

Sefira-Tokyo is sort of a combination of the two. It’s a VR simulation of a real-world place that incorporates real-time real-world data, or an AR program that lets you interact with what’s happening in the corresponding VR space.

What is Augmented Reality?

Augmented Reality is a technology that already exists, and it’s more or less what it sounds like. Augmented reality is like a reality overlay. As you look around at a real-world space, an AR-enabled device like a visor, eyepiece, or even your smartphone will show you more information or allow you to interact with things. Some examples:

You look at a movie poster and an AR app shows you the movie’s showtimes, descriptions, lead actors, and provides you with the option to download the trailer or buy movie tickets.
You want directions, so you fire up your maps app and see the path you need to take highlighted with arrows suspended in mid-air. If you enable audio, a voice may read out detailed directions for you, like a car’s GPS system.
A subway station projects an image of various beverages on a concrete wall, and you can use your phone, AR device, or hand gestures to view the bottles in 3D, access nutritional information, and purchase items for delivery.
Anything Google Glass can do, AR can do!

Augmented Reality modifies a space, task, or item that already exists in the real-world.

Some devices that you might use to access AR are visors or eyepieces, smartphones and tablets, or special holographic projectors. These items are very common and widely used.

What is Virtual Reality?

Virtual reality is a completely artificial space. Being in virtual reality is like immersing yourself in the world of a video game. You are not really there, and the things around you don’t really exist, though the virtual reality system enables you to interact with things as though they do through the use of an avatar that represents you. Some examples:

You log in to play a VR video game, where your character is a catgirl space explorer who must befriend aliens from other planets.
You want to buy a new car, so you visit the VR shop of your auto dealership to “test drive” their selection before you visit the shop in-person.
You want to learn to swim, so you go to a VR pool where a VR assistant coaches you through exercises in the water. You also tweak your avatar-self to look cuter in a bathing suit.

Virtual reality simulates a space, task, or item and is completely artificial.

Because trying to navigate the virtual world and the real world at the same time would be dangerous, you typically access VR when you are fairly stationary, at a spot specifically set up for VR use, using a VR visor or helmet. If the VR helmet doesn’t support thought-detection, you may also have to use other devices to capture feedback as well, such as a special controller, touch-control gloves, or even a mouse and keyboard on the low end of the spectrum.

What is Sefira-Tokyo?

Sefira-Tokyo is like a combination of VR and AR space. The aim of the project is to build a complete, 100% accurate version of Tokyo in the VR space, and sync it up with everything happening in Tokyo in real-time. This way, someone in VR can have the experience of walking through Tokyo as if they are really there - like Google Maps streetview on steroids.

Meanwhile, if a person walking on the streets of Tokyo wants to see what is happening in Sefira-Tokyo, they would be able to connect to the AR version of Sefira, and see projections of people’s avatars walking down the street in real-time. The person connected through AR and the person connected through VR would then also be able to interact with one another.

Sefira-Tokyo is the first project of its kind. Depending on its success, other global cities may follow.

...So How Do I Use VR?

A very good question! There’s a fairly wide range of VR devices (technically, VR/AR--but generally speaking, anything that can access VR is also compatible with AR) on the market, but they all have a few things in common.

The first, all have some kind of display screen, typically the lenses of glasses or, in larger models, the inside of a helmet. The second, all at least partially encircle the head to some extent. The most unobtrusive models are almost indistinguishable from prescription glasses (and, yes, there are prescription VR glasses as well), though the somewhat bulky, snug-fitting, and gently-curved arms give them away on a closer inspection.

VR headsets are able to turn a user’s thoughts into useful data because despite their small scale, they are essentially high-tech MRI machines: they detect electrical signals in the brain, then convert them into useful digital information (which can then be used to control various functions, sent to a server, and so on). The same applies in reverse: in order to send information to the wearer’s brain, a battery of high-precision magnets (very, very carefully) stimulate specific regions of the wearer’s brain.

(Incidentally, the technology’s not perfect. That’s why many people comment that VR sounds and textures, and especially smells, often feel “fake”. The reason all widely-used VR headsets still have a visual display is because it’s much easier to provide an image and convince the brain it’s “real” than manufacture one entirely through neural stimulation).

All students at Matsubayashi are being provided with a pair of Jupiter VX-220 AR/VR glasses, free of charge. They’re the latest “general use” model, having come out only four months ago; the market price is just over 28,000 yen, and most major retailers are still having difficulty keeping them in stock. The battery life is up to 50 hours of continual use between 10-hour charge periods, a wide variety of styles and colors are available, and they’re equal parts lightweight, durable, and comfortable.

Other examples of VR equipment include…

The Zony Gamer Master Series is not really portable VR equipment. Padded helmets that cover the user’s head above the upper lip, they’re explicitly designed for, well, intensive gaming use. These are commonly found in arcades and used by professional VR e-sports teams.

Jupiter Co.’s Keter series: The absolute top-of-the-line in VR equipment. Last year’s model will run you about 200,000 yen; the new Sparrow model is less a luxury item than something you buy because you have more money than you know what to do with. Each unit is keyed to its user’s unique neural patterns, built to order, and considered about 4-5 years ahead of mainstream VR technology at a minimum.

Ghost Servers

One of the secrets to Sefira’s success is its stability: VR environments run on the Sefira framework are notorious for never going down, even during extended periods of maintenance. Indeed, this was one of the major selling points that allowed Jupiter to beat out the competitors for the Virtual Tokyo project. (Before sinking billions of yen into a project, the government wanted to be assured that it would work.)

The ‘secret’ there is that when a platform running Sefira creates a VR environment, it also creates one or more ‘spare’ copies--multiple servers running the exact same simulation, essentially (though generally they all run off the same physical server). Normally, only one of these will be occupied; if it goes down, or begins to lag because the population is too high, people are automatically transferred to one of the backup servers (this is almost unnoticeable--a blink-and-you’ll-miss it ‘flicker’ of the environment).

This had an unintended side-effect: because those backup servers need to be available at a moment’s notice, they’re always running--just empty. They are not, however, completely inaccessible. A good analogy would be a web page with no links leading to it: if you know the URL, you can still get there. Moderately tech-savvy individuals with enough time on their hands can, similarly, transfer themselves to these “empty” servers.

The common term is ghost servers, after the ghost towns that sprung up as a result of Japan’s continuing urbanization. Entering one, it’s not hard to see why: you’re standing alone in a completely quiet building, or city street, without another human in sight.

...Most of the time. Some of these ghost servers are very stable, and word can spread about those ones. There’s one ghost server in Akihabara that’s been up for close to eight months, and is treated as a sort of “semi-exclusive VR club”, logging a few thousand unique visitors a day. Other, more obscure servers are used as meeting places for less-than-legal activities.

Generally, though, these ghost servers will only be accessible for a short period of time--a week at most--before their address changes, meaning they have to be hacked into all over again.

Which brings us to...

The Midnight World

Most people consider the Midnight World to be an urban legend, though it’s the kind that could be true, that just might be true, which is probably why it’s such a popular one. As the rumors go, the Midnight World is a “special” ghost server. The only way to access it is to “hack” in like you would a normal ghost server--and until one’s logged in, there’s no way of knowing it will be anything beyond just another ghost server.

But the Midnight World is undeniably different, presenting a warped, just slightly wrong version of whatever environment it should be simulating. There are two prevailing versions of what it looks like. The first claims the world is shaded dark blue, and thick, murky shadows cling to everything. More rare is the story of a blasted, dilapidated city in dusty reds. In both versions, the world is locked in a perpetual midnight (hence the name).

What prevents anyone from confirming (or properly disproving the rumors) is that the Midnight World isn’t a static fixture. It might ‘appear’ in downtown Shibuya, or a small arcade, or a train station. By the time word spreads, it’ll be gone, like the server was never there.

Other versions embellish the story one way or another: it’s possible to be, by freak of chance, logged directly into the Midnight World. If you log in, you can never log back out (raising the question of how anyone would know that). It’s part of some strange viral marketing campaign (though Jupiter denies knowledge of any such server or program). Aliens are doing it. And so on, and so forth.