Skyrim VR broke my 45 yo mind
Hey guys,
I'll try to keep it short since I'm pretty sure I'm telling you nothing new but I felt like sharing.
Born in '79 I found out about videogames with Pong from Atari in my living room, fast forward to the '90s when I got my hands on the pen & paper manuals of Dungeons & Dragons in italian (!), I was already playing dungeon crawlers like Eye of the Beholder and Dungeon Master on the Amiga 500, next step were immersive crpgs like Ultima, in 1997 I distinctly remember about reading a preview on a magazine (on paper!) where Richard Garriot was like, "you know those crpgs you love like Ultima 7? we are working on the next step where EVERY character in game will be a player connected from a pc somewhere in the world" and it BLEW my mind, got it on day one and spent the next years on it, World of Warcraft was nothing more than a dumbed down (albeit very slick) version that came out almost 10 years later, in 2002 Morrowind came out and that is to this day the best Bethesda rpg by far, Skyrim was again a dumbed down albeit very slick version of Morrowind, now virtual reality was a thing in sci-fi narrative since the '70s (I strongly suggest watching World on a wire, no spoilers but A LOT of modern sci-fi just copypasted that movie) but honestly it never SPOKE to me because even after reading Gibson and watching the various Hollywood shenaningans I would NEVER, EVER thought I could experience anything remotely closer in my lifespan.
Boy was I wrong.
Got my Quest 3, enjoyed Alyx, HL2 then installed Fus (+Ro +Dah) and there I was, after playing Skyrim for hundreds of hours in 2d it got me like it was the first time.
I honestly fail to find the words to convey the marvel that this game represents, just slowly trotting on my horse next to a river, the sun shimmering through the trees, hearing the roar of a waterfall in the distance, slowly rising a torch to light behind the corner of a haunted tomb only to discover a massive underground cavern, the rain pouring in from a overhead crack in the earth, the fire crackling in the inn at night, a bard playing the lute and singing tales and legends, a busty maid that tells you to keep your hands to yourself if you slap her butt (!).
I really had no idea that this could have been possibile by just hijacking our eyes and ears, no brain jack in or other sci-fi solution involved, you're just THERE and our brain just "fills in the blanks" so to speak, after a while just the visual feedback of your hand touching those people is enough to SUGGEST you the tactile feeling.
It's absolutely insane and it boggles my mind that people are not running and screaming in the street about it, especially since we could do SO MUCH MORE with vr, from interactive live concerts and artistic experiences to training purposes (I'm a salesman by trade in the medical devices market and I actually used to sell a vr surgical training tool to universities) to incredible vr porn to, honestly, anything that comes to mind.
So, forgive my rant and if you have a headset (well, you should be since you read this) and a pc with a somehow modern graphic card do yourself a favor, google wabbajack "fus", it's basically 70 gigs (!) of mods ready to install, it's not click and play but all in all pretty easy, get it and go play skyrim vr and get your socks absolutely blown off.
Cheers!