There is a new collection of words running around - Environmental, Social, Governance. The aim is to develop principles that will help guide businesses, governments, and other organizations in making decisions that are more environmentally and socially responsible. Proponents of ESG are also very much on the lookout for new industries and how they might fit in with those principles. One of those is the growing worlds of esports and virtual reality.
I remember my first virtual reality experience. It was back in the early 1990s and there was a big (and expensive) virtual reality set up at the local movie theater. With the bland background and very heavy polygons, it would be putting it mildly to say that the experience was less than immersive. Anyone could be forgiven for thinking it wasn’t likely to go anywhere. Now, though, it has come a very long way.
The combination of other advanced technologies like motion sensing, augmented reality, and haptic feedback have given us various levels of virtual reality experiences, from the Nintendo Wii to the Oculus headsets. Now that the experiences are getting better and more detailed, it no longer takes much imagination to see how we could go from where we are now to the technology available in Ready Player One, with full haptic suits and a totally immersive experience with full digital representations of ourselves in a virtual universe.
Combine that with the concept of esports and that cool omni directional treadmill and there are some interesting possibilities. Imagine if you could get together with your Twitter circle for a virtual baseball game. Or a car race. What if you could arrange a time to meet and do a virtual hike of the Grand Canyon, visit the Louvre? Mars? The possibilities are endless.
How on earth does this have anything to do with ESG principles? The short answer is the potential savings in resources. Imagine if you could test out a car without actually having to drive it? Or try flying a plane in virtual reality? You might find if you wouldn’t like something that you would have spent thousands of dollars on. Virtual testing could be applied to all sorts of things. For example, you could test walking a dog. If you don’t like it, you wouldn’t find yourself returning a dog, which tends to lead to bad results for the little canine. Trying on clothes is another great use. Rather than just ordering something only to be disappointed, you’d get to see how that jacket looks in a virtual setting before you spend money on it.
It could also open up a whole world for people who would never have the resources to travel. Someone in the lower middle class could explore the Australian Outback. It could also provide a new immersive way of exploring literature or history. Wouldn’t it be great if you could sit in on a Socratic dialogue, or walk through Pompeii before Vesuvius blows up? Needless to say, the educational opportunities are immense.
In terms of actual sports, some of the tech that could be incorporated, such as treadmills, could actually help overall fitness of the population. A virtual football game could have much of the athleticism and none of the head trauma. Using virtual reality tech to play something like Call of Duty, which could incorporate a physical simulation of an M4 automatic rifle, with the same weight and shape could actually get you in pretty good shape.
Of course, none of this actually substitutes for the real thing. The real world will always be superior precisely because it is real. That’s something that even the creator of the Oasis in Ready Player One realized, total immersion in the virtual leads to a disconnect from reality. Used judiciously as a tool though, it could be used to expand people’s horizons and get them to a place where they have a greater appreciation for the world around them and a better understanding of how we are all connected in the long run.
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