VIRTUAL REALITY TIMELAPSE (2030 – 3000+)

Over the next decades, technologies for virtual reality are going to become significantly more advanced. But how advanced will virtual reality become after hundreds or thousands of years? And what would be the most logical path to get there? This video will explore those topics. In:

2030

8K VR Headsets Are Commonplace

By 2030, the latest VR screens now have 8k resolution, which has 4 times the number of pixels as 4k screens. When you view character models and objects up close with these devices, there is zero visible pixilation resulting in breathtaking detail and realism.

Because of other equipment upgrades, VR games also have near-zero latency and a wide field of view.

Additionally, some haptic suits have become electrode meshes to maximize comfort and convenience.

Many VR Headsets Now Include Brain-Computer Interfaces

In 2030, many VR headsets now include the option for brain-computer interfaces to record users' electrical signals and enable actions by merely thinking about them. Headbands and wrist bands with non-invasive sensors have become the preferred choices for mainstream brain-computer interface use.

These devices scan beta, gamma, and other brain rhythms involved in problem-solving and orientation tasks and converts the wearer’s mental intentions into actions. The brain-computer interfaces themselves do not process the signals; they send those signals to consoles that decrypt the data.

Game developers and VR content creators also have the ability to track and analyze the emotional states of users who volunteer that information. This allows these companies to create more compelling experiences with their content in the future.

However, these devices have limited functionality and there are still some issues with controlling objects in virtual environments and video games.

Virtual Worlds Are Considerably Larger Than Ever

Extremely large and highly detailed VR worlds are now possible. This is largely due to the emergence of 6g, which is 100 times faster than 5G and runs at terabytes per second. This is critical since higher numbers of VR users are now using cloud gaming services.

2050

16K Virtual Reality Headsets Are Mainstream

By 2050, most headsets now come with 16K resolution as a standard, which is 4 times the number of pixels as 8K displays from 2030 and more than 16 times the pixel count of 4K devices from the early 2020s. The 16K format offers photorealism that is practically impossible for the human eye to distinguish from the real world.

Meanwhile, a mid-range graphics card has more than 10 petaFLOPS of processing power, which is 1,000 times more powerful than high-end graphics cards in the early 2020s.

Brain-Computer Interfaces Have Improved By Orders Of Magnitude

By 2050, all virtual reality headsets come with brain-computer interfaces of some type. The somewhat niche and experimental brain-computer interfaces in the 2030s are being replaced by much more sophisticated versions, making brain signal data less noisy.

Brain-computer interfaces now offer a bidirectional exchange of information. These advanced neural interfaces send waves to the brain, transmitting visual, audio, and other sensations to the user. The images and experiences generated by these devices are almost indistinguishable from reality, and they’re unique to each user because they depend on the structure of the brain.

You can easily manipulate any object in a game using your brain signals. This feature is particularly important in the latest Star Wars game where you play as Jedis and Siths with force abilities. And in the latest Matrix game where you can play as The One.

Additionally, these devices allow people in VR games and experiences to communicate with each other using relatively simple thoughts. However, it will take a few more decades before this feature is refined.

Virtual Worlds Are Vastly More Realistic

With the release of Unreal Engine 8, it’s easier and faster than ever for game studios and independent creators to build large and realistic virtual cities that are fully explorable in terms of shops, office spaces, and most other types of interiors. Likewise, an entire forest can now be rendered with sub-millimeter precision, showing unique and random features such as individual leaf marks or insect bites.

This variety and realism are apparent in character models as well. Generative adversarial networks (GANs) can generate an almost infinite variety of each physical attribute such as faces, hair, body types, and clothing. This is made possible because of enormous amounts of visual data fed to these neural networks. This technique also improves character gestures, expressions, and actions, making them more fluid and lifelike. At this stage, character animations aren’t 100% realistic yet, but they are jaw-droppingly close.

And with the latest version of Metahumans, it’s relatively easy to build hundreds of unique, non-playable characters at a time that each has a unique personality and life story.

Additionally, thanks to a modern version of a language model similar to GPT-3 from the early 2020s, non-playable characters can now generate and sustain natural, nuanced, and indefinite conversations with the use of powerful and responsive deep-learning algorithms in the cloud.

Audio in general is richer, more atmospheric, more varied, and realistic. Sound waves can be manipulated in exquisite detail as they bounce around virtual environments and are influenced by different objects, surface textures, and weather conditions.

Grand Theft Auto 8, which includes a VR mode, uses much of this technology and on the first day of its release, it made billions of dollars.

VR Glasses Feature Multiple Display Modes

Headsets will be reduced in size so much that they resemble goggles or glasses. The display modes for the VR glasses include the following:

• The Augmented Reality mode will allow the lenses to be transparent so that you can view holograms
• The Mixed Reality mode will allow the lenses to be transparent as well so that you can view hyper-realistic virtual objects in the real world that seem to obey the laws of physics
• The Virtual Reality mode has an opaque coat of silver over the glasses so that you can fully-immerse in a virtual world

In the augmented and mixed reality modes, you can view a smart stream where you can manipulate multiple apps and files using your brain activity. It’s because of these features that VR glasses are considered the next step of evolution after smartphones.

The earsets that come with virtual reality headsets are almost invisible and work using bone-conducting technology.

VR contact lens is another area that is gradually being adopted.

Realistic Touch, Smell, And Taste Are Now Possible In Virtual Reality

Haptic suites now work using exoskeletons to simulate touch or they may stimulate nerve endings to cause muscle contractions.

Because of this technology, you can feel sensations such as cold and heat on precise body regions with sub-millimeter precision. You can clearly differentiate between being punched or caressed in a virtual environment. And you can feel the sensation of a gentle breeze or the sensation of swimming through a virtual lake.

In addition to haptic technology, smell and tastes are digitized as well. Digital smells and tastes are beginning to be added to virtual environments and are accessible using signals from brain-computer interfaces.

Real Locations Are Being Used For VR Experiences

As part of a massive effort to build profitable ecosystems in the metaverse, multiple companies have created entirely digital versions of real cities and locations. This allows smoother continuity between location-based holograms in the physical world, actions made in the associated virtual world, and vice versa. Advances in GPS, 3d scanning, and AI technologies made this possible well before 2050.

Increasingly, VR Games are being created using real locations as the environments.

This development is also transforming the virtual tourism industry.

2100

Full-Immersion Virtual Reality Becomes Mainstream

Full-Immersion Virtual Reality involves injecting tens of billions of nanorobots into the brain that are programmed to function simultaneously. These nanobots are too small to disrupt the electrical signals in the brain and they won’t cause harm due to their limited functionality. Implants in general are also tailored to the unique physical composition of each person’s brain as opposed to VR helmets in Science Fiction.

Nanobots work by blocking all sensory information and downloading alternate information to the 5 senses. In other words, sensations like vision, hearing, smell, taste, and touch are temporarily substituted by a computer program. This would allow users to feel like they’re 100% connected to virtual environments.

As a result, VR experiences are now indistinguishable from reality. 

And thanks to this technology, in multiplayer games, you can communicate with other players using moderately-complex thoughts.

All VR Experiences Have Photo-Realistic Graphics

Decades after all non-VR video games became photo-realistic, all VR experiences are capable of being 100% photo-realistic as well. This is due to the fact that $1,000 of computing power is now equal to a billion Earth's worth of human intelligence. Laptop-sized computers of this year can perform the equivalent of all human thought over the last ten thousand years in less than ten microseconds.

These VR experiences are so convincing that they force humans to question whether their own reality might be virtual.

Characters In Virtual Worlds And Videos Games Are Just As Intelligent As Real Humans

It’s now becoming commonplace to encounter characters in virtual worlds and video games that exhibit human-level intelligence. These characters can perform a wide range of activities, creatively problem solve, and exhibit life-like emotions. At this stage, even artificial general intelligence is starting to become possible for non-playable characters.

This is leading to an emergence of people getting more emotional support and satisfaction from virtual characters rather than from other humans.

Virtual Worlds Are Now Planet-Sized

Advances in memory, internet speeds, cloud computing, and other areas now enable planet-sized virtual worlds to be commonplace. Because of the partnership of several companies over decades, many of these worlds are modeled after planet Earth with numerous alterations applied to them like size, landscape variations, and time periods to make these worlds more interesting.

This development revolutionizes open world and role-playing games.

3000

Entire Virtual Worlds Are Constructed Using The Smallest Quantum Units As Building Blocks

As the computing power for supercomputers reached the zettascale, yottascale, and beyond, smaller and smaller pixelations were being applied to greater and greater volumes of space-time.

It’s now possible to replicate every single subatomic particle in a real environment and the countless quantum events that occur in those environments. Objects in virtual environments, including the air, are now comprised of individual molecules and atoms. And physical forces such as gravity, electricity, magnetism, air resistance, and more now function the same in virtual environments as they do in real life. This offers a level of realism that was inconceivable with full-immersion virtual reality by itself.

Humans Are Able To Transform Virtual Environments With Their Thoughts

Thanks to multiple scientific breakthroughs, it’s now possible for people to instantaneously transform multiple dimensions of objects at almost the atomic level using only their thoughts. This development leads to an explosion of creativity and innovation that was inconceivable to people in earlier centuries.

To people from the early 21^st century, the virtual worlds in this era would far surpass the most epic movie environments they ever watched and offer an unimaginable level of detail, ingenuity, and originality. And reality in these worlds is able to change in ways that can’t be adequately explained with words from previous centuries.

Research is even underway that will allow humans to become virtual environments by connecting their consciousness to those environments. This would allow people to instantaneously re-arrange the atoms anywhere in a virtual environment with only their consciousness.

Characters In Virtual Worlds Are Capable Of Super-Intelligence

Characters now have a wide range of intelligence levels. Not only is it normal for characters to have human-level intelligence, but some of them have considerably higher intelligence than humans. Humans now require intelligence and memory-boosting implants to comprehend these characters and the worlds they live in.

Digital Immortality Is Commonplace

For a few centuries now, the average person has had access to special clinics where they can upload their consciousness to computers so that their consciousness can live on long after their physical death.

Many people choose to have their consciousness transferred to simulations before their physical bodies die, allowing their digital selves to live forever in those simulations. By now, many of these people have lived in these digital simulations for at least a few centuries. Anyone who is biologically alive can enter these simulations to potentially interact with these people.

10,000

A Simulated Universe Has Been Created

This simulated universe has similar laws of physics to our own. Some people are granted access to enter and leave it as they please as long as they don’t disturb the civilizations that live in it too much.

It’s become routine to run experiments on artificial Earths in this universe, slightly alter parameters such as gravity, mass, temperature, and so on, then fast-forward billions of years to compare outcomes. Intelligent species evolving in these virtual worlds may be entirely unaware that they are part of a giant simulation.