Like many of us, Ryan Holmes and Isaac Vesouca dream of going to space. Lacking the technology to take a trip to the International Space Station, they set out to simulate the experience. Through virtual reality, the two believe they can deliver a true space experience, letting SpaceVR users to Earthgaze like the astronauts from the comfort of their couch.
The pair is trying to engineer a way for billions of people to see the world in a new light. If virtual realtiy is as advanced enough to make people feel like their hanging above the Earth in the ISS, they believe their SpaceVR program has the potential to make users experience a full-on cognitive shift.
“Something happens to you out there,” Apollo 14 astronaut Edgar Mitchell once said. “You develop an instant global consciousness, a people orientation, an intense dissatisfaction with the state of the world, and a compulsion to do something about it.”
It's known as “The Big Picture Effect” or “The Overview Effect.” Philosophers explain it as a new kind of self-awareness — a cognitive shift in the way we think about our world and our place in it.
Astronauts have this very emotional reaction to this meditative experience of seeing the Earth as a unified entity. They recognize it as a living, breathing organism. But also realize its fragility.
“Because you go outside on a clear day and it's the big blue sky and it's like it goes on forever, right? And how could we possibly put enough stuff into it to fill it up that really change it,” shuttle astronaut Jeff Hoffman explains in the documentary Overview. “Yet, you see it from space and it's this thin line that's just barely hugging the surface of the planet.”
It's a sobering experience, astronauts say. You see boundaries in what should be a world that's one, but human impact has caused decisive lines to be drawn in the proverbial sand. However, communicating the scope of this idea is difficult. Unless you happen to have a couple million dollars lying around.
Richard Garriott paid upwards of $30 million to personally take a vacation to the International Space Station, but not everyone has this kind of dough rolling around.
That's where Holmes, the CEO of SpaceVR, and Vesouca, the Chief Technical Officer of SpaceVR, come in. Their SpaceVR project is one part accessibility and another part philosophy.
“So, we know that the demand to experience space is there and we know there isn't really any way for people to experience it,” said Holmes. “We sought to bridge that gap for the average person using virtual reality.”
But the big question is virtual reality in a place where it can provide such a realistic experience. Vesouca told TechTimes:
“Now, specifically in terms of the view, the limit of the human eye is somewhere around 60 pixels per degree. So as long as you have that kind of resolution, it becomes kind of like a retina display where you can't tell the difference between the real thing and a digital version in front of you.
“Now, in VR, this could be achieved. So, in this resolution that we're talking about, we're only a sixth of the way there right now with current technology that was never really designed purposefully to be used for VR. And so it's certainly feasible that in the next few years we're going to getting closer and closer to that number of that 60 pixels per degree, 120 FPS, at which point the experience that you'd have in VR...it really could be just a philosophical debate between that and the real thing.
“What you see is the same as if you were there. So, in essence, you are. And I think at that point we are going to be able to experience exactly what the astronauts feel because we'll have all the same stimuli.”
It's possible for humans to have this meditative experience on a smaller scale without going into space, Vesouca says, “For example, here in San Francisco, there's a place called Twin Peaks and from it you can see all of San Francisco. So, climbing up there and just looking around, taking a minute, it feels like a difference place … you gain a different perspective. And, that's just a very localized version, from an airplane it's the same thing.
“Now, in terms of a space perspective, I think what is special about this effect in space is just the scale of what the view gives you. You can think of your planet, your home, your world as a single thing, your brain just thinks things differently.”
The estimated launch date of the SpaceVR program is September 2016, provided all goes well. As Vesouca explained to me, “It's really hard to test things on the ground to make sure they'll work in space. Once you go up there, you're payload is gone. Whatever you did, it's been done. You usually pay for these things after.”
