Virtual Reality

CRONENBERG ON THE NEW FLESH, THE ARCADE POD THAT NEVER LANDED, A NAVY BATTLESTATION FOR 2025, AND AN HOUR SPENT WALKING ACROSS LOS SANTOS.

Editor's Letter: Virtual Reality

Twenty years after a bad five dollars at Dave and Buster's, virtual reality is back. A long look in both directions.

Past

The New Flesh

David Cronenberg mastered body horror. But virtual reality brings it crawling into the real world.

Failure to Launch

Virtuality and the ’90s VR arcade boom

Did The Lawnmower Man Ruin Everything?

How one terrible movie defined our vision of the future.

Long Live the Screen

The Victorian roots of virtual reality

Higher Powers

We’ve been ready for virtual reality for a long time.

Beyond the Sword of Damocles

One of the signature inventions in early VR is collecting dust in an Orange County apartment.

Present

Sleep No More

What happens if we can’t get out?

When Will We Get the Holodeck?

According to its creator, at least 100 years.

Seeing the Elephant

LARPers and war reenactors are used to constructing new worlds.

Battleground States

Inside the efforts to revolutionize PTSD therapy

Horizons

We’re being conditioned to think of virtual reality as “a new medium,” which it may someday be. In the meantime, developers are trying to transmute all that promise into playable experiences. Here are a few of the most exciting.

Welcome to the Blackbox

What can theater teach us about presence?

Shark Bytes

Designing the battlestations of the future

Future

Think of the Children

On the frontlines of the Coming Backlash Against VR

Breaking Immersion

The most overused word in videogames crawls into obsolescence.

Moving Pictures

Film took a century to replicate the world. Have videogames done it already?

The Oculus Shift

How Palmer Luckey’s headset is democratizing virtual art.

Space Travel (or, Falling Down)

How do we actually remember Los Santos?

Dark Igloo & KidMograph

About the cover artists