How 'Star Trek' is about to become a reality

When people don a virtual reality headset, which is rather bulky, big and made with drab looking grey or black plastic, they look ridiculous. The headset is always two sizes big, irrespective of the person who is wearing it. And it looks unabashedly nerdy. But people who have wore one — whether it is Oculus' Rift or Microsoft's HoloLens or HTC's Vive— don't care how they look with it. The experience is so engrossing, almost magical that it is worth wearing one (even though people around you are going to laugh when you wobble your head and open your mouth) while staring at the virtual marvels, completely oblivious to the real world around you.

The virtual reality headsets are coming and they are going to change the way we interact with our world. Oculus, which is arguably the current leader in virtual reality headsets, last week announced that after years of research and development, it would start shipping its first consumer product in 2016. Microsoft and HTC too have plans to put out one in the market by the end of this year, or more realistically, in the first half of 2016.

But what exactly is a virtual reality headset and why it has become such a big deal that last year Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg decided to spend two billion dollars to buy Oculus, a company that was yet to ship a product.

The way things stand now, a virtual reality headset is a sort of head-mounted display with two screens. Combined, these screens and tons of sensors inside these boxes create a virtual world that a user can peer into. The magic happens when software and computer processing power is added into the mix to allow a user to interact and mould this virtual world.

Though the user sees only the virtual world, the experience feels very real to the brain. For example, when a user puts on the HTC's Vive and experiences a demo of the underwater scene, standing on top of the virtual shipwreck inside the virtual sea, the information that the brain gathers seems magically real. In this demo, when a mighty blue whale lazily swims towards the user and flicks its tale, it is almost impossible not to duck even when you very well know that you are in a room and not inside the sea.

The same is the experience while gaming. When Oculus asked its testers to take rollercoaster rides or play parkour games while wearing Rift, the experience was so real that not only did many complain of motion sickness but some also fell down from their chairs.

But this is just about gaming. Virtual headsets could very well be the next big thing in the world of technology. They have the potential to transform the whole world around us. “Immersive gaming will be the first... But this is just the start. After games, we’re going to make Oculus a platform for many other experiences. Imagine enjoying a courtside seat at a game, studying in a classroom of students and teachers all over the world or consulting with a doctor face-to-face – just by putting on goggles in your home,” Zuckerberg wrote on Facebook last year.

Microsoft’s vision with HoloLens is even grander. The company not only wants to put users into the virtual world but wants to give them the ability to shape this virtual world. For example, it wants a car designer wearing HoloLens to take a look at the virtual model of the car so that he can take it apart, bolt by bolt, and reassemble it in a way that fits his vision.

The world of technology has a way of following Star Trek. What was once a fiction – a tablet, a touchscreen, an all-knowing voice controlled personal assistant – has become real in the last one decade or so. The virtual reality headsets are the next in line.

Zuckerberg says it best. “Virtual reality was once the dream of science fiction. But the internet was also once a dream, and so were computers and smartphones. The future is coming,” he wrote in 2014. At that time, there was no date. Now it seems the future is coming in 2016.