Virtual Reality of Time - Concept and Applications

⏳🪄🤔

👨‍💻 Who am I

• My name is Shutaro Aoyama and I am a freshman at Columbia University in the School of Engineering and Applied Science.
• You can find me on Twitter as Bluemo (@blu3mo).
• I am interested in engineering the interaction between humans and the environment to make absolute things relative.
• This includes relativizing reality, time, space, gender, and more.

📕 What is “Virtual Time”?

• “Virtual Time” can be thought of as the virtual reality equivalent of time, as opposed to space.
  • Just as virtual reality creates a simulated version of physical space, virtual time creates a simulated version of physical time.
• Here’s a comparison:
  • 🗺 Physical Space vs Virtual Space
    • 
  • 🕑 Physical Time vs Virtual Time
    • (relativizing physical time)
• The definition of virtual reality is an experience that may seem different from reality, but has the same effect as reality. Similarly, virtual time is an experience of “time” that may seem different from real time, but has the same effect as time.

🛠 How is it possible?

• How can we recreate the virtual effect of time?
• Virtual Space:
  • Perception of space is a combination of our internal sense of space and external stimuli.
    • External stimuli can include sight, sound, haptics, and more.
  • We can construct the experience of moving in virtual space through artificial stimuli.
  • Virtual space allows for more freedom, such as flying, warping, and non-Euclidean space.
• Virtual Time:
  • Perception of time is also a combination of our internal sense and external stimuli.
    • External stimuli can include a sense of synchronization with other changing actors, such as clocks and people.
      • (hypothesis)
  • We can construct the experience of moving in virtual time through artificial stimuli.
  • Virtual time also allows for more freedom, such as speed manipulation, warping, and looping.

🤔 What I want to do with this concept

• My goal is not to force virtual reality or virtual time upon people, but to provide an alternative choice for reality and time.

⚗️ Applications

• 

• Interactive lecture video streaming platform:

  • Overlay student-generated content on lecture videos.

• The goal is to combine the advantages of real-time and on-demand lectures.

  • Real-time lectures allow for interactive communication between students.
  • On-demand lectures allow for control of time.

• The method is to use virtual time by providing artificial stimuli.

  • Pseudo Sync (擬似同期):
    • Gives a pseudo sense of synchronization with other students interacting on lectures.
  • Elastic Sync (弾性同期):
    • Secretly controls the playback speed within a range of 0.9~1.2x.
    • Synchronizes unsynchronized students.
    • 
    • 

• Current issue with voice communication: Only one thread available.

  • Difficult to have branching discussions.

• Applying Elastic Sync to create multithreaded voice communication, where participants eventually receive content from every thread.