• by Steven Rosenbaum , Featured Contributor, August 7, 2017

They all have their place, but none of them took me out of this world, and into another -- except one.

Two years ago, I was one of the first people to demo a new technology platform called The Void at the TED conference in Vancouver. 

The Void describes Itself as “hyper-reality": a whole-body, fully immersive VR experience.

I wore a haptic vest that uses sound and vibration to ramp up the sense of realism for explorers. I was transported to an ancient temple. From there, I walked down the stone-lined pathways,  solving puzzles to open a door into the next chamber. On the wall, a torch was burning, and a voice in my headset suggested I take it along with me.

The plot was carefully choreographed to play out from room to room, with actual walls and stone chairs that drove the sense of reality.  The floors shook and the walls felt cold to the touch.

Then a floor dropped away and a lake emerged with a rumble, and a massive serpent rose up and moved in for the kill. Thankfully, I had my torch to keep the serpent at bay. 

The Utah-based startup has developed a proprietary head-mounted display, the haptic vest, a tracking system and software called Rapture.

TED's Katherine McCartney said The Void "is pioneering a new form of cinematic virtual reality.”

Because The Void is both digital and physical, it takes your mind places that just images and sound cannot. The images of the waves crashing on the shore are combined with a mist of water -- and that little physical clue takes you there. It’s not fake, it’s real. And it felt to me then as if i’d seen a glimpse into the future.