VR

Empathy is the ability to feel other people’s emotions, it is something that can happen for a variety of reasons. Virtual reality can make people empathize with other people because it puts the user in the shoes of other people. Other forms of media can make people empathize like movies or video games. However, virtual reality is more intimate than other media. Film, for example, there is a greater separation between the viewer and the characters. This makes it harder for the viewer to empathize with the characters; the less separated the viewer is from the characters the easier it is to empathize. This is why virtual reality is good at getting people to empathize: there is less separation between the viewer and the characters. This is the case for the story Queerskins. This story uses virtual reality to put you in Missouri where you can interact with objects around you. This makes the experience more “real” for the viewer. Virtual reality is interesting to me because it is new technology: it has the capability to create a new world in a virtual space. Virtual reality is still young and the technology is going to improve over time. I am excited to see what virtual reality will be capable of in the future.