The Nature of Mixed Reality
Nature is healing and as I moved deeper into the mountain forest the trees lined the trail like a corridor. The cool air surrounded me as I flowed deeper and farther immersing myself into a familiar setting for the first time.
The calming sensation of being in the woods, the sounds and cool light are the most relaxing place for me. Like water, nature is always seeking balance and being in nature brings the sensation of balance in a chaotic and often unjust world.
It is known that hospital patients achieve noticeably better results in their recovery when plants are in their room or a window faces a natural setting.
For generations, wild areas served as a place for therapeutic activity. In the 2010’s I worked as a therapeutic wilderness guide leading students on month-long expeditions with the explicit purpose of finding meaning, guidance and intrinsic motivation while in nature. Students would gain life skills in a setting devoid of distractions of modern life and seek understanding where basic needs like shelter, food, water, and well being were condensed into pure forms of necessity.
I'm reminded of much of the time I spent working in the field in the mountains and deserts of Utah. Now, I find a log, smooth and cool on the ground where I sit and stare off into the dense forest around me. It is familiar to me but I have never been here before like a prolonged feeling of deja vu. The greens of spruce trees light up in rich greens even in the broken shade.
There were several years of my life where I spent more nights sleeping out under the stars than inside. Those times have changed now.
I fight hard to find the balance that once flowed over me like a river. It is harder now and those memories serve as a connection to the nature I knew and the meaning that motivated my existence. The world has changed. Nature still offers that respite and understanding, but now, nature is gone.
I stand up from the log and look longingly down the trail. It goes on forever. I pull the headset off and the trail is gone. I am inside a cubicle with low walls. The headset with the virtual reality display is just a projection. The haptic jacket and gloves only simulate the sensation of motion and the adjusting temperature as I move from the artificial shade to the sun along the simulated trail creating a mixed reality sensation of being in nature.
For a moment I feel calm. The balance of nature has been restored even for a moment but my time is up. A mixed reality experience at Natures Mixed Reality Cafe can be had with rented equipment by the half hour. The cafe resembles an old barber shop with four haptic chairs on either side of the long narrow storefront. Leads from the chair, haptic jacket, gloves and headset are bundled together in a lead that runs into units on the wall. If it were a barber chair a mirror would have hung on the wall but instead of a mirror, a high-res display shows a live feed of the headset at each chair. All of the displays, this being a nature cafe, danced with imagined scenes of outdoor settings at each booth. Some followed trails, other customers stood on imagined peaks or deserts taking in the view. A person in one chair appeared to be staring out at the ocean until his time ran out.