The ever-advancing state of technology will bewilder some and excite others, but one thing it’s sure to do for just about everyone is surprise us. The biggest things in technology at the moment are, for the most part, augmented reality and virtual reality, which is fairly apparent by the rate at which companies are announcing their plans for research and development into these two particular areas. HTC and Oculus have their Vive and Rift headsets, Sony has PlayStation VR, Google now has Daydream alongside Cardboard, Microsoft has the HoloLens, and Samsung has the Gear VR, and those are just a handful of the larger corporations that are already working on hardware or have already launched something on the market. Things have yet to integrate fully into a day-to-day routine, but it may not be too far in the future before virtual reality and augmented reality become a part of everyday reality.
How things might turn out when and if this happens is anyone’s guess, but short-film maker Keiichi Matsuda has put together a piece which attempts to give the public a glimpse at his vision of what the future holds when and if physical reality fully integrates with AR and VR technologies. The short film is called Hyper Reality, and in under six and a half minutes it provides an eye-opening view of how jumbled and congested things could be when what’s real and what’s not real are fused together, containing a collection of social media alerts, updates, and more.
With how many things are visible in this mixed reality state, from what’s physically in front of the film’s character to what’s displayed digitally in front of her, things appear as a bit of a mess, and the film visualizes the level of disconnection that one might experience due to a flurry of incoming messages, phone calls, interactive games, and other interactions that we’re used to engaging with through mobile devices. In the film, as the character passes by different people, places, and objects, different informational details pop up and disappear that are relative to the surroundings. It’s important to note that the film is not necessarily representative of exactly what these types of technologies will be like when they are more integrated with daily life, but it does serve the purpose of making you think about what life could be like if technology rules every single part of your day on a consistent basis. Technology is great, but it’s entirely possible to have too much of a good thing, and this short film does a decent job of exemplifying that. Hyper Reality is the first short film of three that Matsuda plans to make and put out which display what he envisions the future to potentially be like.