Virtual reality is still fake

Over the weekend I spent a morning hiking in the mountains, enjoying the last of the fall colors. I live in Utah, which will never be a serious contender with New England for “Best Places to View Fall Foliage” but we do have our moments. I nevertheless had to shake my head to see this article on Popular Mechanics’ website today: A Drone’s Eye View Is By Far the Best Way to See the Leaves Changing. Yes, the video is pretty, but given the choice of watching the video and actually being there…no contest.

I’m not dissing pictures or video, mind you. They have their place. I learn a lot about places I can’t go via imagery. But that’s a pale substitute for being there, and I’m not going to pretend otherwise, no matter what Popular Mechanics may say. No video will ever be able to capture the feel of moist earth and musty leaves underfoot as you walk from sun into shade and feel the air grow suddenly cooler on your skin, the scent of soil and pine and decaying matter and mountain breezes in your nostrils, the whispered rush of air through the leaves mingled with the crystal calls of birds and small creatures rustling in the undergrowth, or the sudden blaze of color as you round a turn and see, through the silver-white trunks of birches, a splash of blazing yellow amongst the stolid green of evergreens on a hillside across the dizzying ravine below.

That cannot be even approached, let alone surpassed, by a video, no matter how high the definition. My daughter perhaps put it best, “My eyes hurt from trying to see everything at once!” When we live our lives through a screen that takes up at best a quarter of our vision it’s easy to forget that the real world is more vivid than can ever be captured by any medium. Anything short of the real thing is a reproduction, and reproductions fall short.

I can forgive Popular Mechanics for their gross exaggeration. They are running an online information site, and therefore have to continually find new ways to entice increasingly-jaded eyeballs, which lately means bold-faced lying in headlines. They just won’t get the views if they tell the truth: “This drone footage shows some really nice views of fall leaves.” The trouble is there are generations of people who are growing up to believe their exaggerations: Why actually go out and experience the world when I can see drone footage on my smartphone screen?

My daughter’s reaction was interesting and sad and reassuring all in one. At least I’m doing my duty as a human being in reminding my children that, while there is certainly beauty to be found in manmade creations or reproductions, actual experiences can be more beautiful still–and in fact provide mental fodder to add meaning to man’s attempts to capture that beauty. It’s easier to appreciate the beauty and excellence of a work of art when you know how close they came to capturing the reality in spite of the limitations of the medium. As beautiful as the scenery was in “The Lord of the Rings”, I’d rather see it in person. But my own experiences with similar scenery provided me with sensory memories for those images to tie into in evoking that awe.

Perhaps I would have appreciated the cityscapes of Coruscant in the Star Wars prequels had I spent time in New York City or Los Angeles or Tokyo or Rio De Janeiro. But even my experiences with the downtown areas of Salt Lake City and Brisbane, Australia give me some emotional foundation from which Lucas could build.

As I said, I’m not saying there is no value to imagery over reality. Imagery can take us far in learning about and appreciating places or things or events we will likely never see in person. I do collect images that fire my imagination; Mount Roraima wreathed in clouds, Lake Bled in Slovenia, the salt flats of Bolivia after a rain, for examples. But I don’t for a moment believe I’m getting the full experience I could have in actually being there. Drone footage of New England leaves is pretty, but it’s no substitute for being there.

I recently read a biography that described the meetings of the Inklings, a group of literary-minded intellectuals headed up by C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien. I only was able to appreciate the descriptions because I’ve been involved in real group gatherings of that very sort and know how energizing, inspiring, and synergistic such conversations can be. I regularly play a table-top RPG with good friends of mine via Skype, and even when we have a video feed along with the audio it still fails to capture the experience of actually being there.

Don’t let click-bait superlative fool you. There is no substitute for actual experiences. A drone video capture is no better a way to enjoy fall foliage than licking the package of cookies is better than eating the actual contents. Anyone who says differently is selling something.