Long Island

Chapter 40: Blemishes and Boredom

"You are right." Dr. Talvar answered. "There are several games out there which have such virtual worlds. Most of them have taken map data from these planetary bodies and used them to make the games. But you forget, that they cannot show the reality very much. After all, you don't really have bikes on the Moon neither a couple thousand other players! Haha.." Everyone smiled a little.

"However, to someone who has seen the actual thing, he won't find it real. NASA, ISRO and others, nowadays, do use virtual reality to train new astronauts. However, this program has been changed for the people who have actually travelled to the Moon and Mars. They have reduced the virtual reality training of these astronauts. Can someone guess why?" Dr. Talvar asked.

Swamy shook his head and looked around him to find eyes as confused as his. Today's virtual reality should make it possible to train the astronauts in real-like environments in virtual worlds. Finally someone took a leap and said, "Isn't it because they don't find it real?"

"That's what I said! But why do you think they don't find it real? After all, some of you might have played space related games? How real did it feel? Even if you have not been to the Moon or Mars, did it feel like you were not there?" Dr Talvar said smilingly.

This time more people shook their heads.

"No one? Well, I don't really expect you to understand why just yet. It is easy to say something is not real, but harder to explain why it is not real. Those returning astronauts found themselves in a similar situation without being able to explain why! Which actually became a very good research topic across universities and still is. The true answer for this question is not known, but many schools of thought have said that this might be because of perfection. Powerful devices perfectly capture detailed data down to the nanometre, which is then used in mapping the surface, which is then used to create the virtual worlds. But an astronaut on the Moon will never in his lifetime look or feel this perfection."

"Nature is by its very nature, imperfect. Rules have exceptions, crossovers have mutations, cells have cancers...skins have blemishes! Now we run into some truly ironical situations. If we wish to simulate a human in the virtual world, or create what you guys call an NPC, by taking a million measurements of the human body, and perfectly inputting everything, you would hope that it would look as real as possible. On the other hand, if we make mistakes along the way or only use a thousand measurements, you would think it should NOT look real? Why? Obviously because we have not perfectly captured the human being and as such there are mistakes you can observe...." Dr. Talvar paused.

"Unfortunately, in the reality index, which is simply how much a person thinks something is real, we will find that both of the NPCs would have close results. Truly ironical isn't it? Haha..." Dr. Talvar laughed. "In 2017, a researcher from Kazakhstan, made a significant discovery. Human beings look at the blemishes for perfection and perfection for the blemishes."

Swamy and everyone else was dumbfounded, including the author. 'What does that even mean?'

Looking at the even more confused gazes, Dr. Talvar laughed and said, "thankfully you won't have to deal with this question till the third year, by which time you would have more understanding of virtual reality. But it is still food for thought. Let me put it this way. There are no perfect things in the world. When we find something beautiful or delicious or smelly, we are actually not looking, smelling, or tasting everything. We are doing what we call putting priorities in the incoming data. So a thinner chin might look beautiful to you but to someone else it won't. There is a reason why we say, beauty lies in the eyes of the beholder, after all. In fact, it applies to everything. An apple would be an apple anywhere, yet some may say its sweet, or slightly sweet, or slightly sour. Do you see the big picture?" Dr. Talvar stalled.