A 45-Year-Old German Film Knew Things About Virtual Reality We’re Just Discovering Today
Nearly 50 years ago, German film maker Rainer Werner Fassbinder created a two-part sci-fi miniseries made for TV that was way ahead of its time. Combined, the parts created a movie that would be an entirely different genre for Fassbinder and a pioneering example of VR on the screen.
Based on the book Simulacron-3, written by Daniel F. Galouye in 1964, the movie is set within the Institute for Cybernetics and Future Science (IKZ). Engineers have created the Simulacron, a virtual world that looks just like the real world and contains more than 9,000 ‘identity units’ who all look like real people and think they’re living, breathing human beings - and, importantly, not generated AI living in a simulation.
In World on a Wire, Stiller begins to question the nature of his reality, realising that if the virtual world feels just like the real one, could the one he thinks is real be virtual too? What about his own identity, is that real or is he one of the many, many units inside the simulation?
See the full story here: http://www.gizmodo.co.uk/2018/12/a-45-year-old-german-film-knew-things-about-virtual-reality-were-just-discovering-today/