Lag is the lurking demon of the digital age waiting around Web corners to crash your site, slow your YouTube video or murder your first-person-shooter score. Now an Internet service provider is showing us, for the first time, its hilarious and frustrating effects in real life.
Internet latency delay, or lag, has been the ever-constant source of dread and frustration since 56K dial-up modems connected us to the Web in the ’90s. Now, Swedish fiber service ume.net is using a new ad featuring Oculus Rift VR headsets to demonstrate just how unacceptable lag really is in 2014.
WATCH:
The ad, titled “Living with lag,” documents an experiment in which participants wore an Oculus Rift programmed with a three-second delay from camera to display feed and attempt simple games and every day tasks like ping pong, bowling, dancing or cooking — all of which are rendered surprisingly more difficult by lag.
“You wouldn’t accept lag offline, so why do it online?”
The Oculus Rift has been making headlines as the most popular and advanced VR experience to date, and has been used in experiences including virtual horror experiences, video games, science experiments, drone piloting and creating entire virtual environments. The tech has spawned numerous other VR endeavors from noted gaming giants like Valve and Sony.
Facebook purchased Oculus last month and plans to further the tech in the video-game realm, and expand it into the world of social media.