Avalon Technologies

Avalon Technologies was a virtual reality entertainment corporation that was contemporary to the Valerian Empire. They were one of the primary innovators of virtual reality technologies at the time having developed real-time custom life simulations as well as historical reenactments. However, during the Singularity War, their data was seized by the Oracle and used as training data.

Overview

One of the main services they offered was a virtual reality simulation that effectively allowed someone to live an entire lifetime of a human being within the span of a few hours. It was thorough and incredibly photorealistic as it directly interfaced with a person's neural activity, putting them into a deep, dream-like state that effectively slowed their perception of time. While a customer entering the simulation could choose certain parameters of what sort of life they want to live, upon starting it - they would temporarily lose all memory of the real world. From that point forward, the person would experience their life from being born, growing into an adult and potentially starting a family of their own. The experience ends when the person dies in the simulation, to which they are returned to the real world with all memories of their experiencs intact.

While initially considered revolutionary at the time, their technologies led to the first recorded instances of virtual reality psychosis. That is, there were an alarming number of people who, after returning to the real world from one of their simulations, still believed they were in VR. While many were mild, treatable cases, some extreme instances led to individuals doing incredibly rash actions with no regard to their own lives.

Controversially, their technologies were also adapted to be used for prisoners. This was later exploited by the Oracle who put captured civilians and prisoners of war into torture simulations that would be experienced for decades, even centuries, by the person trapped inside.

Legacy

After an ancient VR simulation from Avalon Technologies was restarted during the era of the Federation of Stellar Systems, use of the system beyond academic research was banned. This ban was extended to all virtual reality worlds on the vrNet. It became mandatory for all virtual reality simulations to have an easy way to escape from it and distinguish from the real and virtual worlds. This led to a decline in photorealism in virtual reality in favor of stylized fantasy worlds.