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Dream - Lucid

I was at work at what appeared to be the check out, and this older guy was telling me something about something that he wanted. It may have been a cake, but I'm not entirely positive.

Then, I was in what appeared to be some virtual reality thing, but it was actually real. This street in a town appeared in front of me and many others, and we were rollerblading down the street! There were people that were coming towards us who were also rollerblading. There were all kinds of different people blading: Kids, adults, black people, white people. At first I didn't go as fast, but then, I really remembered how to roller blade and went really fast, blading like a pro. I was avoiding hitting anyone coming towards me.

I then felt as if I was going too fast, so fast in fact that I felt that my blades were almost not touching the ground. I was going way too fast, so to slow down, I sat down on the ground. My butt lightly scraped the ground, but it didn't hurt at all.

I then was in some weird area, again, it was like virtual reality. It was like I was in some training area for a new person who was blading. It was dark with a blue floor that was slightly raised in a square shape in the middle that had two circles on it, one for me to stand on and one for the new guy to stand on. I didn't think I'd have to go through it with him, but I did. It was telling me to stand on a certain circle on the floor. This part felt like it was in third person. I went and stood on the circle.

Then the area turned into Shannon's, my manager's, house. I was in her living room, which looked small and a little cluttered with all the tables, but nice. The light was kind of dim. She also had many candles lit. She gave me a cart that had a bunch of appliances on it, speakers and other electronics, to set up in her living room. This was something that other people had done before as well. I went through, going as fast as I could putting things away in what I hoped was the right spot. When I finished, Shannon went and checked my work. Things were in the right spots, but the cords were hanging out everywhere, not how she liked it to be. She was tucking a speaker cord in that was hanging off a table, and told me I was disorganized. She kept messing with all the cords. There was one point where she had a power strip and was messing with the cords on there. She was messing with a power wrench that looked like an electrical plug, doing something to whatever was on the power strip.

I'm working on the prototype for a video game I intend to create with a good friend of mine.
The game will require fast AI pathfinding over dynamic terrain for a large amount ( >1000 ) of enemies.
My current navmesh/A* approach is working fine, but I'm a little worried that it's not going to scale well if we want to add even more enemies.
I remember that one of my friends did her masters thesis on swarm AI,
so I decide to call her on Skype to get her opinion on my situation.
Unfortunately I'm having trouble navigating my contact list.
The names don't seem to be sorted alphabetically...

I hear the door bell go off, so I go downstairs to check who's at the door.
A man in his early 20's offers me a package addressed to "Hyu".
Huh? Did I order anything using my nickname? Why would I do that?
I accept the package and the man just leaves without asking me to sign anything.
What the hell?

I go back upstairs and open the package.
OH MY GOD. It's the Oculus DK2 I ordered!

I am so excited!
I unpack everything as quickly as I can, tossing the empty package into a corner of my room.

Once I've plugged everything in I notice that my computer is now running Elite: Dangerous.
That's not right, I was working with Unity3D before...
hmm....
I try to increase my awareness, going through the last few minutes in my mind.
Yup, I'm definitely dreaming.

I'm so disappointed. I got all excited for nothing.
Then again... I wonder what happens if I...
I sit down and hold the device in front of my eyes, trying to see if the displays in it are showing anything.
The device just straight up vanishes from my hands as soon as the screens cover my entire field of view.
I'm left completely immersed in the game, sitting inside the cockpit of a Sidewinder, which is the ship you start out in in the game.
Huh, that's kind of a neat trick.


Also I'm in a spaceship. Did I mention I'm in a spaceship?
I'm super excited and get going immediately.
Fortunately the controls are identical to the joystick setup I use in waking life, so I have no trouble maneuvering the ship.
I use the lateral thrusters to lift off and to get to the center of the station.
The moment I let go I immediately feel the weightlessness, which makes me feel a little sick initially,
but the feeling quickly subsides.

As I maneuver out of the station, I notice for the first time how tight the entrance actually is.
You don't really get a sense for it on a computer screen.

Unfortunately I don't really remember much else.
I faintly remember feeling the heat of a sun radiating into my cockpit as I dropped out of frameshift, but that's about it.


The experience got me thinking about how virtual reality is going to affect dreams though.
I wonder if it'll make it easier to incubate dreams about video games.
I imagine it could also make such dreams more immersive.
Usually when I have video game dreams, it feels like I'm merely an observer.
I'm not really in the dream, it's more like I'm viewing it on a monitor that happens to cover my entire field of view.
Perhaps this is going to change with regular usage of VR.

non-dream dream semi-lucid lucid false awakening

At some community by the sea, maybe on vacation. I don't fit in, people of my age don't get along with me, find me weirdo.
One day while everybody is outside for some kind of town celebration, I am in a cellar, looking for something or also a bit hiding out. That's when I have a close encounter with a kind of dragon eel. I disturb its hiding place and it attacks me. I escape barely and the weird beast disappears. But nobody believes me when I tell the story.
The next day the whole town is under a dome and people talk about aliens. Eventually some turn to me asking me about my encounter with the alien eel, but there's not much I can say about it. Some days after, we wake up to find we're no longer in a glass dome under the sun, but in a rusty metallic enclosure, as if the entire town had been teleported to inside a giant warehouse or ship. By then people were freaking out and kept coming to me to ask questions I could not answer.
Some other day, we got back to see the sun and apparently were freed, but it happened that I had caught a glimpse of something, no one else had seen. I saw the moment of transition and I knew we had not been beam up back home, we had been plugged into a VR simulation. I guessed either they gassed us to put us unconscious and plugged us in individually to the simulation (like in the matrix) or they had means to telepathically plunge us into a VR world. Either way, I seemed to be the only one aware of it. No one else had picked up the transition moment or, once again, believed in me.
I notice that a new face appears among us. It's a lady I haven't seen before and I am sure she is one of the “others”, whoever “they” are. She comes to me. She confesses she is one of the aliens. She also explains she is merely using a human avatar to blend in and confirms we are in a VR simulation. She wants to help. She explains her people kidnapped us and keep us in this high-tech zoo, just as we would keep earth animals in a zoo, for entertainment and research. But she belongs to a small group of activists who understand we are intelligent and sensible beings and who defend our rights. She wants to help me by bringing me along to their assembly, to present our case and to prove that we should be set free.
I wonder how we can do that, but she explains they don't really meet physically, they do it telepathically, in a sort of shared dream environment and she can grant me access to it. Because I don't even know how they look like and everything would just look incomprehensible to me, she makes a kind of filter so that I see things through my expectations of a human like world. So when we enter this meeting place, to me it looks like an auditorium where hundreds of people gather. There's a group presiding the session and different groups seem to present petitions or motions to them. Then they seat down, but when I turn to my friend to ask what I should do, people are already getting up of their chairs. I'm confused. She tells me that since everything is shared telepathically, stuff happen instantly, as soon as a motion is presented, everybody knows what's in it and vote and decisions are made. I just could not pick it up since I don't have such developed capacities. But she says now is the time to come out and reveal myself and present my case. Which I do in a loud, chaotic way. At first they just look at me, emotionless, and many turn away, ignoring me. Others stay in place, but still showing no emotion. Don't know what else to say to convince them. In panic, I start to sing. More heads turn, their faces start to change, at last I get reactions. They are a species who does not know much emotion, they are rational, effective, but since ages they have lost their creativity and passion. They no longer have music or other arts. As I continue singing, I start conquering new adepts, intrigued by this thing that is affecting them. I start to feel that maybe we'll have a chance after all...

I am vacationing somewhere in the Caribbean when some man steals my wallet. Another man tells me that he knows that man is working for a drug cartel and knows where I can go to find him. What followed was a long chase across several islands utilizing planes and boats. We eventually cornered the man at this unassuming resort where the man who had been helping me explained that they were actually part of the same drug cartel.
The thief gives me my wallet back and states that this was actually just a plot to get me here. The resort manager opens a secret trapdoor behind the desk and leads me into this basement area. Once down there, he explains that this is not a drug cartel at all, but rather an international secret project to develop the first virtual reality simulation.
There is this girl with a robotic arm who has supposedly built the first prototype of the machine. The machine is huge, and I did not get a good look at all of it. But what I do recall was the room where you entered the virtual reality. It was a concrete room (because we were in a basement, duh) with wires and tubes running everywhere. There were four metal chairs, and there was a large chrome disc mounted on the front wall of the room. Several wires are clipped onto the outside.
And of course, I have to be their test subject, that being the reason they lured me all the way out here. So I sit down, and they place this small nose-breather thing onto me with this blue fluid running through it. Supposedly, it is supposed to help stabilize the VR link. robot arm girl fires it up and a beam fires out of the silver disc.
The room begins to distort and change. When its done, all i can see is the four metal chairs sitting in a black void. Two people phase into the other chairs and explain that they are agents sent in after me; the machine malfunctioned and locked me in. It also altered my perception of time, and now with every second we experience, an hour goes by. They let me out. I wake up.

Dream 1(fragments):

There was something about video games and there was one AI War like game, then there was some story about control and some kind of monk person that was lacking power, then later i was in some metallic place and there was something about medics.

Dream 2(fragments):

I was in some dark city, there were metallic walkways around buildings and i was with a group of people, we had some kind of power and we were fighting some mutants while searching for something.

Dream 3:

I was playing AI War with SilentEternity, the map was mazey and squarey, starting position was on the bottom of it, one AI homeworld was roughly in the middle, accessible only from the left, and another in the upper right. The map interface looked weird since it had those weird blue grid quite differently from normal. We had a good army and soon most of the map was controlled by us, also we were using five frigate champion ships.
Some planets were quite different, in a way that zooming in started completely different game that was FPS in some 'virtual reality' style setting with grid textures and such and it was occasionally turning into an 2D platformer too. We were doing some of those missions and there were also 3D jumping puzzles. AI Core worlds near homeworld had some missions too, the objective was to blow up some sort of generator.
Soon we have unlocked most of the stuff and there were only a few AI Planet clusters left, champions were still frigate level and there was only one nebula on the map, though SilentEternity told me that thjey are unlocked in order of completion, we decided that we will be fine with just frigates though. We triggered last mission and it was some arena with the mechanism in the middle that we had to defend. We were successful and soon the path opened.
Then i started having problems with PC, there was some code not working properly, then some hacker looking guy came and started trying to help, but was really bad at it. I told him to go away and fixed everything myself. He flied away.
I continued the game with SilentEternity and after path there was some high building we climbed, on the top, some weird dude waited for us, he said that he's the author of the game and then credits rolled. At the end hacker dude flying threw some metallic disk and destroyed some enemies that were trying to attack us, also disk somehow cut dad's beard in the process and also killed a few birds on the way back, hacker dude was surprised with that throw and i laughed.

Dream 4:

I was in some weird, abandoned building and some female AI-like voice was talking to me about that i was in game and i had find something to get out. There were some ghosty entities occasionally moving around. I was following some instructions and soon reached some ventilation shaft, it was too tiny to get through but i managed it. View switched to third person on the top and some dude in black suit appeared, ran towards me and said that he's friendly, then dream ended.

Deleted

My Virtual World
I am in a place that looks like a video game. There is just something about the place that makes it look like a computer rendering instead of a real physical place, though I'm not entirely sure what that something is. I am designing the place as if I was in a 3D virtual reality design system. I place pieces of geometry to form them into buildings and such, then I choose textures from a menu that pops up in mid air to apply to the buildings… it is really cool. There are a couple people there with me, but they don't seem to be real people. They are actual NPCs I have already designed for the game, and it seems I programmed them well enough that they can now help me with designing the world.

That is awesome. I have to give them explicit instructions, but they are still very helpful. I leave the virtual world for a bit and find out I am at school, at ITT Tech. I wonder when they got such cool equipment in, and why did they have to get it when I am just ready to graduate? My instructor tells me what effect I need to be creating in the virtual world, so I go back in and begin setting that up. It is a lighting effect where the rays of the sun are visible shining through one of the windows of the building. I create the effect without much difficulty. There is another effect I have to do in the same setting. I enter a completely blank void. I pull out what seems like a blanket and throw it out in front of me. It expands to become a copy of the world I just made previously. Now that is a useful feature! I pull my NPCs into the setting again and then I begin adding the details I need to achieve the next effect. My NPCs are getting annoying now, however, they just want to stand around and do nothing while I do all the work.

DDO - In Poisoned Waters
I am in a place that looks a lot like the city of Stormreach from the DDO game, I am in the harbor area. I am not alone there, I see there are two men and a woman there with me. I am instantly aware of who they are, though I do not become aware it is a dream. It is Nomad, MoSh, and Tigress, but I am thinking they are just in a virtual reality version of DDO with me. And the game is completely awesome! I look around at all of the NPCs and the other players, there are actually some of the NPCs with golden chalices floating over their heads indicating they have quests… Tigress heads over to one of them and talks to her. I follow Tigress, Nomad and MoSh come with me. The NPC is telling Tigress how some of the wells in Stormreach had been yielding poisoned water. She says the kobolds are responsible, though no one knows why. The poison is coming from the waterworks.

The four of us go into the waterworks. At first we get attacked by a few kobolds, but there isn't much kobold resistance. Farther down we start seeing a lot of dead kobolds lying about in varying stages of decomposition… yuck. The water smells bad, it is poisoned. Why would kobolds poison their own water supply? We go deeper, and soon we aren't in the waterworks any more, now we are in what looks like mine shafts. Kobolds are digging at the mine, but they pay no attention to us. Most of them look very weary, exhausted even. I see a kobold fall over from exhaustion. A goblin comes and starts poking the kobold with a spear, snarling at it to get up and back to work. It is clear the kobold can't go on any longer. It weakly tries to get up and then collapses again. The kobolds around the fallen one make no move to help, they hardly seem to notice. The goblin kicks the fallen kobold.

Nomad tells the goblin to pick on someone his own size. The goblin notices us for the first time and calls out that there are intruders. Nomad picks the goblin up by the neck in a hand that has grown huge, and snarls at the goblin that he is pathetic for being able to pick on those who can't fight back but he calls for help the instant someone who can fight comes along. He crushes the goblin's neck. More goblins are coming now, so a fight breaks out. I am a paladin, Nomad is a dark knight cutting down goblins with a black sword and drawing their energy into himself, Tigress is a rogue hitting the goblins when they are distracted attacking Nomad, MoSh, and me, MoSh is a monk knocking goblins to the ground with martial arts moves. We fight all the goblins off, but we know the boss is down farther into the dungeon.

The four of us continue down farther, past a lot of kobolds who are working as hard as they can. A couple kobolds pause in their work to look over at us. We get down to the bottom chamber where the kobolds are digging down even farther. There is a really nasty looking goblin there, examining a chunk of metal. He smacks the kobold who presented it to him, saying he would not stand for them bringing him crap like that. He says any fool can see it's the wrong mineral. The kobold is on the ground, begging for mercy. The nasty goblin says mercy is for the weak and kicks the kobold. He then tells the kobold to get back to work and don't bring him any more crap or next time the penalty would be death. The kobold can barely stand, and is moving slowly away. The goblin tells the kobold to move faster or he might change his mind and kill the kobold now. The goblin looks over and finally sees us, and asks who the fuck the three of us are. Three? I notice that the rogue Tigress is not with us. I then spot her in sneak mode over behind the goblin boss. I comment that they are polluting the water, and that has to stop. The goblin laughs and says he doesn't care. That's what he told the kobolds when they bitched about it, and that's what he's telling us. I say I guess that means it's time for him to die, then. He laughs harder. He says his goblins are more than a match for three pathetic humans.

Tigress attacks the goblin boss, which takes him completely by surprise, he spits an obscenity… AAHHH!!! SHIT!!! What the FUCK? We get into a big fight. I am fighting off goblin warriors and throwing out healing spells to allies. I can't see their health bars… so I don't know if they are needing the healing… but I don't want to take any chances. It feels like my supply of mana is limitless, and I credit that to a potion that gives that temporary effect. The goblin army that the boss boasted about proves to not be so tough. Archers are shooting at us from above. Tigress is sneaking around the rim up there and knocking the goblin archers off one by one. On the other side of the room I see a couple goblin archers get attacked by kobolds. It seems some of the more capable kobolds decided to join in the fight. The goblins never had a chance. We wipe out their numbers completely, I see Tigress finish off the boss near the end of the fight. I see Nomad over near the underground stream, he is doing something to clean the pollution from the water. The kobolds keep saying they don't want any trouble, won't attack any people, they just want their home in the waterworks back… I don't see any reason to attack kobolds right now, so instead I heal some of the ones that are more seriously injured. I tell a couple of the kobolds in charge that as long as they're not hostile towards the inhabitants of Stormreach, I certainly have no problem with them. The kobolds say we helped free them, they won't forget that. I'm not really sure that will prove to be true, but Stormreach is used to dealing with kobold problems… and they'll probably be busy for a while cleaning up the mess the goblins made.

09.01.2011

Skating fragment (Non-lucid)

NON-DREAM DREAM LUCID

I'm with an asian girl in a city. I'm helping her do some stunts on her skate, which had videogame-like controls. She doesn't want to continue but I tell her that she's just quitting without really trying. Then we hold hands in a really weird way for the next stunt. After that I vaguely remember dreaming about some guy who killed people who told others about lucid dreaming to keep it a secret.

_________________________

09.01.2011

In which man pays for his mistakes (Non-lucid)

NON-DREAM DREAM LUCID

I went to a place with my family where they had a virtual reality program that let you experience what it would be like if man had to pay for all of his mistakes (yeah, that's what the dream literally said) Don't rember mut about the actual experience but after it happened I started a new job as a bathroom cleaner. My aunt was also working as a bathroom cleaner and she told me everything about the job. After I'd learnt everything there is to know about cleaning bathroom a middle aged lady entered and refused to flush her toilet. She was also very rude so I started being a smartass and saying weird things about her shit.

The lady left angry but returned somewhat later as the head of the customer association and I had to go to the bosses office, where I was reprimanded.

After that I sort of wished that man really did have to pay for all of his mistakes and that's whenthe whole world really did go to shit (I think at some point of the dream I or my hole family had been given wishing powers), the apocalypse started to happen, buildings started coming downand some other things happened which I cannot remember. After that I vaguely remember getting into a gunfight with my family. Then we got into a car and had to drive to safety before the sun came up or we'd all burn to death on the way a car from the gunfight started shoting at us but we managed to avoid it.

We arrived at a weird factor where a man stole our powers and did a jedi mind trick on us to make us forget. After some more driving we arrived at a safe town where there was no technology. At this point my family momentarily became the simpsons family and Lisa complained avout the breakfast that was some kind of weird vegetable but Bart said it was good and homer agreed.

In the end it turned out that I'd never left the virtual reality program from the beginning and that It had all been part of the experience. On the way out my brother told me that the whole adventure had been just like a movie he saw where the same sort of thing happened to two astronauts(here the dream shifts and I'm watching the movie)

Two astronauts hadn't made the cut for the next space mission, which had only places for eighteen people, but they'd been good enough that they were selected for special training for the next one. They had to live together for a while and they were told that they needed to have as much trust around each other as they did with their loved ones. The male astronaut said goodbye to his loved one, a beautiful tall blonde woman and entered a train with the female one, who happened to be a girl I'd seen around high school and I thought that I'd never known she was an actress.

Notes: Longest dream yet!

Non-Dream Non-Lucid Lucid

I started out on the bottom of my school quad with a gun-type thing in my hand. I was already lucid because I listened to a subliminal lucid track before I fell asleep. I tried to climb up the stairs but I felt weak. Gravity seemed to rip my muscles as I climbed up the stairs. When I finally got to the top by just teleporting with a single thought. I saw a few others with guns and mini-radars held in their hands. I noticed it was twilight. The sky was purple with orange streaks of orange at the horizon, along with the silhouettes of trees and homes. I looked below the horizon down to the field and b-ball courts and saw snipers and a few others. I realized it was a VR because the people getting shot faded out. A person showed me his radar and a person was heading towards our camp. We saw him come in through our right side and I shot him down. In that time, I was sniped twice, and I faded out. The dream ended.


Notes:
Vividness: 9/10
Subliminal messaging to induce lucid dreams work great for me.

Key: Non-Lucid, Lucid, Commentary/Notes, Hypnagogic Hallucinations

I awoke in a dense rainforest. The plant-life glistened as though it had just recently been raining. It was beautiful. Then I realised, I didn't know where or who I was.

I looked around and saw members of the Voyager crew. Ah yes, I too was a member of the crew. But where were we?

Thinking about it now, this dream bears some striking similarities with a certain Star Trek: Voyager episode. Can't say I've watched it recently though, so it's odd that I would dream of a similar scenario.

Someone explained that we were trapped in a virtual reality. Not only that, but the virtual reality represented an entire virtual universe, larger even than our own. I found the prospect both daunting and exciting. If the view of the rainforest in front of me was indicative of the beauty and realism of the rest of the virtual universe, I certainly would want to see more of it.

There were many questions floating around in my head. Can we get out? If so, how? Should we even bother? Why are we trapped here? How did we even get here? I contemplated the idea of a virtual universe some more as I watched the rainforest before me. It all seemed so real.

There was an invisible barrier just behind us. It lead back in to reality. On the other side was a room. It was sealed. Perhaps just the entry point?

The next thing I knew we were under attack by Klingons. I didn't know if they were real or part of the virtual reality, but I knew they were trying to kill us. We fought with them and came out victorious. There were only a few of them. They explained that they too had awoken in this virtual reality just a few miles to the west of our location. They returned to the west, presumably to the rest of their people.

A moment later some other humans appeared from the rainforest. They wanted us to go with them to where they were living. They were dressed very plainly in neutral colours.

We went with them and they brought us to what appeared to be some kind of temple or tomb. It was made from stone and had detailing done with small red stones. I was standing next between Tom Paris and Kim and we all exchanged a glance as though to say... 'Ok, this is weird.'

The people were beckoning us to follow them around the structure to the other side. We did so and there was a stone casket. They began to remove the stone slab on top of it and when asked what they were doing they told us that they were releasing Hathor. I panicked. I shouted that Hathor is a Goa'uld and would immediately try and take a host! The Goa-uld symbiote came flying out of the casket. The realised that since this was a virtual reality that it might not be able to take control of any of us. It seemed I was right because the symbiote disappeared in the air with a kind of red de-digitising effect. Panic over.

Mixing some Stargate SG-1 with your Star Trek dreams can never be a bad thing, right?

Captain Janeway was pretty miffed about everything. I remember looking at Tuvok and he just had an intrigued look on his face, as you would expect.

Finally I contemplated more about the nature of the virtual universe. I was torn between the desire to explore it and the desire to be back safely in reality.