this post was submitted on 18 Mar 2024
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My theory has always been that the better you try and make VR, the more it's going to negatively affect the general population.
The same thing happens when you try to make life like prosthetics. If you make a prosthetic that's too visually similar to the original, your brain actually tries to communicate with it, and when it doesn't get anything back, it can cause symptoms of dysmorphia.
I think similar things are happening with VR, that the more sound and visuals are able to trick your brain, the more it will conflict with proprioceptors telling you that you're actually just sitting in your room.
One thing I noticed after playing the horizon game in VR (where it renders fake hands that follow your controllers) is that afterwards, I had a sense that my real hands weren't so real after getting used to dismissing them in the game.
I question whether VR is generally a good idea based on how our brains learn and do things. Like I'm sure that my brain has made specific pathways or weights for playing a whole bunch of games, but activating them involves sitting in front of a screen with the input devices. I think even racing sims, where some things can be applicable, it's more at the conscious level than the "I can do this without thinking about it". VR games might be realistic enough to start activating the same pathways outside of games. As much as I want better VR, I wonder if it's a be careful what you wish for kinda thing, especially for younger people.
I think the main problem with VR in general is the same problem we see mirrored in the rest of the tech world. Most people in silicon valley fundamentally do not understand the way the central nervous system works.
Because of sci-fi and other media, people tend to perceive the brain and the body as two different things. That the body is just the vehicle of the brain, and that we will someday be able to rid ourselves of these mortal vehicles.
In reality there are no clear delineations that separate the central nervous system from the rest of body in this manor. The more we learn about the brain, the more we discover that it doesn't function like the command center we like to describe it as. That a lot of reactive motions aren't signaled by the brain, but from the spinal cord.
Because of this relation between body and mind, screens will never be as effective as buttons. Things like NueroLinks will never be able to provide the ease of use as a mouse. And VR will never be a pleasurable experience for the vast majority of the population. We simply aren't suited for an environment where our only stimuli is just the visual and audible spectrum.
Yeah, even just something like movement involves the whole body. The inner ear and stomach are a couple of obvious movement feedback areas, but real movement affects every cell in your body. When they don't agree, it's easy to get disoriented plus there can be nausea.
I feel very lucky that I can move around in a VR game with a controller and not feel sick, but I'd love to be able to feel the acceleration in Gran Turismo. I think not feeling the movement is why I can't go into autopilot in the game like I can while driving for real. I have to pay attention at every corner and need the gear indicator (or memorization) to know how much to slow down. I never have to check my speed on corners when driving a real car, though manual transmission might help with that (but if I drive an auto, I'm still not checking the speedometer on corners).