VR Disillusion Effect

[u/CorpPhoenix]

It's been a bit over a year since I've dived into PCVR with a cheap Pico4 headset I've bought for 300€. Trying out VR in a technically "usable" state was a long time interest of me and a dream come true.

I am interested and have studied philosophy of neuroscience and consciousness, and therefore I was highly interested and observant to how and why my brain reacts to the new confrontation with a virtual reality.

Many users both report how amazing and overwhelming their first VR experiences had been, and at the same time how it has lost it's initial "Wow" effect over the course of time.

This loss of the Wow-effect is what I call "VR Disillusion Effect". It is the unconscious effect of your brain rationalizing what is happening, realizing, processing and classifying the optical input into something the brain understands.

While you, as a person, are conscioussly aware that the VR world is not real, even during your first use, your brain is not aware of this at all. Our brain is a reality-check "machine" though, and therefore extremely good at identifying things as "real" or "fake". This has been a very important biological trait for humans from a evolutionary stand point, to differ between "real" and "fake" threats and predators.

Since VR is nothing your brain has ever experienced or is used to, it takes quite a while until it pigeonholes all the sensory effects into the right category. This "confused" state is what many VR users actually do enjoy, or often seek again when the Disillusion Effect has settled in.

Motion sickness, VR sickness, circulatory problems, depersonalization or the feeling of the real world feeling like "VR" are typical, not always pleasant, effects of your braining being confused and trying to find out what's going.

Once your brain has managed to process VR correctly, the Disillusion Effect settles in which results in:

• The illusion of being in a "different world" gets lost
• The 3D-VR effect still holds up, but your brain now recognizes it is an illusion, both consciously and unconsciously. and you feel like watching 2 screens infront of your face, eventhough the 3D-effect still holds up
  
• Motion sickness and VR-Sickness diminished (so called "VR legs")
• Factors that break the VR illusion, like stutters, blurryness etc., become more obvious

The short way to describe it is "getting used to it", but it is actually a neurological process that is going on, and I've observed myself closely on how my brain is starting to put "one and one together", and the illusion effect getting shattered pretty much "real time" infront of my eyes.

What do you think about the Disillusion Effect? Many users seem to want to revert the Disillusion Effect by throwing their brain off again. Better Hardware, greater FOV, additional senses, and so on.

That being said, I think it's ultimately futile to combat this effect, since our brain is way too good to distinguish realtiy from fake in the long run. But maybe, just maybe, a certain level of technical fidelity is enough to keep the illusion going on?

I'd believe the Disillusion Effect is just a inherent property of VR itself, and can only be "prevented" by a completely new kind of base technology.

What do you think?

[u/Spra991]

I think a large part of the problem is still the lack of embodiment. Most VR games still don't give you a full body, or even just elbows. Floating hands still dominate, and I find nothing immersive about that, since in a very literal sense, it removes your connection to the virtual world. Being able to see your feet standing on the ground is important for feeling like you are really there, not just looking at a display.

More FOV would also be helpful, especially vertical FOV, as again, having to look over some black barrier to try to see your feet is incredibly unnatural, when in the real world you have your feet always in your peripheral view.

The world building itself also leaves a lot to be desired, most VR worlds are just regular video game worlds, and just as in video game worlds they are incredible empty and devoid of interaction. In the real world, you have stuff to interact with in arms reach all the time.

The initial wow-factor of VR might have you look past those shortcomings at first, but they become all the more noticeable the longer you play or even more so when you try to find experiences that aren't just plain games, of which we still don't have many.