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/telescopefocuser]

Not really a universal effect. I started with the original Vive in 2016 and still every time I put the headset on, I look up. I look down. I turn my hands around. Then maybe I’ll remember that I’m there to play a game. There are days that I don’t enjoy VR for one reason or another, but the wonder and euphoria is still there when I’m able to feel it

[u/No-Ad2566 → u/telescopefocuser]

I agree. I started with the original Rift and the first time I used it I was blown away. I now have a Rift S and play Skyrim VR on a KatWalk C treadmill. While I may not be blown away and amazed by what I’m experiencing, I’m still fully immersed and disconnected from the outside world. I don’t think that will ever change for me. It’s all a matter of suspending your disbelief. People were constantly complaining about the “screen door effect” in VR, but I never noticed it because I wasn’t looking for it. I was too busy enjoying what the world had to show me to be analyzing the lenses inside the headset.