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Post Virtual Reality Sadness

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Re: Post Virtual Reality Sadness

#51

Post by schismsubv »

careersuicide wrote: post #35
Afforess wrote: post #23

I wonder if the author has ever experienced the joy of reading a good book, or the first showing an amazing movie. Finishing an amazing story, you feel a let down afterwords; the characters were not real and you can never interact with them. The realm of fictional worlds are often more engaging, and seem superior to the world you live your day-to-day life in. The actions and experiences in those stories were more ful…

A few years ago I started reading "The Wheel of Time" by Robert Jordan. I had somehow timed it so that the week I finished the thirteenth book "Towers of Midnight" the fourteenth book "A Memory of Light" came out. I blew through the first chunk of the book and then got to a chapter that was over a hundred pages long, maybe even longer, Google says it was over fifty thousand words. It was the last battle, the moment t…

Try 20 years. I started the story back when book 5 came out and re-read (or skimmed) the series each time a book came out. I literally grew up alongside the characters (although book time certainly slowed as the series progressed). I cried when I read that chapter, finishing in tears; it still smarts a little today.

Every emotive, immersive experience seems to produce some whiplash of the soul upon separation. As you noted, this is not unique to VR or even literary works. Even so, since one's first such is the most memorable, VR will likely slowly replace older works in this department.

Re: Post Virtual Reality Sadness

#52

Post by Aardwolf »

careersuicide wrote: post #35
Afforess wrote: post #23

I wonder if the author has ever experienced the joy of reading a good book, or the first showing an amazing movie. Finishing an amazing story, you feel a let down afterwords; the characters were not real and you can never interact with them. The realm of fictional worlds are often more engaging, and seem superior to the world you live your day-to-day life in. The actions and experiences in those stories were more ful…

A few years ago I started reading "The Wheel of Time" by Robert Jordan. I had somehow timed it so that the week I finished the thirteenth book "Towers of Midnight" the fourteenth book "A Memory of Light" came out. I blew through the first chunk of the book and then got to a chapter that was over a hundred pages long, maybe even longer, Google says it was over fifty thousand words. It was the last battle, the moment t…

Wouldn't it be cool if there were written multiple endings for the story? One is randomly selected when you start reading, and you won't know which one! Would that bring back the excitement?

Oddly I think it wouldn't, and wonder why. Is it because we want to know the one single ending the author intended?

Re: Post Virtual Reality Sadness

#53

Post by mattmanser »

jonstokes wrote: post #39

The few times I've tried VR I've had post-VR sadness, but mine was sadness because it totally failed to live up to the hype. I could see the pixels, for one, so I never forgot I was in VR. And the other thing is, as "magical" as those experiences are, they just don't measure up to real life. I've played virtual instruments and games and visited a VR villa and so on, but none of it was as magical as watching my kids d…

It's not that kids playing are engrossing or amazing or anything. Go watch someone else's kid play for six hours. You're obviously not going to get the same high, it's pretty boring, pretty quickly. A small amount of people will enjoy it.

Some chemical's going off in your brain, saying "WOW, my kids are AMAZING". It's a delusion that helps the human race carry on. How can you compete with a nature built in drug?

What you going to do for kicks in 10 years time when your kids are teenagers? The allure will have rubbed off by then.

Re: Post Virtual Reality Sadness

#55

Post by greggman »

nugget wrote: post #18

People talk a lot about futuristic sex robots but what about VR experiences that are not only physical but deeply emotional - wherein you experience seduction and actually fall in love? Think about riding in a weeks long 18 hour a day RPG crusade with a Milla Jovovich lookalike Joan of Arc who, in between battles, is irreparably infatuated with you. The tech needed to achieve this level of total immersion may yet be…

Putting 3d models of people in VR is easy. Getting them to do anything interesting and not just be a few scripted things is much harder and very far from a solved problem.

Maybe that doesn't matter. Maybe all you need is the character to look you in the eyes. But I suspect most people would need more. Someone you can actually talk to. Not just pick multiple choice responses

Re: Post Virtual Reality Sadness

#56

Post by theoh »

nugget wrote: post #18

People talk a lot about futuristic sex robots but what about VR experiences that are not only physical but deeply emotional - wherein you experience seduction and actually fall in love? Think about riding in a weeks long 18 hour a day RPG crusade with a Milla Jovovich lookalike Joan of Arc who, in between battles, is irreparably infatuated with you. The tech needed to achieve this level of total immersion may yet be…

Indeed, reciprocation/interactivity is not a requirement for obsessive love. See Dorothy Tennov's theory of "limerence". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Limerence

Re: Post Virtual Reality Sadness

#57

Post by tlrobinson »

nugget wrote: post #18

People talk a lot about futuristic sex robots but what about VR experiences that are not only physical but deeply emotional - wherein you experience seduction and actually fall in love? Think about riding in a weeks long 18 hour a day RPG crusade with a Milla Jovovich lookalike Joan of Arc who, in between battles, is irreparably infatuated with you. The tech needed to achieve this level of total immersion may yet be…

The movie "Her" is a great movie that touches on this.

Re: Post Virtual Reality Sadness

#58

Post by swombat »

Aardwolf wrote: post #52
careersuicide wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A few years ago I started reading "The Wheel of Time" by Robert Jordan. I had somehow timed it so that the week I finished the thirteenth book "Towers of Midnight" the fourteenth book "A Memory of Light" came out. I blew through the first chunk of the book and then got to a chapter that was over a hundred pages long, maybe even longer, Google says it was over fifty thousand words. It was the last battle, the moment t…

Wouldn't it be cool if there were written multiple endings for the story? One is randomly selected when you start reading, and you won't know which one! Would that bring back the excitement? Oddly I think it wouldn't, and wonder why. Is it because we want to know the one single ending the author intended?

I think it's simpler than that. We don't want to miss out on a great ending by picking a suboptimal one. Endings are definitely not equal.

Re: Post Virtual Reality Sadness

#59

Post by dahdum »

Having spent many hours in VR (Vive Room Scale) at a stretch, the article rings true to me. The biggest surprise being that it might not feel perfectly real at the time, but the memory is much closer.

The next generation of pixel density will make a huge difference IMO. I can comfortably work in VR with multiple desktops, but the resolution is tad too low.

Re: Post Virtual Reality Sadness

#60

Post by badloginagain »

A lot of comments here mention this isn't unique to the VR medium. I would suggest that VR is fundamentally different than reading a good book or watching a great movie.

I would expect this is closer to when movies were first invented. There's a story (which may be untrue) of a movie which had a train heading towards the camera, and people running out of the theater thinking it was real.

I expect the feelings the author is exploring is in part experiencing a brand new medium. What I really like about this article is how the author isn't drawing conclusions, but rather saying this is an interesting phenom to investigate further. VR does provide extensions to fundamental human ability (I can only thing of the depression a disabled person would feel if they could move around virtually), and I would be interested to see if there's a fundamentally addictive quality to extending your interactions with reality.

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