I'm concerned that AR will make this worse rather than better. The amount of dopamine that we will get from constant AR we glasses or contact lenses is going to be devastating. Just look at this artist rendition: https://vimeo.com/166807261
Post Virtual Reality Sadness
101–110 of 163 posts
Re: Post Virtual Reality Sadness
#102Earlier quoted context omitted.
Agreed. This whole phenomenon was reported on widely after "Avatar" came out. News anchors gleefully reporting that people left the theater feeling depressed their world wasn't as fantastic as Avatar. More of "the kids aren't alright!" reporting they love to do to scare parents and elderly folks. My solution: Move out of the big cities. I live in a small town in the countryside and my world is that fantastic.
> More of "the kids aren't alright!" reporting they love to do to scare parents and elderly folks. Sadly this is one of those topics, like violence in video games, where we don't get beyond this cycle of "accuse and deny". Which is a shame because IMO there are really important topics here we need to address collectively such as how this connects to addiction http://www.paulgraham.com/addiction.html The "data point"…
A simpler explanation to your experiences may simply be disappointment from having expectations unmet. If you were looking forward to a quiet date night without kids, only for them to suddenly come back home after being gone for just an hour, wouldn't you similarly feel such negative emotions as you adjusted to the reality of the situation?
Re: Post Virtual Reality Sadness
#103I 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…
I felt the same way the day I went to check the results of the french baccalaureate at my high-school. A warm summer day surrounded with friends, acquaintances, and other people I went to school with every day for years. There was joy, sadness sometimes and an overwhelming feeling of excitement about what the future holds. We were laughing together, drinking already, lots of discussions. Everyone was here.
I remember everything, every single detail, from the bitter smoke of the cigarettes to the sweet smell of drying leaves. That's all very vivid. And I can recall that incredible feeling of solitude. In fact, the certitude that this was over. That from now on, I would only ever be able to look back on this period of my life.
Honestly, this was a strange experience. I had the feeling to be extremely old, on a death bed and looking back to the life I had. When in fact, reality could not have been further removed from that setting. I was barely 18 years old, and about to start a whole new life in North-America.
You know there is something incredible about the carelessness of one's youth. Of course, to appreciate it fully you would need to be aware of it. That, in fact, would kind of weaken that very state of mind now that I think about it.
Plus France is such a wonderful country to grew-up in. I know it might sound ridiculous, but at 21 years old, I already feel a little bit like my best years are behind me. Or rather, that the warmth and happiness I have experienced will remain unmatched from now on. It's hard to think about the gardens of Paris or the Cathédrale de Reims' parvis in the summer without a heavy heart. They were my companions for nearly two decades, and years later I still don't want to say goodbye...
I guess that's the cost of happiness
Re: Post Virtual Reality Sadness
#104Earlier 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…
I get like this with my favorite things. I do it less frequently than I did as a child, but I still do. It's silly I guess. The last book I did this with was "Permutation City" by Greg Egan. There's probably less than an hour's worth of reading left, but I just don't want it to end. This was maybe a year ago and I still haven't touched it since. Eventually I'll probably re-read it from the beginning and actually fini…
This is going to sound silly (and tangential to the original topic), but Permutation City gave me the idea for my last startup. I liked the idea of being able to rent out compute power from anywhere in the world, AWS style, but where the supply of compute could be democratized.
Anyway, I would recommend finishing it. It's a great book.
Re: Post Virtual Reality Sadness
#105I have two feelings about this: 1) It reminds me of the quote: “Finishing a good book is like leaving a good friend.” ― William Feather 2) What is the author doing in actual reality that makes it so pale compared to VR? It's interesting that the first example brought up is about interacting with a phone. For god's sake man! Play a sport, have sex, go for a walk and smell the leaves, go for a swim in the ocean. Sweat,…
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Re: Post Virtual Reality Sadness
#106I don't know that this is VR-specific. I remember feeling like this after: - Playing with MS Paint on Windows 3.1 for hours on end until my eyes burned when i was 8. - Inhaling Lord of the Rings in about a week when i was 10. - Playing Ocarina of Time for 12 hours a day as a young teen. - Playing WoW in 100-hour weeks as an undergrad on summer break.
It's the intensity of the experience that will make VR the new hyper-addictive drug of choice for escaping reality in the near future.
I fully expect my children to be lamenting how their children won't want to come back to the physical (real) world - much like how we wanted our kids to get off the computer, and our parents didn't like us being on the telephone and watching TV.
Re: Post Virtual Reality Sadness
#107Earlier 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…
Finishing "A Memory of Light" and the The Wheel of Time series left me in a funk that lasted a whole week. I sometimes regret finishing the series, I now know how it ends, so I can not go back and re-read the series for a 4th time.
At least there's fanfiction. It might not be ever up to snuff as the original author's work, but some are quite entertaining, albeit in different ways.
Re: Post Virtual Reality Sadness
#108I wonder how much this has to do with vision correction. VR goggles, like TV screens, flatten everything into a single plane. If your eyes can focus on that plane they see everything. The real world is different. None of us have perfect vision at all distances simultaneously. We have to refocus when switching between near and far. The result is that nothing in the real world is every as 'in focus' as the VR world. So like wearing flippers while swimming, the real world is fuzzy and requires you to work harder than you did while wearing the device.
This is akin to why BBC documentaries always look better than the real thing. (I watched Planet Earth II last night). Those giant lenses in the fancy cameras can keep more objects in focus, allowing us to see both the parrot and the mountain background in ways we couldn't in the real world.
Re: Post Virtual Reality Sadness
#109I struggle to believe that this is a serious post, from someone who has seriously used VR. At the very least, I imagine their experience is very subjective.
I have the Oculus Rift, but have experienced nothing like what he's describing. Maybe its the lack of room scale, the lack of hand/arm interaction (Oculus Touch isn't out yet), or maybe I'm just playing different games?
Oculus never felt magical to me. In fact, if I'm being honest, it was kind of a let down. Yea it's cool, but the resolution is garbage (even in the production version I have). This article reads like someone who's never used VR, but worries about what it COULD do to you... if it really were great.
Re: Post Virtual Reality Sadness
#110I have experienced this post VR depression with PSVR. Although I have to say that it has been happening less and less the more I play. Perhaps it's possible to become desensitized to VR. I've found myself becoming more aware of the fact that I'm in a game. I'm not saying the magic has completely wore off. I still experience moments of aw. Anyone else experiencing this?