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[QaaQer]

The Post Virtual Reality Sadness
by Tobias van Schneider

...I start to feel better physically. Objects seem to be normal again, I don’t feel dizzy or anything. All symptoms I mentioned above are back to normal usually within 30–60 minutes.

But what stays is a strange feeling of sadness & disappointment when participating in the real world, usually on the same day....The intensity of this feeling is usually closely correlated to the length and kind of experience I had in VR, at least for me.

I think about it this way. I just spent a couple hours painting with fire or any material I want in a 3D space in Virtual Reality. I’m so confident & fluid using these VR tools, they feel almost native. I scale my environment up and down, rotate objects and teleport around my own dream world. I feel like god for a couple hours, with magical and powerful tools right at my finger tips. I can do anything I want!

After leaving a world like this...I feel deeply disturbed and often end up just sitting there, starring at a wall because I just don’t feel like doing anything else. I wouldn’t say I’m feeling depressed, but there is a lack of motivation and sad feeling in my chest....

You might find it interesting to read more about Derealizationand this interesting paper on Virtual reality induces dissociation and lowers sense of presence in objective reality

Also mentioned in the piece was the following study: Virtual reality therapy could help people with depression

Patients wore a VR headset to see from the perspective of a life-size 'avatar' or virtual body.

Seeing this virtual body in a mirror moving in the same way as their own body typically produces the illusion that this is their own body....

While embodied in an adult avatar, participants were trained to express compassion towards a distressed virtual child.

As they talked to the child it appeared to gradually stop crying and respond positively to the compassion.

After a few minutes the patients were embodied in the virtual child and saw the adult avatar deliver their own compassionate words and gestures to them.

This brief eight-minute scenario was repeated three times at weekly intervals, and patients were followed up a month later.

Initial results were promising.

 

[Msyjsm]

This is a fascinating phenomenon, but I'm struggling to comprehend his second phase issues (i.e., the "derealization"), albeit as a person who hasn't used VR extensively.

His description of the world as less vibrant is particularly puzzling to me, as I've always found the real world much more graphically intensive than any other experience I've had so far. (Hell, the lighting engine alone is amazing.)

And his depression regarding the loss of "superpowers" also seems strange, because again, I've always found the control systems in the real world much more accurate than any video game's. I'd much prefer to have fine-tune control over my hands and fingers even with all their real-world limitations than having more control over broad strokes manipulation of other objects in the world, but losing the subtler methods of interaction, so to speak. (E.g., I'd much rather be able to play music on a piano than be able to arbitrarily rotate it and repaint it wacky colors.)

Pure conjecture from a non-expert in psychology: Perhaps his (and others') issues are stemming from some deeper-rooted issues with reality, or their existence within it. Certainly a lot of us play games as a form of escape, but for me at least it's escape from the messy and unpredictable "rules" of societal interactions, not from my own sensory experience.

 

[Blackie]

Interesting stuff! Going to have to set aside some time to fully dive into this.

 

[Dmax3901]

While only tangentially related, I feel like I've noticed vivid colours in real life a hell of a lot more than normal since playing games in HDR. One example I can give is of trees back lit by the sun. The contrast between the leaves in the sun and those in shadow is so stark and beautiful, obviously it's always been that way I just... dunno... notice it more?

 

[Mephala]

This is interesting. I'd love to see VR in more practical usage outside of games and pornography.

 

[muu]

This is a fascinating phenomenon, but I'm struggling to comprehend his second phase issues (i.e., the "derealization"), albeit as a person who hasn't used VR extensively.

His description of the world as less vibrant is particularly puzzling to me, as I've always found the real world much more graphically intensive than any other experience I've had so far. (Hell, the lighting engine alone is amazing.)

And his depression regarding the loss of "superpowers" also seems strange, because again, I've always found the control systems in the real world much more accurate than any video game's. I'd much prefer to have fine-tune control over my hands and fingers even with all their real-world limitations than having more control over broad strokes manipulation of other objects in the world, but losing the subtler methods of interaction, so to speak. (E.g., I'd much rather be able to play music on a piano than be able to arbitrarily rotate it and repaint it wacky colors.)

Pure conjecture from a non-expert in psychology: Perhaps his (and others') issues are stemming from some deeper-rooted issues with reality, or their existence within it. Certainly a lot of us play games as a form of escape, but for me at least it's escape from the messy and unpredictable "rules" of societal interactions, not from my own sensory experience.

It's not the accuracy or fidelity of reality that's being trumped in VR -- far from it, as even the room-scale implementations leave you w/ fairly crude control schemes and the resolution is clearly inferior to even something like a 1080P screen. It's the fact that, despite limitations such as those I just mentioned, you've been thrown into a somewhat convincing world where amazing things that you had only seen projected on a screen in front of you or printed in some kind of media are somewhat tangible. Being jumped by an enemy in Dead Space is scary, but you're still not flinching like you would be on a first playthrough of a stupid zombie shooter in VR. Mouse aiming at an enemy is not the same as wielding a weapon in VR, reloading and ripping through enemies.

I believe author of the article is exaggerating for the sake of the article, but I do agree that the intensity of the experience can make other things feel less impressive.

 

[B-B-Bomba!]

I love the idea of using VR to enable people to become the recipient of their own most natural and loving compassion. It's a great example of the way this technology, used to implement even quite a simple idea, can produce transformative experiences that could reduce many people to tears.

 

[SMattera]

This happened to me today after using a Vive for about 20 minutes. It was really scary and makes me nervous about ever using it again.

It wasn't so much sadness, as it was real bad de-realization.

If you've ever been on a boat for a few hours, and then you get back to land, sometimes you'll feel like you're still on the boat. I would compare it to that. I felt like I was still in VR for a good 90 minutes after taking it off. My hands felt like controllers, and my brain was expecting to see the grid appear with every step forward.

It wore off, but it was really strange and anxiety-inducing.

Oddly, I've used the Vive many times in the past, and for longer periods of time, and it never happened to me before. Not sure what caused it.

 

[kyser73]

Obviously a long way off, but there are a number of examples in SF which references similar things as well as issues caused by spending too much time in simulations of super-abstract things like math.

Will read the article in full before saying anymore tho.