Introduction

While virtual reality (VR) is often marketed as a gaming technology, it is not, in toto, a gaming medium. Its serious applications predate and far outnumber gaming, spanning education and training, journalism and documentary, engineering and design, and clinical rehabilitation, to name but a few. (See Slater and Sánchez-Vives, 2016 or Slater et al., 2019 for overviews; see Riva, Dakanalis, and Mantovani, 2015 or Rivera et al., 2015 for a focus on health and wellbeing.) However, given the increasing popularity of VR amid the gaming landscape, this article does eventually focus on VR games, making tentative comparisons and contrasts with less ludic (but nonetheless entertaining) VR "experiences" and, separately, social VR spaces.

VR has long lurked in the technological imaginary. For at least three decades, VR headsets (or head-mounted displays; HMDs) have been treated as emblematic of embodied expeditions into immersive virtual worlds. VR "DataGloves" and other exotic, often wearable input devices captured the public's imagination throughout the 1990s and beyond, hyped by Hollywood films like The Lawnmower Man (1992), Disclosure (1994) and Johnny Mnemonic (1995). Alas, the excitement was premature. It would be years before VR could support the kind of seamless experience promised by promoters, journalists and fiction writers, and even longer before it would be affordable to the average consumer. After decades of reality playing catch-up with fiction, mass-market VR HMDs finally emerged circa 2015, spearheaded by the startup company Oculus, which was quickly absorbed by Facebook (now rebranded as Meta).

This article takes a fairly narrow view of VR, treating contemporary, commercially available headsets as typical of the technology or medium at large. While other types of VR system exist, most remain prohibitively expensive, take up large amounts of space and/or confer a qualitatively different experience. (See, for example, back-projected "CAVEs". CAVE is a recursive acronym for "CAVE automatic virtual environment"—an allusion to Plato's allegory.) By contrast, affordable and lightweight headsets like the standalone Oculus Quest 2 (~€350), the upcoming PlayStation VR2 (~$500), or the PC-powered Valve Index (~€1000) can serve as touchstones against which to cast claims and observations about VR systems in general, as well as the breadth of experiences that can be had thereby.

Two Core Principles of VR

Certain aspects of VR remain almost invariant irrespective of era, price point or form factor. Perhaps the most important are (A) stereoscopy, which produces "3D" visuals (stereopsis), and (B) a position-tracked viewpoint, which effectively erases the sense of there being a virtual camera mediating the user's visual experience. Here follow explanations of these respective features.

In headset-based VR, an onboard or external computer renders a 3D environment containing two virtual cameras offset at the average distance between a user's eyes (approx. 64mm). Each virtual camera is fed to a different screen in the headset, and hence to a different eye. Unlike conventional displays, then, VR reduplicates the binocular basis of our everyday visual experience: Each eye receiving a slightly different image confers lifelike depth cues. This technology or principle, stereoscopy, supports natural stereopsis. "Coarse" stereopsis is for the detection and processing of motion in peripheral vision, enhancing the impression of moving through space. It is at play when we walk along a corridor or down a narrow flight of stairs. "Fine" stereopsis, meanwhile, is important for visuomotor tasks performed up-close and at the center of the visual field—threading a needle, for instance.

More impactful than stereoscopy as supportive of stereopsis, however, is a VR system's ability to track the user's head in space, and to translate its position (i.e., the user's viewpoint) to a corresponding point in virtual space. In consumer jargon, this is referred to as "room-scale" tracking, and is now standard in almost all headsets. In the technical literature, room-scale tracking is called "6DoF" positional tracking: The abbreviation stands for "six degrees of [combined rotational and translational] freedom". Room-scale or 6DoF tracking lets the wearer of a VR headset rotate and translate their head (or other tracked body-part/s) around and along the three Cartesian spatial axes. Movement is thus constrained only by the size of the tracked physical volume ("play-space") and the mechanical limits of the body. Otherwise, any head- or hand-based movement performed in the real world should be reflected virtually: Ducking under a desk, doing a backflip (not recommended), and other gross movements will be captured and represented in VR as long as the relevant body parts—or objects such as props—are tracked, and an avatar visibly rendered.

At the time of writing, most consumer VR systems ship with only three motion-tracked points: Head and hands. While most people's experience of reality would be upended if they suddenly found that their legs, torso and forearms were invisible, having only a head and hands in VR seems sufficient for a range of tasks and experiences (Kondo et al., 2018; 2020; Murphy, 2017). Even when VR users can't see a virtual torso or limbs, the unconscious functioning of proprioceptive networks (which underpin a "sixth sense" sometimes called kinaesthesia) lets users remain aware of their real-world embodiment despite no avatar body being visible.

To summarize this cursory technical introduction, HMD-based VR hasn't much changed since "goggles 'n' gloves" systems were first developed in the late 1980s and early 1990s: Headsets have simply improved to the point of being (A) affordable and (B) usable for extended periods of time. In the plainest possible terms, VR's hallmarks—arguably its defining features—are "3D" visuals (stereoscopy) and a roving, motion-tracked viewpoint. Together, these features give the sense of being physically located in virtual space. VR can thus be difficult to disentangle from the "cognitive feeling" (Schubert, 2009) that it routinely and robustly confers. That is, spatial presence: The feeling of "being there" (Heeter, 1992, passim) via "a perceptual illusion of non-mediation" (Lombard and Ditton, 1997, n.p.). In reductive but illustrative terms, VR's tendency to automatically induce spatial presence (or place illusion; Skarbez, 2016; Slater, 2009) makes it feel, on some impenetrable level of consciousness, as if you're "really there" despite any amount of knowledge or beliefs to the contrary (Hartmann and Hofer, 2021).

In nuce, VR systems are those that confer strong illusions of spatial presence by providing "3D" depth cues and tracking the user's head position. Spatial presence is the subpersonal feeling of "being there" that (in VR, at least) cannot be wished or willed away.

History of the Term

VR as we know it is a culmination and refinement of dozens of technologies—some material, others conceptual. A given history of VR can choose as its starting point Pompeiian mosaics, Renaissance-era advancements in representing linear perspective, 18th-century panorama paintings, early Victorian stereoscopes, the motion picture projector, the cathode-ray tube, computer graphics and so on. (See, for example, Grau, 2003; cf. Syed, 2019; cf. Bolter, Engberg, and MacIntyre, 2021.) Arguably, any such starting point is arbitrary: Since VR is a picturing medium (Tavinor, 2021), its history extends as far back as the earliest evidence of pigment being daubed on cave walls. Alternately, VR can be analogized to narrative discourse (e.g., Ryan, 2001; 2015), which would make its earliest ancestor oral storytelling. Wieldier than either of these options is to begin a short history of VR with the emergence of the label itself.

VR's Morphogenesis (1930s–1990s)

The words "virtual" and "reality" are brought together for the first time by actor and dramaturge Antonin Artaud (1938/1958). In The Theater and Its Double, Artaud writes of the "virtual reality of the theater[:] ... [T]he purely fictitious and illusory world" created through stagecraft (Artaud, 1958, p. 49 – italics original). He saw the potency of a theatrical "virtual reality" as linked to his own aesthetics of "cruelty", which centered on striking imagery, searing-hot symbolism and unbridled surrealism. Since Artaud was writing long before the advent of digital computation, many overlook that his réalité virtuelle (Artaud, 1938, p. 51)—notwithstanding its commitment to transfixing and transporting audiences—has much to do with VR (cf. Murphy, 2021). Despite the etymological link between Artaud and VR being almost coincidental, the conceptual–aesthetic correspondence is strong: As curator Fabien Siouffi notes, "[t]he theatre and scenic arts are essential fields of research for creation in VR", concerned as they both are with "constructing spaces, illusions, stage settings and the dynamics that bring spectators, actors and creators together" (Siouffi, 2016).

In the 1960s, inventor and cinematographer Morton Heilig patented several devices including the "Sensorama Simulator" (Heilig, 1962; see also Heilig, 1960). The Sensorama was a booth-like contraption housing a stereoscopic display, a vibrating seat and handlebars, and fans to blast the participant with air and waft them with odors. It boasted only one attraction: A ten-minute motorcycle ride through New York City replete with live-captured sights and sounds and synthetic urban smells. While Heilig did not refer to his inventions as VR, he clearly created one of the earliest instances of a multisensory vehicle simulator outside of the comparatively clandestine research labs of the U.S. Airforce and its affiliates. (See, e.g., the McDonnell Douglas Corporation, which reportedly developed a motion-tracked HMD capable of displaying computer graphics as early as 1979.) However, Heilig's motorbike ride was pre-recorded, and hence not alterable by participants' head movements or other inputs. In simple terms, the Sensorama was not "interactive"—a proviso that prevents it from qualifying as VR "proper", or VR as we know it today.

Working at roughly the same time, Ivan Sutherland is often erroneously credited with creating the first VR headset: "The Sword of Damocles", which is sometimes mistakenly conflated with his "Ultimate Display". (See, e.g., factual ambiguity in Paíno Ambrosio and Rodríguez Fidalgo, 2020.) Note, then, that there are two misconceptions often made, here. First, while the Sword of Damocles (so-called because it was ceiling- as opposed to head-mounted) did exist, it was not a VR display (Sutherland, 1968). It was rather an augmented reality or AR system featuring transparent screens: The user would see wire-frame geometry overlaid onto their view of the physical world. The Sword of Damocles was largely unrelated to Sutherland's other invention, the Ultimate Display, which was purely hypothetical; a speculative thought experiment of sorts (Sutherland, 1965). He wrote that

The ultimate display would, of course, be a room within which the computer can control the existence of matter. A chair displayed in such a room would be good enough to sit in. Handcuffs displayed in such a room would be confining, and a bullet displayed in such a room would be fatal. (Sutherland, 1965, n.p.)

In this regard, while Sutherland cannot be credited with having invented VR, he clearly prefigured the fictive, VR-generating room known as the "holodeck". The holodeck was dreamt up by Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry after meeting real-life holographer Gene Dolgoff in 1973, and was likely also inspired by an equally fictive "mechanical" VR playroom from Ray Bradbury's 1950 short story, The Veldt. The concept of an omni-responsive holodeck was later adopted by literary theorist Janet Murray (1997/2016; 2017) as a catch-all analogy for "the future of narrative in cyberspace".

Incidentally, another early appearance of the term "virtual reality" is a 1979 internal memo circulated at the IBM Corporation's Software Division. Virtual memory and virtual machines emerged both in theory and in practice circa the late 1950s (Cocke and Kolsky, 1959), and their increasing centrality in general-purpose computing inspired one or more anonymous IBM employee(s) to spoof the concepts by way of tongue-in-cheek reference to a "Virtual Reality" operating system that would "enable the user to migrate to totally unreal universes" (IBM, 1979). However, since neither "virtual" nor "reality" appears in the 1980 article in which Marvin Minsky coins the term "telepresence", and since IBM's jocular "OS/VR" makes no mention of headsets or any other such user interface, it seems unlikely that the satirical proto-email directly inspired the development of any given virtual reality technology as they exist today.

Computer artist Myron Krueger, himself a key contributor to the development of VR-adjacent technologies, suggests that while engineering communities tend to center VR's technical history on figures like Sutherland, it was creatives like himself and Heilig who drove innovation (Krueger, 1993). Krueger coined the term "artificial reality" in 1983 (Krueger, 1983; 1991) to describe projects like his VIDEOPLACE series—an artwork that evolved in lockstep with advancements in sensing and imaging technologies (Krueger and Wilson, 1985). To technologists, Krueger's artificial realities were perhaps most impressive for their ingenuity. To layfolk, they were striking on account of their responsiveness: The artworks could detect and react to gesture. At the 1977 (U.S.) National Computer Conference, Krueger introduced a "responsive environment which perceives human behavior and responds with intelligent auditory and visual feedback" (Krueger, 1977, p. 423). Despite being responsive or interactive, however, Krueger's artificial realities were not perceived egocentrically, as VR prototypically is. That is to say, Krueger's artworks depicted their participants as silhouettes on projection screens viewed at a distance: One's own virtual body was perceived from a third-person perspective. Thus, while Krueger's "artificial realities" broke ground (and strongly evoke VR), they lack that which typifies VR: The egocentric, embodied virtual viewpoint that's practically presupposed by stereoscopy deployed in tandem with a motion-tracked, first-person perspective.

For modern VR to manifest, the "fictitious and illusory world[s]" described by Artaud would need to combine with something like the stereoscopic simulator technologies patented by Heilig. VR would need a head-tracked means of delivery akin to Sutherland's Sword of Damocles, and to be capable of displaying computer-generated graphics with the kind of responsiveness or interactivity seen in Krueger's "artificial realities".

To this end, in 1984, Jaron Lanier founded VPL Research; the first private company to (later) sell VR HMDs. By some accounts, Lanier did not adopt or popularize the term "VR" until 1987, with the business initially focusing on developing "CyberGloves" or "DataGloves" under contract from NASA, to be used as input devices for desktop computing. NASA's own VR headset, Project VIEW, appeared in 1990, with the decade heralding the first wave of commercial VR systems. (See, for example, the Virtuality Visette, which was often installed in shopping malls or entertainment arcades and worn while strapped into a baby walker-like device.) While the '90s saw VR take shape, almost all systems of this era (A) remained prohibitively expensive, costing between $9,000 and $100,000, (B) remained lacking in terms of the frame rate or refresh rate needed to mitigate nausea or motion sickness ("simulator sickness"; see Buhler, Misztal, and Schild 2018; Hill and Howarth, 2000), and (C) suffered from tracking issues (e.g., latency, "drift", etc.). VR-like devices manufactured by household videogame companies—Nintendo's Virtual Boy, for instance—were notoriously more likely to induce headaches or eye strain than a sense of spatial presence, and in no way allowed for the perceptual or bodily exploration of 3D virtual environments.

Defining VR in Terms of Experience

A brief and partial history of VR inevitably raises questions about what defines the concept. Are desktop computers VR? Are videogames (dis)played on TVs VR? If not, why? Lanier offers a reasonable sketch in a 1990 interview: "The idea is that by wearing computerized clothing over your sense organs, you transport your sensory system into a reality that can be of any description" (Lanier, 1990 – italics added). Indeed, the notion that VR is defined by coupling the sensorium to simulated space such that the latter tracks and responds to the user's exploratory perceptual behaviors (e.g., turning, leaning; circumnavigating an object) is still evident in the work of computer scientists, psychologists and philosophers of VR, who often focus on VR's sensory and motor (sensorimotor) aspects in tandem.

With reference to VR, Mel Slater defines presence-inducing or "immersive" technologies as those that support a high number of "sensorimotor contingencies" (Slater, 2009, p. 3549). Sensorimotor contingencies are couplings or regularities between the motor behaviors of an organism performed in service of perception on the one hand, and any resulting sensory experience on the other (O'Regan and Noë, 2001; see also Gibson, 1979). For example, if your view of an object is obscured in real life, you reposition your head or body to see around the obstruction. Such sensorimotor contingencies—the dependable correspondence between repositioning oneself and being able to see the target object—are supported by room-scale or 6DoF VR, but not by photographs, video recordings or conventional videogames. (Similar ideas are advanced, albeit in more roundabout terms, in Steuer, 1992.) Therefore, while sitting close to a high-definition TV and playing a realistic racing simulator might foster a fragile or fleeting sense of spatial presence, the illusion will be shattered as soon as the player turns to look behind them. The system—in this case, a games console connected to a TV—supports no such sensorimotor contingencies (by virtue of lacking tracking capabilities), and the screen is moreover confined to a distal, front-facing portion of the player's visual field. Such a system cannot helpfully be considered VR as it lacks the sensorimotor contingencies necessary to dependably confer robust illusions of spatial presence in the simulated environment.

Current Use

Today, VR is marketed mainly as a gaming technology. This is despite that the range of media available via VR platforms exceeds what we usually think of as games. Accessing educational experiences, watching non-interactive 360° videos, socializing in virtual spaces, following VR fitness regimens, utilizing 3D art and design tools, visiting virtual museums or galleries and sampling award-winning VR from the international film festival or art fair circuit are just a few activities enabled by VR that are not (proto)typical of gaming.

The most relevant distinction for our present purposes is between VR games and VR "experiences", so-called. Here, experience does not refer to consciousness (as in "subjective experience"). Note also that a VR "experience" is not synonymous with any experience of VR. Rather, the label describes a loose-knit category of VR art and entertainment that is (generally) not quite as involved or as challenging as games per se. Note, then, that the distinction between VR games and VR experiences is not a stipulative one advanced by academics, but a vernacular rule-of-thumb used by creators, curators and consumers to distinguish between game-like VR and less-game-like VR. Of course, attempting to differentiate games from non-games has historically proven fruitless, serving only to underscore that cultural categories seldom map to ontological truths. But it is nevertheless illustrative to contrast VR games with VR experiences and, separately, social VR, to note their differences as well as their shared design problems.

VR Games

It's obvious when VR games take after videogames inasmuch as the resulting product can be described using extant genre labels. For example, Beat Saber (Beat Games, 2017) and Pistol Whip (Cloudhead Games, 2019) are rhythm games. Onward (Downpour Interactive, 2016) and Pavlov (Vankrupt Games, 2017) are tactical shooters. I Expect You to Die (Schell Games, 2017) and Last Labyrinth (AMATA K.K., 2019) are "escape room" puzzle games. Walkabout Mini Golf VR (Mighty Coconut, 2020) and #SelfieTennis (VRUnicorns, 2016) are sports games. Into the Radius (CM Games, 2020) and The Walking Dead: Saints & Sinners (Skydance Interactive, 2020) are survival games. And so on. Common videogame design patterns have been transposed, effectively unaltered, from flat-screen media to VR since at least 1991. Take the case of Dactyl Nightmare (W Industries, 1991), lovingly recreated as Polygon Nightmare (Old School VR™, 2017). Players embody a humanoid avatar from a first-person perspective and must use projectile weapons to dispatch one another while traversing floating platforms and avoiding the predatory swoops of the titular Pterodactyls.

Modern VR games that mimic the often fast-paced attractions of videogames vary wildly in terms of quality or success. For instance, Half-Life: Alyx (Valve, 2020) is widely considered the most polished and impressive VR game to-date despite being almost identical on paper with its PC predecessors. Players will shoot, loot, navigate hostile environments and occasionally solve puzzles. Many concur that what puts Alyx head and shoulders above other VR shooters, then, is the "quality of life" improvements that fall more under the remit of user experience (UX) than game design per se. As with Steve Swink's (2008) slippery but illustrative concept of "game feel", these factors can be difficult to articulate: They're easier experienced first-hand. A "good" VR game (or any other instance of VR, for that matter) will render the interface and concomitant interaction design choices effectively invisible, facilitating the kind of naturalistic, unencumbered tool use described by the Heideggerian notion of the "ready-to-hand" (Zuhandenheit in Heidegger, 1927; "tacit knowledge" in Polanyi, 1966; "immediacy" in Bolter & Grusin, 1999). It's crucial that when creating a VR game "from the ground up", considerable attention is paid to the fundamentals of embodied interaction mechanics. A gun that reloads awkwardly or a thrown object that leaves the hand at a questionable angle can distract from otherwise laudable game design to the point of rendering an exposure intolerable, shattering or at the very least working against immersion.

As VR games per se, what all of the above-cited titles have in common is that they all entail considerable challenge: They would not be prototypically game-like if victory were a foregone conclusion, or if reaching an ending were simply a matter of waiting as opposed to performing well (Costikyan, 2015; Juul, 2003). Likewise, each of the forementioned examples has a competitive or agonistic element (Caillois, 1961). Players of rhythm games may vie to top online leaderboards; teams in tactical shooters are keen to beat the opposition; the puzzles that drive "escape room" games are designed to stump the player, creating friction by deliberately hindering progress. In all cases, it's vital that the player feels as though they've exerted some kind or degree of mental or physical effort in order to earn satisfaction. This is significantly less true of VR experiences.

VR Experiences

If games can be loosely defined as providing challenges and corresponding opportunities to improve by way of practice, then VR experiences are comparatively frictionless, downplaying if not eliminating the need for pre-existing media competencies. Like films, VR experiences are designed so that participants can reach an authorially intended ending in a single sitting: They are usually of a fixed duration (e.g., 20–30 minutes) and are not generally designed with "replayability" in mind. Where games iterate a "core loop" (e.g., take cover, dispatch enemies, find supplies, repeat), VR experiences emphasize variety and simplicity, offering sporadic and often non-mandatory "token" interactions. These are typically actions that VR participants can optionally perform using basic bodily movements and given little to no instruction or training, such as grasping, hitting, throwing or waving. Sometimes interactions are incidental to the progression of events, serving mainly to embellish or entertain, while other times they are mandatory, with the VR experience refusing to continue until a specific input or (inter)action is detected. Many VR experiences mix optional and mandatory interactions. Consider the following example.

The Steam page description for Museum of Symmetry (Casa Rara, 2018) reads:

Museum of Symmetry is a room-scale[,] 20-minute narrative VR experience featuring 2D animation in a 3D playground. Come and meet vivacious characters on a kaleidoscopic joyride through landscapes of earth, fire, wind and water. There are no rules here. Just enjoy. (https://store.steampowered.com/app/870890/Museum_of_Symmetry/ – accessed 27/01/2022)

Besides its developers' description, what qualifies Museum of Symmetry as a VR experience (as opposed to a VR game per se) is the following: All that is required of the participant is that they (1) step through a virtual door, (2) pick up a lantern, (3) use the lantern to interact with some objects and (4) water plants using a watering can. These four (inter)actions, which are interspersed with events and encounters that provide context and meaningfulness, are mandatory: Museum of Symmetry will "idle" until the participant performs these necessary actions. Participants will most likely perform other (inter)actions, too, but are not required to do so. Enjoyment stems not from challenge or mastery, then, but from the feeling of fluidity that comes with performing intuitable yet surprising and delightful (inter)actions on cue.

Other VR experiences that are structurally and processually similar to Museum of Symmetry include A Short History of the Gaze (Molleindustria, 2016), Wolves in the Walls (Fable Studio, 2018), Vader Immortal (ILMxLAB, 2019a; 2019b; 2019c) and Gnomes & Goblins (Wevr, 2020). The label "experience[s]" is also used by artists and filmmakers to describe their VR output. Laurie Anderson and Hsin-Chien Huang's To the Moon (2018) as well as Huang's Samsãra (2021) are both described as VR experiences. Marina Abramovic's Rising (2018) can be classed as a VR experience. And, though it could just as easily be labeled a documentary or a biopic, Randall Okita's The Book of Distance (2020) is often referred to as a VR experience, mixing effortless mandatory and optional interactions to unfold a bittersweet real-world narrative over the course of approximately twenty minutes.

While the above-cited examples are designed for single participants, VR experiences can also be social. New York-based theater collective Pie Hole, for instance, staged a re-imagining of Shakespeare's last comedy, Tempest (Pie Hole, 2020), inside a pre-existing, cabaret-themed social VR world, The Under Presents (Tender Claws, 2019). The production illustrates how easily the line can be blurred between VR experiences and social VR to produce something describable as VR theater. The following section, however, does not delve into the embryonic artform of VR theater, instead focusing on the two most popular instances of social VR.

Social VR

Many would agree that VRChat (VRChat, 2017) is the quintessential social VR app. It begins in a hub environment in which users, players or participants can look in a virtual mirror while "trying on" different stock avatars. Users can also import their own custom avatars featuring pre-recorded animations (e.g., dances; "emotes"), animation rigs (which may enable the use of third-party, full-body and/or facial motion capture systems), sound effects and other frills. Many of the user-created spaces in VRChat lack specific themes or activities: Individuals will simply converse, dance, act chaotically and so on. Other environments have more rigid rules of engagement, perhaps centering on "serious" roleplay, speaking in a certain language (if, say, participants want to practice their Japanese) or other criteria. Owing to its range of possibilities for (often eccentric) customization options and a resulting anarchic atmosphere, VRChat is not suitable for children.

Rec Room (Rec Room Inc., 2016)—another popular, cross-platform social VR app—is more geared towards younger users. While many Rec Room users will spend much of their time in the lobby, taking selfies or tossing virtual frisbees around, there are also competitive activities to be pursued to earn points that can be spent on cosmetic items. Paintball, dodgeball, darts, table tennis and many other games are available. Short "dungeon-crawling" quests can be undertaken, art contests can be held and users with a grasp of finite-state machine logic can create their own rule-based activities using Rec Room's in-world authoring tools.

Design Considerations

What do VR games, VR experiences and social VR have in common? Besides being accessed via VR headsets, the following design considerations are sites of significant overlap.

First, as discussed, practically all VR proffers a roving, embodied viewpoint. Virtual space is experienced egocentrically. This means that intrusions of one's avatar's bodily space feel like intrusions of one's actual peripersonal space; eye contact feels like eye contact (Bailenson et al., 2001; 2003; Lee et al., 2016). Consequently, it can be deeply uncomfortable if an AI virtual agent or a human-controlled avatar comes too close to a VR user without their consent. In single-participant VR, this can be an attraction: The appeal of VR "dating simulators" lies partly in the fact that an attractive virtual human entering one's (peri)personal space can elicit realistic reactions like blushing or "butterflies". But this fact presents ethical and design challenges for social VR creators. Since 2016, individuals have complained of harassment in social VR (e.g., Basu, 2021). Developers need to find dependable and intuitive ways to protect VR users from virtual harassment and even "assault". At present, measures are almost entirely palliative (e.g., block or ban offending users) as opposed to preventative. Regrettably, the problem is not without historical precedent (see Dibbell, 1993).

Second, because VR is experienced by moving one's body in both virtual and physical space, the latter constrains the former. Usually, a tracked VR volume or "play-space" of at least four square meters (2m × 2m) is advised if not required. What happens when the VR user, player or participant needs to ambulate further than this? Two substitutes for "natural locomotion" (i.e., walking) are commonly seen. "Teleportation" is when the user points at a spot on the virtual floor to which they wish to travel, pressing a button on a handheld controller to relocate in the blink of an eye. Besides natural locomotion, teleportation is the least likely to cause motion sickness. A third locomotion mechanic—seemingly preferred by veterans of PC or console gaming—is referred to as "smooth loco[motion]" (alternately, "trackpad" or "thumbstick loco"). As the name suggests, it mimics how avatars are controlled in conventional screen-based games. That is, by way of non-natural mapping. The outcome in VR is an arguably uncanny sense of gliding through space without moving one's physical body; a kind of sensorimotor dissonance or disparity that users may find uncomfortable if not nauseating.

Third, owing to the trade-offs of the abovementioned locomotion mechanics, how best to handle spatial composition across VR's emergent forms or "genres" remains an open question. Should VR environments aspire to mimic reality, as in serious simulations or open-world games? Or does it make sense to have the environment surround and "address" the participant, with virtual objects and agents all located within arms' reach? Should VR environments be richly detailed and abound in spatial information, or is it better to leave the environment shrouded in darkness and bereft of decoration, to minimize the possibility that the player or participant becomes distracted or misses the action? Obviously, there is no one-size-fits-all solution; no "correct" answer. VR creators must, however, consider such points before settling upon gameplay or interaction mechanics, or blocking out (i.e., prototyping) a scene.

Conclusion

This article has advanced a historically contingent definition of VR, mainly in terms of the kind of experience it standardly confers. Spatial presence in VR is currently tied to specific system features, but needn't be in the future. If we consider VR to be any medium or technology capable of making users feel as if they're "there" despite consciously accessible knowledge or beliefs to the contrary, then a given definition of VR needn't rest on things that currently produce illusions of spatial presence (i.e., stereoscopy and motion-tracked visual viewpoint). Consider fictional VR technologies like the aforementioned Star Trek holodeck or the Matrix: Neither is headset- or HMD-based, yet both are undeniably VR.

The article also posited that it's worth making distinctions between VR games and the nascent form of genre VR "experiences". If some VR creators insist that their work is neither film nor game, then scholars are obliged to listen. Whether VR experiences become mainstream depends on whether gamers move beyond the idea that a digital artwork's retail value can be translated into quantifiable units such as minutes of entertainment. Either way, we might consider that where videogames can be understood as or in terms of procedural rhetoric (Bogost, 2006; Frasca, 2003; 2007), with the forms of player agency afforded by the simulation being central to meaning-making (Nguyen, 2020), then perhaps VR—an especially embodied medium—underscores that player or participant's sensorimotor activity, as well as their affective or emotional experience, is an unignorable part of the medium's aesthetics (Murphy, 2021; Tavinor, 2021).

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Author Information

Dooley Murphy is a VR researcher and artist based in Copenhagen, Denmark. His doctoral thesis examines the form and function of VR art and entertainment experiences through a cognitive–phenomenological lens. The monograph argues that while exercises of virtual agency are indeed important to creating and sustaining presence, immersion and emotion in VR, we must pay close attention to agency's opposite number: Patiency—the embodied feeling of being acted upon by virtual entities.

Citation Information

Murphy, D. (2022). Virtual Reality. In Grabarczyk, P. (ed.), Encyclopedia of Ludic Terms (Spring 2022 Edition). URL: https://eolt.org/articles/virtual-reality

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